Victor Sloane's board of directors placed him on temporary leave after investigators served the company with a records request. The decision was described as routine, but the news unsettled him more than the public accusations had. A rumor could be managed. A paper trail could be copied, compared, and placed in front of people who knew how to read it.
Paul Danner met him in a parking garage beneath an office building.
“You said the file was gone,” Sloane said.
“The main file is gone. Hale kept a transmission log.”
Sloane's eyes narrowed. “Hale was supposed to have left the matter behind.”
“He did. Until now.”
“And Pike?”
“He's talking.”
For a moment, Sloane looked as if he might strike Danner. Instead, he adjusted his cuff and lowered his voice.
“Find out what Hale gave them. No threats. No break-ins. I won't have another amateur creating a trail.”
Danner hesitated. “The sheriff is watching us.”
“Then stop behaving like a man who expects not to be watched.”
Sloane returned to his office and opened a locked cabinet. Inside lay a file that had never entered Northline's electronic system. It contained copies of correspondence, notes from the old contractor, and a handwritten page from the week of the operation. The page did not prove that Sloane had intended an ambush. It did show that he knew the revised route would leave the shipment vulnerable and that he had been warned of the risk.
He had told himself the warning was exaggerated. He had believed the transfer would be completed before anyone could ask why the package had been moved. When the ambush occurred, he had chosen to protect the transaction rather than disclose the irregularity.
That choice had cost a young soldier his life and helped bury the truth.
Sloane shut the cabinet.
He could still argue that he had not ordered the attack. He could still claim that the missing equipment had been the real target and that the soldiers' deaths were unintended consequences. Perhaps a court would agree. But the records would expose what he had done afterward: the altered chronology, the pressure on witnesses, the concealment of the transfer.
He called his attorney and asked what could be done to limit the damage.
The attorney advised him to stop contacting anyone connected to the case.
Sloane promised he would.
Then he called Clayton Reed.
Clayton let the phone ring four times before answering. “Reed.”
“You don't know what you're getting into,” Sloane said.
“I know you changed a route and helped hide the change.”
“You know fragments. You don't know the pressures involved, the people who demanded that shipment move, or what would have happened if I refused.”
“Then tell investigators.”
“You think they want truth? They want a culprit. They will use you until they find someone more convenient.”
“Maybe. But I won't help them lie.”
Sloane's voice sharpened. “You could have left this alone. You had a quiet life.”
“I had a quiet life because I stopped asking questions.”
“And now Daniel Price is still dead.”
Clayton closed his eyes. The words were cruel because they were true, but Sloane had used the truth as a weapon.
“Yes,” Clayton said. “He is. And you don't get to use his death to excuse what you did afterward.”
He ended the call and gave Ellis the time and details. Sloane's attempt to contact a witness was logged. It was not a confession, but it was another piece of the record.
For the first time, Clayton felt no urge to confront Sloane in person. He wanted him to answer questions in a room where every word would be recorded.
Sloane’s representatives responded by sending a letter that described the investigation as an attempt to revive a closed matter for personal reasons. The letter questioned Clayton’s reliability and suggested that the recent fight had made him hungry for attention. Rylan read it in disbelief. Clayton read it without visible reaction, then asked Ellis whether the response contained anything that could be checked. Most of it was argument, but one paragraph named a date that had not been released publicly. Ellis flagged it for the investigator. If the date had come from a sealed file, the question became who had access to it and why the defense had chosen to mention it. The letter was not a confession, but it created another line of inquiry. Clayton resisted the urge to answer through the press. He knew how easy it would be to make a sharp public remark and how difficult it would be to correct a misleading one afterward. He let the documented process carry the next move.
Rylan's televised bout was canceled two weeks before the scheduled date. His sponsor released a careful statement about “unforeseen circumstances,” and Grant Bell stopped returning his calls. The cancellation cost Rylan a significant purse and left him with no immediate replacement event.