The List
Vale dropped off a file and heard a conversation she was never meant to hear. One name. One word. Protected. She told herself it was nothing. Then came the flight with no destination and no passenger list. The List continues in Part 2.
I wasn't even supposed to be in the building that evening, my shift ended at six and I had already packed my bag,
but Marcus called and said Harlan needed the Henderson file on his desk before morning.
Harlan is the man I work for,
Harlan Voss, and when his office says something needs to be done before morning you don't ask questions,
you just go back upstairs and you do it.
I dropped the file on his desk and I was leaving when I heard voices from the conference room at the end of the hall,
which shouldn't have been occupied because the building was supposed to be empty.
Who was in there?
Three men I didn't recognize and Harlan, and they weren't talking loudly but the door wasn't fully closed,
and I stopped because I heard a name I recognized, a senator,
and the way they said it wasn't the way you say someone's name in a normal conversation.
It was the way you say a name when that person belongs to you.
What do you mean belongs to you?
Like an asset, like something you own and manage and keep quiet,
and one of the men said the word arrangement and another one said the word protected and
Harlan just nodded the way he nods when a deal is already done.
I left before any of them saw me and I told myself I had misunderstood, that it was business,
that powerful men talk like that about each other all the time and it means nothing.
But you didn't believe that.
I believed it for about three days, and then Marcus asked me to schedule a private flight for Harlan and two of those same men,
no destination listed, no passenger manifest, just a tail number and a time, and I started to understand that what
I had heard in that room was not nothing.