Linda hesitated. “Liz, I could lose my job.”
“Please.”
She sighed. I heard keyboard clicks.
“There was another deposit three weeks ago,” Linda said quietly. “Three hundred thousand. Same source.”
Five hundred thousand.
Sarah had already received more than half the contract.
“If this goes to trial, she’s going to prison,” I said. “Harrison set her up.”
“Then you need to stop her,” Linda said. “Before it’s too late.”
I tried calling Sarah again.
Nothing.
I drove to her apartment in Morgantown. She wasn’t there. I waited outside for two hours. She never came home. I called Andrew. He didn’t pick up either.
By the time I got back to my house, it was past midnight. I sat at the kitchen table staring at the documents.
Fourteen documents for fourteen men.
Harrison had taken my daughter the same way he’d taken my husband.
I called Sarah one last time before I went to bed. The phone rang and rang and rang.
She never answered anymore.
I finally got Sarah to meet me three days later. Not at my house, not at hers. At Giovanni’s, a small Italian restaurant in downtown Morgantown. Neutral ground.
She was twenty minutes late.
When she walked in, she looked tired. Older than twenty-two.
She sat down across from me without smiling.
“You said it was urgent,” she said.
I slid the folder across the table. Bank statements. EPA filings. Copies of the fourteen forged documents, each one bearing her signature.
“You need to stop,” I said. “Right now, before this gets worse.”
Sarah opened the folder, looked through the papers. Her face didn’t change.
“I know what I signed,” she said quietly.
The words hit me like a slap.
“You know?”
“Sarah, these are fake. The emissions data, the water quality reports, none of it is real.”
“They won’t find out,” Sarah said. “Harrison knows what he’s doing. The project is safe. The reports are just streamlined.”
“Streamlined?”
I stared at her.
“Sarah, you signed off on compliance certifications for equipment that doesn’t exist. You falsified federal documents. That’s a felony.”
“It’s not falsified,” Sarah said. “It’s preemptive. The equipment will be installed before anyone checks.”
“And if it’s not? If something goes wrong? If someone gets hurt?”
Sarah looked away.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“That’s what they said at Riverside,” I said. “That’s what your father believed. And then fourteen men died.”
Sarah flinched, but she didn’t back down.
“This isn’t Riverside,” she said. “Harrison has changed. Pinnacle has the best safety record in the industry. You’re so obsessed with the past that you can’t see that people can change.”
“He hasn’t changed,” I said. “Sarah, he hired you specifically to set you up. Don’t you see? Fourteen documents, fourteen signatures, one for each man who died at Riverside. He’s using you. If this project fails, you’re the one who goes to prison, not him.”
Sarah shook her head.
“You’re paranoid.”
“I’m trying to save you,” I said, my voice breaking. “Sarah, please. If you stop now, if you come forward as a whistleblower, I can protect you. There’s someone at Pinnacle—Harrison’s own son, Marcus—who wants to help. The FBI will give you immunity if you cooperate.”
Sarah stared at me.
“You want me to destroy my career before it even starts?”
“I want you to stay out of prison.”
“I’m not going to prison,” Sarah said, “because I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You signed false documents.”
“I signed documents that Harrison Caldwell asked me to sign,” Sarah said. “I trusted him. If there’s a problem, it’s his responsibility, not mine.”
I felt something crack inside me.
“That’s not how it works,” I said quietly. “When you put your signature on something, you’re responsible. You’re the engineer of record. That’s what I taught you. That’s what your father believed.”
“My father is dead,” Sarah said, her voice cold. “He’s been dead for twenty-three years, and you’ve spent every single one of those years making his death the center of your life.”
“The center of my life—Sarah—”
“I don’t want to be like you, Mom.”
Her eyes were wet now, but her voice was steady.
“I don’t want to spend my life chasing ghosts. I don’t want to end up alone and bitter, obsessed with something I can’t change.”
She stood up, started putting on her jacket.
“Sarah, wait.”
