Page 25 of Working for the Heiress

"Conrad."

"Yeah."

"The men who survived the crash. What about their settlements?”

"Low. While they were still in shock. Sign here, don't talk about it, take the money, go away."

"And you signed."

"I did.”

"Because you thought you'd missed something on inspection."

He was quiet for a long time.

"I went over it a thousand times," he said. "Every inspection. Every checklist. Every time I touched that bird. I couldn't find the moment I should have caught it. Two years I carried that. And once I put together enough of a paper trail, I understood there was nothing to catch except someone else’s greed.”

I stood up. I crossed the room to where he was standing by the door. I put my hands on his face, feeling his stubble and the warmth of his body beneath my skin. "My father did this."

Conrad swallowed, his eyes looking tortured. I nodded. “I’m going to fix it."

He covered my hands with his. His palms were rough and warm and I felt the scars on his knuckles against my fingers.

"I know you are," he said.

I kissed him slow and purposefully as the mountains turned pink outside the window. The full weight of my decision settled onto my shoulders, but I felt lighter than before I arrived.

When I pulled back, his eyes were wet. He didn't look away from me.

I understood that Conrad Holt was part of me now, that I was sent here not to tick a box and earn a payout, but to find him, to expose the truth, to bring justice and right a wrong. And if I was lucky, I’d walk away with the greatest prize of all. This man.

Conrad

Lili barely protested when I carried her to the truck around sunset, and that’s how I knew she was exhausted. She fell asleep before I was out of the parking lot, but I certainly didn’t mind the chance to glance at her while I drove.

She spent most of the day alternating between frantic photocopies and angry phone calls as soon as the power was back on. The people on the other end of the line did not deserve the patience or grace she showed them, but by the time she hung up that final time, she was shaking with adrenaline.

I drove slow. The roads were still wet from the storm and there were branches down on the shoulder and I was in no rush to get anywhere that wasn't where I was right now, which was in the cab of my truck with Lili Ashford asleep against the passenger window wearing my henley.

She'd been magnificent.

I stood in the doorway of her office for most of the afternoon, arms crossed, watching her work the phone like a woman who had been born to dismantle things.

The first call was Denver — the regional director, who had heard about the grounded fleet and the medical transport delay and wanted answers. Lili gave them to him in a voice so level and precise that he ran out of questions in four minutes.

The second call was the insurance adjuster. The third was the FAA liaison, who wanted paperwork on Daley. Lili had it ready, along with some amendments to former incidents the rep wasn’t expecting to unearth ever again.

And then she called Boston.

I heard Robert Ashford's voice come through the speaker and I watched Lili's face go still. Not hard. Not angry. Still, the way the surface of water goes still before something comes up from underneath.

She laid it out for him the way she'd laid it out for me the night before. Every requisition. Every substitution. Every discrepancy. The parts that were never ordered. She did it without raising her voice, without accusation, without any of the heat I would have brought to it.

She did it like a woman reading a pre-flight checklist — fact by fact, line by line, with the precision of someone who understood exactly what each number meant.

Robert had gone quiet for a long time. Then he hissed something about lawyers and liability and the family's exposure and Lili said, "I've already sent copies to an outside attorney. And I sent a briefing to the board.”

The silence after that had been the loudest thing I'd ever heard.