The pancake burned. Lily looked up from her dragon drawing. "Mommy?"
"Nothing, baby. Eat your lumps." Naomi stepped into the hallway, her heart hammering. "Elena, I didn't leak anything."
"I know that. But Victor's people are already calling reporters saying the leak came from 'the interpreter.'"
She hung up and read the article with shaking hands. It was thorough — the memo, the timeline, the twelve-day countdown to the Planning Commission vote. The unnamed source was described as "a person with direct knowledge of the closed-door negotiations." That could be anyone. But Victor Hale would make sure it was her.
Her phone rang. Kevin Chen.
"Naomi, don't panic," he said. "But Daniel wants to see you. Today. The St. Francis, one o'clock. Just him, Mr. Lin, and you."
"Kevin — I didn't do this."
"I believe you. But come prepared to prove it."
The St. Francis suite was smaller than the Fairmont's, and colder. Daniel Zhang stood when she entered, which was worse than if he'd stayed seated — it meant this was formal.
"Miss Carter." He gestured to a chair. Henry Lin sat by the window, silent, his face unreadable.
"Daniel," Naomi said, sitting. "Before you start — I did not leak that memo."
"Someone did." Daniel laid a printout of the Chronicle article on the table. "The memo was distributed to eleven people. You are one of them. You are also the only one with a public motive — the video, the restaurant, the waitress the internet loves." His voice was flat. "And Victor Hale called Mr. Lin this morning to say that if we cannot control our own interpreter, perhaps the partnership should be reconsidered."
Naomi felt the trap closing — Victor's trap, baited with her own name.
"Think about it logically," she said, forcing her voice steady. "If I wanted to hurt Victor, would I leak it anonymously? I have two million people watching me. An anonymous leak does nothing for me — and it risks the job I just signed. Why would I burn my own contract?"
"For the center," Daniel said. "You visited it on Tuesday. We know."
The room went very quiet. Naomi looked at Daniel, then at Henry Lin, who had not moved.
"Yes," she said. "I went. I used to volunteer there when I was sixteen. Mrs. Chow — the woman who runs it — she taught me..." She stopped, because her voice was threatening to break, and she would not break in front of these men. "I went because I saw the map and I needed to see it was real. But I did not leak anything. I gave my word when I signed that contract, and my word is worth more than a headline."
Daniel studied her. "You understand that Mr. Hale is demanding your removal."
"Then remove me." Naomi met his eyes. "But know that you're doing it because a guilty man pointed at the nearest woman."
Henry Lin spoke for the first time, in Mandarin, low and final: "够了。" Gòu le. Enough. He looked at Daniel. "我看人不会错。" I know character when I see it. Then, to Naomi, in English: "I hired you for your judgment as well as your tongue. If you had leaked this, you would tell me. Wouldn't you?"
"Yes, sir," she said quietly. "I would."
He nodded, once. "Then it is settled. Daniel — find the real leak. Quietly."
Daniel's jaw tightened, but he bowed his head. "Yes, Chairman."
They left her in the suite with the article and the silence. Naomi stood at the window looking down at Union Square, where tourists were taking photos of a city they didn't know was being sold out from under them, and she thought about Victor's voice on the phone that morning — if we cannot control our own interpreter — and about how neatly he had tried to turn her into the story instead of the center.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.
She almost didn't answer. Then she did.
"Naomi? It's R." The voice was low, hurried — the woman from the lobby, Victor's assistant. "Rachel Kim. I don't have long. That memo — the Chronicle didn't get it from you. They got it from me."
Naomi's breath caught. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because Daniel Zhang is about to tear this office apart looking for a traitor, and I'd rather he find me on my own terms." A pause, traffic sounds behind her. "And because I've worked for Victor Hale for fifteen years, and I'm done watching him bury people."
"Rachel —"
"Fifteen years," Rachel said, and there was something raw underneath the efficiency now. "Fifteen years of watching him do this to people. I have things you need to see. Emails. Can we meet?"
Naomi looked down at Union Square, at the cable cars and the crowds, at the whole bright oblivious city.
"When?" she said.
"Tonight. And Naomi —" Rachel's voice dropped. "We need to talk."
Chapter Eleven
Rachel
The tea house on Clement Street smelled of oolong and old wood. Naomi arrived ten minutes early and took the booth in the back anyway, where the windows looked out at nothing but rain-striped glass. Her hands were wrapped around a cup she didn't drink from. Rachel Kim had said noon. At 12:03, a woman in a charcoal coat slid into the opposite seat, shook the rain from her umbrella, and said, "You're taller than you look on video."
Rachel Kim was forty, with the careful posture of someone who had spent fifteen years making herself invisible in expensive rooms. She ordered tea for both of them without asking, then folded her hands and looked at Naomi for a long moment.
"You're wondering why I slipped you my card," Rachel said.
"I'm wondering a lot of things," Naomi said.
Rachel smiled, thinly. "Fifteen years. That's how long I've been Victor Hale's executive assistant. I started when Hale Development was three floors of a building on Montgomery and a founder with a dream. I built his calendar, his contacts, his life. I know what he orders for breakfast. I know his wife's birthday and his mistress's, too, and I have never once mixed them up." She lifted her cup. "Last year he hired a twenty-six-year-old with a communications degree to be my 'strategic support.' She's paid forty thousand more than I am. When I asked for a raise, he laughed and said, 'Rachel, loyalty is its own reward.'"