Chapter 48:The HR Visit

Leah sat at her desk with the third part of her NexGen clinical data review open on her screen. The SEC response team deadline was tomorrow — April 18th — and the memo had to be airtight. David Choi would read it. Priya would read it. Legal would read it. Every claim had to be supported, every discrepancy documented with page citations from the investor disclosure materials. She had been working on the memo since seven in the morning, after a sleepless night. Ethan's apartment, the letter, the crayon drawing on the mantelpiece — the images kept surfacing at the edge of her thoughts, pulling her out of the clinical language of pharmaceutical analysis and into something raw and uncontrolled. She pushed them down. Not now. The memo first. Diana second. The memo was nearly complete. Three sections already submitted to David via ThorneVault secure messaging: the clinical data discrepancies, the directional adjustment pattern, and the mathematical impossibility in the aggregate reporting. This final section covered the investor disclosure timeline — the sequence in which clinical trial results were shared with investors, regulators, and the public. If Leah could prove that the data was adjusted between internal review and investor disclosure, she would have a securities fraud case that didn't require the restricted section documents. She typed the last paragraph, reviewed the full section, and saved the draft. Then she closed the file and opened a new browser window. Diana Voss. She had run the badge access log information through every database she could reach without triggering security alerts. Diana Voss, Human Resources, Thorne Group. Senior Benefits Coordinator — the title on her employee directory listing. Tenure: seven years. No internal profile photo. No social media presence that Leah could find. No LinkedIn. Seven years at Thorne Group, and Diana Voss had left no digital footprint beyond her name and job title. That was either careful privacy management or institutional habit. People who worked inside Martha Thorne's orbit learned to be invisible. Leah understood the instinct better than anyone. She checked the clock. 9:47 AM. HR was on the 32nd floor. Diana Voss's office hours were standard — 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday, per the employee directory. The pretext was simple. Catherine Marsh had a question about her dental insurance enrollment. She had received the benefits package during onboarding but couldn't find the provider directory for out-of-network coverage. It was the kind of mundane inquiry that HR handled dozens of times a week. It required no documentation, no appointment, no record beyond a casual conversation. Leah saved her work, locked her screen, and took the elevator to 32. The HR floor was quieter than the corporate strategy level. Softer lighting. Potted plants. A reception desk staffed by a young man in a gray sweater who looked up with the automatic friendliness of someone whose job required constant pleasantness. "Hi, I'm Catherine Marsh from Corporate Strategy. I had a quick question about my dental coverage — do I need to see someone specific, or can anyone help?" The young man checked his screen. "Benefits questions usually go to Diana Voss. She's in office 3214, down the hall, third on the right." "Thanks." Leah walked down the corridor. The hallway was carpeted in a neutral beige. Doors lined both sides, each with a small nameplate in brushed nickel. Most were open — casual HR territory, where employees wandered in with questions about PTO and retirement contributions. Office 3214 was closed. Leah knocked twice. "Come in." The voice was low, unhurried, with a faint trace of something that might have been a regional accent — Mid-Atlantic, perhaps. Not New York. Not Southern. Something in between. Leah opened the door. Diana Voss was sitting behind a desk that was smaller than Leah had expected. The office was compact but not cramped — a window looking east toward the Chrysler Building, a filing cabinet, a bookshelf, and two chairs for visitors. Everything was neat but not sterile. There was a warmth to the arrangement that suggested someone who had been in the same room for a long time and had made it hers. Diana Voss herself was in her late forties, Leah estimated. Dark hair, streaked with early gray, pulled back in a low chignon. Her face was composed — not closed, but controlled. The kind of face that revealed nothing it didn't choose to reveal. She wore a navy blouse and a thin silver chain around her neck. No rings. Her eyes were pale brown, almost amber in the light from the window, and they moved over Leah's face with a speed and precision that reminded Leah of Geraldine Hoffman. Not the same pale blue watchfulness — Diana's assessment was warmer, more human, but no less thorough. "Can I help you?" "Catherine Marsh. Corporate Strategy. I just started a few weeks ago, and I have a question about my dental coverage. I can't find the provider directory for out-of-network dentists." Leah kept her voice casual. Professional. A new employee with an administrative question. Diana nodded. "Did you check the benefits portal?" "I did. The portal lists in-network providers, but I have a dentist in Hoboken that I've been seeing for years. I wanted to check if she's covered under out-of-network benefits." Diana turned to her computer. "What's your employee ID?" Leah gave it. Diana typed, clicked, scrolled. Her fingers moved with the ease of someone who had entered thousands of employee IDs over seven years. "You're enrolled in the PPO plan. Out-of-network coverage is at sixty percent of usual and customary rates, after deductible. Your deductible is three hundred dollars, and your annual maximum is two thousand." She turned her screen so Leah could see. "The provider directory is here, under Benefits Resources. It's a PDF — easy to miss." Leah leaned forward and looked at the screen. She memorized the navigation path — not because she needed it, but because the act of looking gave her a reason to be in the office for another thirty seconds. "Got it. Thanks so much." "You're welcome." Diana's smile was polite and practiced. The kind of smile that said *I've answered this question a hundred times.* She began to turn back to her screen. "Actually," Leah said, "one more thing. I noticed on the benefits portal that there's a dependent care flexible spending account. I don't have dependents, but I was curious — is that something employees use often?" It was a neutral question. The kind of thing a new employee might ask while she was already in HR. But it was also a probe. Leah wanted to see how Diana responded to an unexpected question — whether her composure held, whether she gave more than she needed to, whether something flickered behind those amber eyes. Diana's fingers paused over the keyboard. A beat of silence — no more than a second. "The dependent care FSA is available to all benefits-eligible employees," Diana said. "Usage varies by department. Corporate Strategy tends to have lower enrollment than, say, Legal or Finance." She smiled again. "You'd be surprised how many people don't know it exists until they need it." There was nothing in her tone that suggested suspicion. But Leah had noticed the pause — the half-second between the question and the answer. Diana had considered the question before responding. Not rehearsed. Considered. Leah filed it away and stood. "Thanks again. I appreciate it." "Anytime." Diana's eyes followed Leah to the door. Not suspicious — watchful. The same quality Leah had observed in Geraldine, but less deliberate. More instinctive. Leah stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her. She had what she came for — but it wasn't the dental information. In the thirty seconds she had been in Diana Voss's office, Leah had catalogued everything her peripheral vision could reach. The bookshelf held no personal photographs — only reference texts: *ERISA Compliance Guide*, *Benefits Administration Manual*, *New York State Labor Law*, and a worn hardcover copy of *Wuthering Heights* that sat apart from the professional texts, its spine cracked and faded from repeated readings. The filing cabinet had three drawers, each labeled with departmental codes. Nothing unusual. The window ledge held a single item: a small framed photograph, positioned so that it faced Diana's chair, not the visitor's side. Leah had not been able to see it clearly from her angle, but she had caught a glimpse of color — green, the shade of trees in summer — and the edge of what might have been a house. And the silver chain around Diana's neck. Not a religious symbol. Not a locket. A small pendant — irregular in shape, the color of aged copper. Leah had seen something like it before, in a museum exhibit about antique jewelry. It was a cameo. A silhouette carved in relief against a colored background. She couldn't see the subject of the cameo from where she sat. But the style was old-fashioned — Victorian or Edwardian. The kind of thing passed down through generations. Catherine Voss would be in her early sixties now — if she was alive. Elena Voss's younger sister, who had tried to gain custody of her orphaned niece and been crushed by Martha Thorne's legal machine. If Diana Voss was Catherine Voss's daughter, she would have grown up in the shadow of that defeat. She would have known that her aunt had fought for a child and lost. She would have known that the Thorne family was responsible. And she would have gone to work for them. Leah took the elevator back to 34. She sat at her desk and stared at her screen without seeing it. Three possibilities. Diana Voss was a victim — someone who had ended up inside Thorne Group through circumstance and couldn't leave. Diana Voss was a participant — someone who had made peace with Martha's world and served it willingly. Or Diana Voss was something more complicated — someone who was biding her time, waiting inside the machine the way Leah was waiting inside it. The half-second pause before the dependent care question. The worn copy of *Wuthering Heights* — a story about obsessive love across generations, about children stolen and raised by those who destroyed their parents. The cameo around her neck, old and personal, turned inward where visitors couldn't see it. Diana Voss was hiding something. But whether that something made her an ally or a threat, Leah couldn't tell yet. She needed more information. And she needed it without drawing attention. The SEC memo. Leah pulled the draft back onto her screen and forced herself to focus. The deadline was tomorrow. The memo was the priority — not Diana Voss, not the restricted section, not the growing convergence of threads that pulled at her concentration like riptides. She worked for three hours. The memo was meticulous. Twelve pages of clinical data analysis, supported by investor disclosure documents, FDA inspection findings, and internal email chains. Five discrepancies documented. Each one a nail in the coffin of NexGen's acquisition narrative. At 1:15 PM, Leah reviewed the full memo one final time. She read it not as its author but as David Choi would read it — as a senior director who needed to submit a defensible SEC response. Every claim was sourced. Every assertion was supported. The tone was clinical and professional, stripped of any language that might suggest the author had a personal stake in the findings. She attached the memo to a ThorneVault message to David Choi with the subject line: "NexGen Clinical Data Review — Part 3 (Final) — SEC Response Team." She pressed send. The memo was done. A quietly devastating document that proved clinical data fraud across multiple acquisitions — proof that Martha, Sebastian, Pemberton, and Antonio had known about the discrepancies before the NexGen deal closed and had chosen to proceed. It was an internal document, not a public weapon, but it would be preserved in ThorneVault's audit trail. If the SEC investigation escalated, the response team's own analysis would become part of the evidence. Leah exhaled. She had been holding her breath without realizing it. Her phone buzzed. A text from Ethan on the encrypted channel. *Geraldine Hoffman requested a follow-up meeting. She wants to show you something. Tomorrow, 10 AM, Research Room. She was specific about the time — said the morning is the only window when the floor is quiet.* Leah read the message twice. Geraldine Hoffman wanted to show her something. Not tell her — show her. That meant documents. Physical documents from the restricted section. Geraldine was choosing her. Leah typed a response: *Confirmed. I'll be there.* She set the phone down and looked at the clock. 1:28 PM. The afternoon stretched ahead of her — five more hours at her desk, surrounded by the quiet machinery of corporate analysis, pretending to be Catherine Marsh while the walls of the conspiracy pressed inward from every side. Diana Voss on 32. Geraldine Hoffman on 36. Rachel Okonkwo watching from Corporate Development. Sebastian's internal leak investigation grinding through personnel files. Pemberton calling Ethan's father about sealed adoption records. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a woman named Catherine Voss who had written a letter to a child she would never know, and a man named James who had discovered something dangerous and paid for it with his life, and a girl named Isabella who had been stolen from everything she was and raised as something she wasn't. Leah picked up her pen and opened her notebook — not the Moleskine, which was safely hidden, but the standard Thorne Group notebook that Catherine Marsh used for meeting notes. She wrote three lines: *Diana Voss — cautious, watchful, hiding something. Old cameo, Wuthering Heights, no personal photos visible. Dependent care question produced half-second pause. Victim, participant, or biding?* *Geraldine meeting tomorrow 10 AM — Research Room. Will show something. Restricted section?* *SEC memo submitted. Part 3 final. David Choi will review by end of week.* She closed the notebook and returned to her screen. The healthcare competitive landscape analysis for Costa Holdings was due Friday. She had two days to complete it. She opened the file and began to work. At 4:45 PM, her phone buzzed again. Another text from Ethan. *Ran Diana Voss through Hunt Capital's proprietary database. Seven years at Thorne Group, no promotions, no lateral moves, no performance flags. She's invisible by design — her employee record is aggressively normal. But there's one anomaly: her emergency contact is listed as "C. Voss, Hampton Bays." No phone number. No relationship specified.* Leah stared at the message. *C. Voss. Hampton Bays.* Hampton Bays was ten minutes from Southampton. From Martha Thorne's Hamptons estate. From the property that had been transferred to Martha Thorne as trustee after James and Elena Voss were killed — the same property listed in the dissolved Voss Medical Research Foundation's final tax filing. Catherine Voss was alive. She was living in Hampton Bays. And Diana Voss — who worked in HR at Thorne Group, who had accessed the restricted section eighteen months ago, who wore a Victorian cameo and kept her personal photographs turned away from visitors — had listed her as an emergency contact. Leah's hand was trembling. She pressed it flat against the desk until it stopped. Diana Voss was Catherine Voss's daughter. And Catherine Voss was alive. The letter that Ethan had read aloud in his apartment two nights ago — the letter that had made Leah cry for the first time in two years — was not a relic. It was a living connection. The woman who had written *be brave* was still breathing, still within reach, still carrying the weight of a twenty-four-year-old grief. Leah picked up her phone. She started to type a response to Ethan, then stopped. The encrypted channel was secure, but some things needed to be held in silence before they were shared. She set the phone down and looked at the window. The Chrysler Building's steel crown caught the late afternoon light, gleaming like something permanent and untouchable. Tomorrow: Geraldine Hoffman and whatever she wanted to show her. And somewhere behind Diana Voss's closed door on the 32nd floor, the answer to a question that had been growing for months — the question of who Isabella really was, and where she came from, and whether the life she remembered was real or a carefully constructed lie — was one step closer. Day twenty-four. The HR visit had revealed nothing and everything. Leah saved her work, locked her screen, and took the elevator to the lobby. She walked out into the April evening, past the doorman, past the town cars idling at the curb, and into the city that was still, for now, keeping her secret. Her phone buzzed one more time. Ethan. *Are you okay?* She typed back: *Better than I've been in a long time.* It was the truth.