Catherine Marsh Part 2

Chapter 79: Catherine Marsh Part 2 "Good afternoon," the woman on the burner said. "This is Karen Feldman from Thorne Group Human Resources. Am I speaking with Catherine Marsh?" Leah had rehearsed the name until it felt like a key in her mouth, but the first time Thorne Group asked for it, the apartment seemed to shrink around her. The 10-K lay open at her knees. A page of notes on Costa Holdings, Foundation grants, and board diversification waited beside her like contraband. If she answered too fast, Catherine sounded eager. If she hesitated, Catherine sounded false. Leah let one ordinary beat pass, adjusted her shoulders into the woman Viktor had built, and said, "Yes, this is Catherine." Karen Feldman did not hear the dead heiress under the voice. She heard an applicant in a pile. "Great. We received your application through Whitfield Executive Placement for the Junior Analyst position in Corporate Strategy. We'd like to schedule a phone screen. Do you have twenty minutes this Thursday or Friday?" "Thursday works well. What time?" "Two o'clock?" "Perfect." Karen's laugh was practiced and harmless. "It will just be a preliminary conversation. We'll review your background, discuss the role, and if there's a fit, schedule an in-person interview. Nothing to worry about." Nothing to worry about meant no one had opened the wrong file yet. Leah thanked her, kept Catherine's warmth in place until the call ended, then set the phone on the floor as if it might still be listening. In the Moleskine she wrote Karen Feldman, HR coordinator, Strategy division. Whitfield referral strong. Phone screen February 11, 2 PM. Then she added the line that mattered: First gate opened without facial exposure. For the next four days, Leah became Catherine in layers. She built answers that sounded lived-in without sounding overprepared. Why Thorne Group? Family-owned enterprises navigating generational transitions. Why corporate strategy? Ambiguous data, long-range decisions, the space between legacy and growth. Why short tenures in Chicago and Boston? One manager relocation, one contract-based role, both departures clean. She practiced leaving a few sentences imperfect. Isabella had always been too polished. Catherine needed to be good enough to hire and forgettable enough to survive. At 1:58 p.m. on February 11, Leah sat on the apartment floor with the window cracked two inches to let winter sharpen the room. The burner phone rested in her palm. Her resume, the fake Rutgers transcript, and three pages of public Thorne Group notes formed a neat fan on the rug. When the phone rang at exactly two, she answered with a small lift in her voice. "Catherine Marsh." The screen lasted eighteen minutes. Karen asked for a resume walk-through, and Leah gave her the Chicago firm, the Boston contract, the Rutgers MBA, the family-business research thread. She made the Chicago manager sound real by giving him a bad habit of changing spreadsheet labels. She made the Boston role sound limited by naming a project scope and a contract end. She placed Catherine's grandparents in a New Jersey hardware store and let the lie carry enough sawdust and ledger paper to feel true. Karen warmed when Leah mentioned family-owned enterprises. "What draws you to that space specifically?" "I grew up watching one generation's decisions land on the next," Leah said, using Catherine's softer cadence. "At Rutgers I became interested in governance, succession pressure, and how family dynamics either support strategy or quietly sabotage it. Thorne Group is operating at that scale now. Healthcare expansion, Foundation visibility, board diversification. It's the kind of transition where analysis matters." She used three public details and one quiet one. The board diversification initiative had been buried in a proxy filing, not announced in a press release. It was just enough to show research, not enough to show surveillance. Karen's pen scratched against paper. Then the trap arrived in a polite voice. "Is there anything in your background that would come up in a standard background check that you'd like to address proactively?" Leah did not look at the license on the table. Looking would make it powerful. "No. Clean record, clean credit, straightforward employment history. I left Chicago after my manager relocated and the team restructured. The Boston role was contract-based and ended on schedule. My references will confirm both departures were amicable." "Perfect," Karen said, and the word hit harder than praise should have. "I think we'd like to bring you in. Can you come to 445 Park Avenue next Tuesday at ten?" Leah kept her pulse out of her voice. "Tuesday works perfectly." "Bring a copy of your resume and a government-issued ID for building security. You'll meet with me and David Choi, Senior Director of Corporate Strategy." When the call ended, Leah pressed her palms flat against the rug until the fibers marked her skin. She had expected relief. Instead she felt the shape of the building: forty floors of cameras, elevators, old access memory, and people who had once stepped aside for Isabella Thorne. Catherine Marsh now had an appointment with the place that killed her. On February 14, Megan tried to stop the appointment with garlic, wine, and the furious precision of someone who knew panic could not be useful unless it had a plan. Leah sat on the couch while Megan stood in the kitchen, stirring pasta hard enough to punish the pot. "Sofia is asking questions again," Megan said. "She thinks I stopped talking about the NexGen data because I'm hiding something." "You are hiding something." Megan appeared in the doorway with a wooden spoon in one hand. "I'm hiding you, which is worse. And now you're telling me you're walking into Thorne Group next Tuesday." "For an interview." "At the building where Martha works." "On the thirty-fourth floor. Martha's office is not there." "That is not comforting." Megan set the spoon down. "People knew Isabella in that building. Security guards, receptionists, analysts, assistants. Someone could look at you for half a second and remember the girl who disappeared after the gala." "They will be looking for Catherine Marsh." "People don't only see what they're looking for." Leah looked down at the untouched wine in her glass. Megan had earned more truth than slogans. "I know the risk. But the sealed files stay locked until March 2027. Martha gets fourteen more months to consolidate, erase, and adjust if I wait. Corporate Strategy is the first door that can put me near board packets and archived decisions without marching into Martha's office." "And Ethan?" Megan asked. "Is he helping you, or using you?" The question found the bruise. Ethan had opened Whitfield. Ethan had his own war with the Hunt name. Ethan also knew too much and had resources Leah could not control. "He is a partner under terms," she said. "Full transparency. No unilateral action." "Partners betray each other." "Some do." "Be ready for him to be one of them." Leah nodded because arguing would insult them both. "I have contingencies." "How many?" "Three." Megan almost smiled, then lost it. "Of course you do." They ate pasta after that because fear could not be allowed to own the whole night. Megan told a story about an elderly patient who insisted on being called Commander and saluted every nurse who entered his room. Leah laughed for real, and the sound startled both of them. At eleven, she put on her coat at the door. "Catherine Marsh," Megan said. Leah turned. "Is that really who you're going to be?" The calendar alert for Tuesday's interview glowed on Leah's phone: 445 Park Avenue, 10:00 AM, bring ID. She looked at it, then at the friend who had chosen to stand inside the blast radius. "She's who I need to be." Megan opened the door. "Then be her well."