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ultimate jurisdiction over IT.”
    He nods thoughtfully. “Phil Cartwright. Yeah, he’s a strange one. He’s not part of the lawsuit, though according to the records, he’s lost a lot more than most. He probably knows a lot about what exactly went down there too. He must’ve been pretty close to McNeil at the time.”
    “Oh yeah, I think Joseph already has him as target numero uno,” she says.
    They finish up their coffee and she walks with him back to his office. “So you got Brad’s office, huh?”
    “Brad? I thought it belonged to someone called Emily before me,” he says.
    “Yes, that’s right. Brad was the one before her. No one seems to know what went down with Brad. Just one day he was here, next, he was clearing out. I guess you got the speech from Estelle about how we work here?”
    “I did.”
    She laughs and shakes her head. “It’s good advice. We all thought Brad would be a keeper, he seemed to play everything right. Joseph was real friendly with him too, put him on his special team.”
    “Joseph’s special team?”
    “He likes to groom certain people,” she says. “You can always tell. He’ll give them extra assignments; take them along with him on business trips or whatever. Like he did with you for the Liza Show thing.”
    “Oh, I see,” he says, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation is going.
    “Listen, Ryan, you seem like a nice guy, and I get it, you want to do the right thing, be the model employee Joseph wants. But if you really want all this then you have to make sacrifices. I’ve been here three years and I’ve had to give up a lot to stick around. I’m not saying that I don’t like it. This is the place to be, and Joseph is… well… he’s Joseph. But just—” She taps the doorjamb again. “—don’t get too attached.”
    He gives Fiona a friendly smile and watches her leave, feeling the smile freeze and slide off his face as soon as she slips into her own office. He’s not sure exactly what kind of game she’s playing, but he’s not naïve enough to assume that there’s no game. Of course, she might be genuine, giving him a friendly warning. But then again, she has been here three years; she can’t have lasted this long if she didn’t know how to play some sort of a game.
    The news comes in around 3:00 p.m. that the defendant’s agreed to settle out of court for $150 million.
    “That kid didn’t even have a fucking case,” one of the senior attorneys, Sean, scoffs, as they gather around the TV in the kitchen to watch the news scroll across the screen. “Joseph really skewered that bastard, Jelf. We’d’ve been lucky to get twenty-five out of his ass if they’d let the jury rule on it. But Jelf never had any balls. That kid should be fucking worshipping Joseph after this, 150 million, lucky asshole.”
    There’s a smattering of laughter. Ryan hangs back, watches the high-fives, sees the toothy, bullish grins and macho posturing. Sean and his group of cronies are acting like they’ve just walked off the set of Wall Street. He leaves them to it and goes back to his office to call Daisy. The phone rings, then cuts through to voice mail. He hangs up without leaving a message. Daisy hates listening to voice mail messages and she’s probably busy at work anyway.
    He’s getting ready to call it a night when a knock on the door startles him as he’s logging off his computer. He looks up in surprise to see Joseph Van Aardt leaning against the doorframe, regarding him with the sort of look in his eyes that makes Ryan instantly want to check for his wallet and keys.
    “You got any plans for tonight?” Joseph says.
    He has got plans, as a matter of fact. He and Daisy are supposed to be meeting up with the usual crowd for beers and nachos at one of their favorite Mexican places. But that’s not important, not when Joseph’s here in person, asking him if he has plans.
    He gets to his feet, shakes his head. “No, no