The Audit Committee Read The Schedule Greer Had Left Out

Priya held the audit meeting at a rented office near the courthouse. She said no one should need Greer's permission to enter.

There were no gold stars on its walls.

Jo and I sat at one end of the table. Althea waited outside until the committee called her. Mara had two screens open and a paper list of the files she had received.

Greer arrived seven minutes late.

"We could have handled this internally," she said.

Priya set a packet in front of her.

"This was our internal packet."

The board's copy of my assignment had four pages. A contents note said the remaining schedules held only routine employee inventions.

"Who wrote the note?" Priya asked.

"My office prepared the materials."

"Who checked them?"

"We were under a deadline."

Mara put a dated email on the screen. Seven months earlier, Ruth had sent Greer a deed map and asked for the proposed west approach easement.

Greer's reply promised clean title before sale.

"You knew there was an open land issue," Mara said.

"Every network has loose ends."

"This one carried thirty-eight percent of the network's evening traffic."

I knew that number. The tunnel spared us a long trip around the ridge. Without it, Lowbank's backup path could carry emergency traffic, but not the full busy-hour load Greer had sold.

She had promised two strong routes. In fact, one was a narrow spare.

Mara displayed the sale warranty: full, continuing access to all listed corridors, with no further third-party consent required.

Greer had signed beneath it.

"I expected Mr. Endo to cooperate."

Priya looked at me.

"What would cooperation have required?"

"A request," I said. "The whole proposed agreement. Enough time to check it. And the actual landowner's permission for land my license didn't cover."

"Would more money to you have fixed the west approach?"

"No. I couldn't sell that permission. It wasn't mine."

Greer folded her arms.

"He understood the business depended on him."

I looked down at my hands. There was still a dark line under one thumbnail from the last pole I had inspected.

"I understood I needed to report defects. I reported this one through my lawyer."

Mara's next page showed the attempted one-dollar transfer. It would have made a new company the route user. Both agreements still required approval for that change.

"Your instruction called this a bookkeeping move," Priya said. "After counsel warned you about consent."

"A possible solution."

"Did you tell the buyer Bellmouth had rejected it?"

Greer did not answer.

Mara moved to the financial records. Lowbank had paid my annual fee as license expense. No ledger entry showed it had bought my right. Drain payments to Rivermark were listed as maintenance, not land purchase.

The papers agreed with one another. The story Greer had told did not.

Mara asked me to check the license number on each receipt. I read the digits aloud. The committee secretary entered them into the minutes. It was the sort of slow check I did with pole tags, and for once nobody told me to move faster.

When Althea came in, the committee asked whether she had warned the original founder about the west strip.

She produced her closing checklist from the early expansion.

One line remained open: Secure Separate West Approach Easement.

"Then the company had failed too," Priya said.

"Yes," Althea said. "I can show you where I raised it. I can't tell you anyone finished it."

I was glad she said that. I did not want a neat story that let everyone else walk away clean.

The founder had retired years earlier. Priya ordered the audit to include the older lapse and the board's own review process.

Then Jo played Greer's voicemail.

Nobody looked at me while it played. I watched the little time bar creep across the screen.

Afterward, Priya asked Greer to wait outside.

The committee asked us to leave too. We had given evidence; we were not part of its vote.

In the hall, I bought a packet of crackers from a machine. I had forgotten lunch. Althea split them with me.

"You did well," she said.

"I mostly read things."

"That's what they needed."

At four, Priya called Jo. Greer had been suspended. Her authority to sign or direct route transactions was revoked. The board had named a temporary manager and ordered every sale promise checked against its source.

Lowbank would stop pursuing the counterclaim while independent counsel reviewed it.

I did not celebrate. A paused claim could still wake up. A suspended chief could still return.

I went home and folded a crane from a pale strip of jacket liner. This one stood badly. I took it apart and started again.

At dusk, a courier knocked on my door.

The envelope he handed me carried Ridge Ledger's name and the words Revised Terms: Subject To Verified Access.