He was a tall man, and I spotted him at fifty yards, his head bobbing high above the pack. I let him pass, and when he was well ahead, I cut out onto the trail and ran to catch up. I gave him a quick backward glance as I overtook him, then I did an exaggerated double take.

“Oh, hello!” I called as I slowed my pace and fell into step beside him. “It’s Nelson Ledbetter, right? Shay Lambert. I took your deposition last week?”

He peered at me. His face was red and streaming with sweat. “Oh. Hi,” he puffed.

“How’ve you been?” I asked cheerily, loping along.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to you.” He could barely talk anyway. “Us being adversaries and all.”

I laughed. “But we’re not anymore. Mark pulled me off the Northstar case. My work is done, as they say.”

Ledbetter seemed to relax at that news, though he was still blowing hard. “Yeah. I heard you found that email.”

“You sure didn’t make it easy for me, though.”

He hesitated.

“But I understand. You had to sell it, right?”

He huffed a laugh.

“Anyway, he just put me on Genco. So now we’re not adversaries, we’re allies.” I winked.

“Oh, so you know about . . . ?”

I nodded. “And thank God. Current management is a shipwreck.”

“I got—a good—team lined up,” he panted. “We’ll—turn it around. By—2015 fiscal year end.”

And there it was. My hunch confirmed. All I’d based it on was some cryptic marginalia in the draft settlement agreement, but it all made sense. Mark would be installing new management at Genco, so with the presidency up for grabs, why not offer it to someone who could help him sew up his appointment as class counsel in the Northstar case? He’d made an offer to Ledbetter: conduct a reverse auction with Ned Bartman, leak an incriminating document, and become president of a bigger and better company than Northstar. The whole thing was a setup of Ned Bartman, even if Bartman was already angling to do a reverse auction. It was like framing someone for a crime he actually did commit.

Here was the weapon I’d been hoping for. Ledbetter would probably want to report our little conversation to Mark, but with Mark incommunicado today, he wouldn’t have a chance until after I’d already deployed it.

“Oh, there’s my phone,” I told Ledbetter, slowing to a trot. “Nice talking to you.”

I’d planned that as my exit line, but in fact my phone was buzzing. I fished it out of the pocket on my thigh as Ledbetter saluted and ran on. The call was from the office. I started walking east as I answered, off the Greenway and heading for the city streets.

“Sorry to interrupt your conference call,” Luisa said. “I have someone named Joe Riley on the line? He says it’s urgent.”

At the mention of Riley’s name, my heart rate shot up higher than when I was running. The police must have finally deciphered the documents in my briefcase and figured it all out. “Patch him through,” I said. At that moment, I spotted Lester Willard. He was watching me from behind the wheel of a blue sedan parked at the curb, facing west on a one-way street going east. I scanned the block for escape routes, but there weren’t any. I had a sickening realization that I shouldn’t have come here without Alice.