A dead dandelion sits in a ceramic mug on the reception desk at Harrington Tech, white seeds still clinging to the stem like they have forgotten how to let go.
Jordan Chen stares at it instead of the clock. She checks the hospital app: Marcie's white blood cell count is low but stable, and the nurse's notes say the patient is resting comfortably, which means not currently in crisis. That is enough. She presses her mother's silver ring into her palm and waits to be called in.
She used to be an investigative journalist. Seattle Chronicle. The Port Blossom housing authority piece, the one that won an award she calls a team effort. Now she is here to write press releases, because her sister has cancer and press releases come with health insurance.
Leo Harrington does not believe a word of it.
*"You're not a press-release writer, Ms. Chen. You're an investigator. You dig. You find things people don't want found."*
He tells her a story about a local reporter named David Park who was looking into a company called NexGen Systems, stopped returning calls, and moved to Arizona to sell timeshares. A cautionary tale, he calls it. Then he hires her anyway and tells her flatly that he does not trust her.
On the lid of his laptop there is a sticker. A white ghost on black, two empty eyeholes. The original logo of a hacktivist called the Phantom, who breached a pharmaceutical company's servers years ago, leaked documents proving suppressed safety data, and was never caught.
On her way out, Leo says: *"I know who you really are. I know what you did. And I know why you left."*
What Jordan finds in his office is a yellowed newspaper clipping, and a phone call through a door she is standing behind. *"The Phantom is dead. Let it stay dead."*
Chloe Vega, who wanted Jordan's job and leans in close enough to whisper watch your back, is talking to Victor Nash. Nash has been digging into Harrington Tech's past, and someone has told him that Jordan has a sister in chemotherapy and would do anything to keep her alive.
Then there is the name. Leo was the older brother. He died. The man running this company has been wearing his name ever since.
A contemporary workplace romance about two people hiding the same kind of thing: a journalist who stopped asking questions to keep her sister alive, and a man who built an entire company around a secret he cannot afford to have found. The romance is closed-door.
