Episode 8: The Number in the Folder

The Sixty-First Floor, with Ines Calder

Previously: Ines took the folder with her name on it out of the vault without opening it in front of anyone, and the team left the records room still not knowing what was inside. She waited until the stairwell had emptied out behind her before she untied the string.

The folder held eleven pages, and Ines read them standing on the landing between the sixty-second floor and the sixty-first, because she did not trust herself to make it any farther before she had to know. Most of it was ledger entries in Voss’s hand, dates going back further than she wanted to count, each one logging a transfer from an account that had her name attached to it as the debtor. The total was on the last page, underlined twice, and it was larger than anything she had expected to owe a man she had not worked for in three years.

Dov had come back up the stairs looking for her, quietly enough that she did not hear him until he was already two steps below the landing. He heard her say a number out loud to nobody, the way people do when a number is too large to keep silently, and he heard the particular kind of quiet that came after it. He did not ask what the number was for, which was its own kind of tact, but he had clearly heard it, and now he was standing there waiting to find out if she would say anything else.

“How much of that did you hear,” Ines said, not turning around.

“Enough to know it wasn’t rent,” Dov said.

She folded the pages back along their original creases, slowly, the way a person folds something they are deciding whether to keep. Below them, Hatch’s voice carried up the stairwell asking if everyone was coming or not, and Buttress’s bell answered before anyone human did. Ines looked at Dov for a long moment, the kind of look that is doing arithmetic of its own, weighing what one more person knowing would cost against what it might be worth.

The Vote

What does Ines tell Dov?

Vote in the LinkedIn poll, and Episode 9 gets written from whatever wins.

Tell him the truth: She tells Dov exactly what the folder said and whose debt it is.

Call it old business: She tells him it’s a leftover from working for Voss, nothing that touches the job.

Ask him to drop it: She asks Dov to let it go without explaining any of it.

Hand him the folder: She lets him read the eleven pages himself.