Not What You Think
Chapter 04 - Not What You Think
Marcus came to the studio at nine twelve on Tuesday morning.
Sophia knew the time because the kiln controller had just clicked from preheat to hold, and she had written 9:12 beside the temperature reading on her firing sheet.
He knocked once.
Then again, harder.
"Sophia. I know you're up there."
Grace was downstairs meeting with an insurance adjuster. The gallery had not opened yet, and the street outside still carried the sour smell of garbage bags waiting for collection.
Sophia set down her pencil.
Her thumb moved along its hexagonal edge.
"Leave."
Marcus spoke through the metal door.
"I'm sober. I just need five minutes."
"Call your lawyer."
"This isn't about the charges."
"Then call someone else's lawyer."
He stopped knocking.
For several seconds, Sophia heard only the kiln fan and a delivery truck backing somewhere below, its warning beep repeating every two seconds.
"Diane knows the police have the drive," Marcus said.
Sophia went still.
"How?"
"Please open the door."
She picked up her phone and started recording before sliding the security chain into place. Then she opened the door three inches.
Marcus stood in the hallway wearing a clean white shirt and dark jeans. His face had the gray, tight look of a man who had not slept. A faint bruise marked his cheek where it had struck the sidewalk during the arrest.
"Five minutes," he said.
"You get the hallway."
His gaze flicked toward the chain.
"You think I'm going to hurt you?"
"I think you destroyed a sculpture in a crowded room."
"I was drunk."
"That changes the charge, not the floor."
Marcus rubbed both hands over his face.
"I don't remember touching you."
"You hit my arm while you were fighting security."
"I didn't mean to."
Sophia said nothing.
He looked down at his shoes.
"I'm sorry about that."
Not the sculpture. Not yet.
"What does Diane know?"
Marcus glanced toward the stairs.
"She knows a device was logged into evidence. My attorney had to disclose it because the company might claim ownership."
"Might?"
"It's complicated."
"You said it was company property."
"I said a lot of things."
"Yes. In front of cameras."
He looked at her then.
"You have to tell the police it was mine. Personal. Nothing to do with Hale and Voss."
"Was it personal?"
"It was in my possession."
"That isn't the same answer."
Marcus stepped closer to the door. The chain tightened.
"People get the wrong idea when they see financial records without context."
"Detective Muñoz said the drive is encrypted."
His eyes sharpened.
"You spoke to financial crimes?"
"They spoke to me."
"What did you tell them?"
"The truth."
"Which version?"
Sophia pressed her thumbnail into her palm.
"You don't get to ask me that anymore."
He took a step back.
A pipe knocked inside the wall, an old building sound Sophia had heard for years. Marcus glanced toward it as if someone else might be listening.
"The drive contains backups," he said. "Old internal material. Drafts. Duplicate invoices. Things that look worse than they are."
"Why did you have them at my opening?"
"I was coming from somewhere else."
"Where?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Then why come inside with it?"
He put one hand against the doorframe.
"I saw the announcement. I saw your picture. Everybody acting like you built this life alone."
"I did build it."
"While I was losing everything."
"You received more assets in the divorce than I did."
"Assets aren't cash. The company is under pressure."
"That wasn't my decision."
Marcus laughed once under his breath.
"You left at the worst possible time."
"I left after you called my work a hobby in front of six people at dinner and then told me I was too sensitive to understand a joke."
"That's not why you left."
"No. It was one item on a long list."
His mouth tightened.
"I came because I wanted you to see what walking away did."
"So you broke my work."
"I didn't plan that."
"But you planned to come."
Marcus looked past her shoulder into the studio.
The surviving glass shard sat on the windowsill. He saw it and turned away almost immediately.
"Tell Muñoz the drive has nothing to do with you."
"It doesn't have anything to do with me."
"Then ask for it back."
"Why would police give your property to me?"
"Because you picked it up. Because you're the complainant. I don't know. Just stop pushing this."
"I'm not pushing anything."
"You always do this. You stand there quiet, and everybody assumes you're reasonable."
Sophia's hand flattened against the door.
"I am being reasonable. That's why you're still in the hallway."
Marcus lowered his voice.
"Diane doesn't know what's on the drive."
The sentence landed between them.
He seemed to hear it after he said it.
Sophia traced the edge of the door with her thumb.
"You just told me she knows it's old company backups."
"She knows what I told her."
"Which isn't what is actually on it."
"I didn't say that."
"You said she doesn't know."
"Exactly. She doesn't know what the police will think they're seeing."
"No, Marcus. That's not what you meant."
He reached toward the door, then stopped before touching it.
"You have no idea how she gets when she thinks somebody is threatening the company."
"I know how she treated me during the divorce."
"That was different."
"She called my studio lease a vanity expense in mediation."
"She was protecting the family."
"From a sculptor with student loans?"
Marcus paced two steps down the hall and back.
"My father built Hale and Voss. Diane kept it alive while he was sick. There are employees, pensions, city projects. If investigators drag records into public view without understanding them, people lose jobs."
"Then explain the records."
"It's not that easy."
"Numbers usually are. Money entered somewhere and left somewhere else."
He stared at her.
"You always thought being calm made you smarter than everybody."
"No. It made me harder to distract."
Downstairs, a metal ladder scraped across concrete. Grace's voice floated up, asking the adjuster to photograph the pedestal bolts.
Marcus looked toward the stairwell.
"Tell her I wasn't here."
"She'll see you on the camera."
He followed Sophia's glance to the small lens mounted above the studio door.
"Of course."
"You should go."
"Sophia, please."
The word sounded unfamiliar from him. Not because Marcus never begged. Because he usually disguised begging as accusation.
"If Diane thinks I kept copies from her, she'll make this worse."
"Worse for whom?"
He didn't answer.
"Did you steal the drive from Hale and Voss?"
"No."
"Did Diane ask you to find it?"
Marcus's eyes shifted right.
There it was.
Sophia remembered Muñoz's question about whether others had already copied records. She remembered Officer Bell mentioning a former subcontractor and files that did not belong to Marcus.
"You weren't carrying the drive by accident," she said.
"I didn't say I was."
"You had recovered it from someone."
His silence confirmed more than a denial would have.
"Who?"
"Don't."
"Was it the subcontractor from the police report?"
Marcus took hold of the stair railing.
"You need to stay out of this."
"You brought it into my gallery. You broke my work while it was in your pocket. Then you demanded I lie to the police."
"I'm trying to keep you safe."
Sophia almost laughed, but nothing about him felt funny.
"You don't get to call control safety anymore."
He looked toward the windows at the far end of the hallway. Morning light made the skin beneath his eyes look bruised.
For a second, he seemed smaller than she remembered. A man cornered by choices he had postponed understanding.
Then his face hardened.
"If this company goes down, don't pretend you had nothing to do with it."
Sophia closed the door until the chain pulled taut.
"You smashed my sculpture because you were angry I had a life without you. But the drive wasn't about me. You came here with it because you were afraid somebody would take it before you decided what to do."
Marcus gripped the railing.
May you like
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"This was never about smashing my sculpture, was it, Marcus? You came here to get this back before anyone else could see it."
