At Emma's funeral, my sister raised champagne beside my seven-year-old's casket: "Stay quiet and let this family have joy." I kept both hands on the pew. Then my nephew pointed at Emma's brown prescription bottle: "She switched the white pills." Her smile died when the phone showed an email titled "Trial Neutralization Progress" saying Emma had to fail the drug trial.

By midnight, David’s house felt like a war room.

Aunt Sarah had made a pot of black coffee while David monitored the police band radio. Two local officers had taken our statement regarding the break-in at my house, but their response was frustratingly slow. They treated it as a simple burglary attempt, brushing off our claims about Aegis Bio Corp.

"Corporate security contractors don't break into houses to steal children's medical folders unless someone very high up ordered it," David muttered, pacing across the living room rug. "The local police aren't going to help us, Lia. Aegis donates millions to the city's municipal funds and hospital boards. They own half the officials in this state."

"Then we go outside the system," I said, sitting at the dining table with my laptop open.

"To who? The FBI?"

"No," a voice spoke from the shadows of the front porch.

We both jumped. The screened door squeaked open, and a tall, disheveled man in a wrinkled trench coat stepped inside. He had dark circles under his hollow eyes, unkempt graying hair, and carried a thick canvas messenger bag over his shoulder.

"Who the hell are you?" David demanded, grabbing the fireplace poker from the corner.

"Lower the iron, Mr. Vance," the man said weary, holding up two pale, freckled hands. "If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn't have knocked on your front screen door. My name is Julian Reed. I used to be the Chief Financial Auditor for Aegis Bio Corp until three months ago."

I stood up, staring at him. "Used to be?"

Julian pulled a worn-out ID badge from his coat and tossed it onto the table. It matched the corporate logo of the badge I had found in Emma’s room.

"I was the one who flagged the accounting anomalies in the Vascularis-9 budget back in January," Julian said, pulling a chair out and sitting down without being asked. He looked exhausted, like a man who hadn't slept a full night in years. "I noticed millions of dollars being funneled into an off-book shell company called Apex Logistics. When I dug deeper, I realized Apex wasn't buying lab equipment. They were paying off regional clinical coordinators—like your sister, Callista."

"Why didn't you go to the press?" I asked, stepping closer.

Julian laughed—a bitter, hollow sound. "I did. I went to a reporter at the State Gazette. Three days later, my car was firebombed in my own driveway. The police called it a gas leak leak. The reporter stopped taking my calls. Aegis fired me, sued me for non-disclosure breach, froze my bank accounts, and filed a dozen restraining orders against me. They destroyed my life in seventy-two hours."

"So why are you here now?" David asked suspiciously.

Julian looked up at me, his eyes filled with a terrifying mix of sorrow and vengeance.

"Because I saw the news arrest report tonight," Julian whispered. "I saw Callista Vance in handcuffs outside a chapel. I knew then that someone had finally cracked their shield. And I know what Marcus Kane’s next move is going to be."

"What is his next move?" I asked.

"Callista is a liability now," Julian explained, leaning over the table. "She knows too much. She has the communication logs, the offshore account routing numbers, and the names of the board members who signed off on the 'Trial Neutralization' protocol. Marcus Kane will not let her make it to a preliminary trial hearing. She will have an 'accidental overdose' or a 'heart failure' in her jail cell within forty-eight hours."

I felt a sudden, sharp coldness in my chest. "If Callista dies, the legal chain linking Aegis to Emma's death disappears. They'll claim she was a rogue lunatic who acted alone."

"Exactly," Julian said. "They sacrifice Callista, pay a minor regulatory fine for 'negligent oversight,' close the drug trial, collect their three-billion-dollar insurance settlement, and roll the profits into a new corporate shell next quarter."

I gripped the back of the dining chair. "How do we stop them?"

Julian unzipped his messenger bag and pulled out an encrypted external hard drive, placing it gently on the wooden table.

"Callista kept a backup server," Julian revealed. "She wasn't completely stupid. She knew Aegis would dispose of her once the trial was terminated, so she hid an encrypted mirror image of her corporate communications on a private cloud server. But she locked it with a double-authentication key. One half of the key is her password—which you already have."

"And the other half?" David asked.

Julian looked directly into my eyes.

"The other half is a physical security key card," Julian said. "It’s hidden inside the one place Aegis security hasn't been able to search yet."

"Her house?" David guessed.

"No," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a lightning strike. "Not her house."

I remembered Callista standing at the front of the chapel, her sleek designer dress, her perfect nails, and the way she held her expensive leather handbag right before Brody confronted her.