I woke up in the company medical room after collapsing, only to hear the secretary whisper, “Are you sure she took it?” Then my husband laughed and said, “Relax. By tomorrow morning, everything will be ours.”

Vanessa Hale was sitting in a holding room on the third floor, escorted by two police officers Daniel had called to the building. She was weeping, her expensive mascara running down her pale cheeks in dark streaks.

When I walked in, she looked up, her eyes wide with terror.

“Evelyn, please!” she cried, reaching out her hands. “I didn’t know what it was! He told me it was just a mild sleeping pill! He said you were working yourself to death and needed to rest!”

I sat down across from her, completely unmoved by her tears.

“Save it, Vanessa,” I said. “I’ve seen the text messages. You knew exactly what it was. You knew about Aegis. You knew about the $120 million offshore account.”

She froze, her fake tears drying instantly as she realized her excuses were useless.

“You’re looking at fifteen to twenty years for conspiracy to commit murder, corporate espionage, and grand larceny,” Ruth said, stepping up behind me.

“But we’re willing to talk to the District Attorney if you give us what we need.”

“What do you want?” Vanessa whispered.

“Grant split the decryption key for the stolen database,” Daniel said. “He kept half. He gave you the other half to upload to the Aegis server once the merger was officially cancelled. Where is it?”

Vanessa swallowed hard, her eyes darting to the door. “If I give it to you, Grant will kill me. He’s... you don’t know him, Evelyn. He’s not the man you think he is. He owes money to people who don’t use courts to settle disputes.”

“And if you don’t give it to us, you’ll spend the next two decades in a maximum-security women’s facility,” I said, leaning in close.

“Grant won’t be able to protect you from there. In fact, he’ll probably blame the entire thing on you.”

She trembled, her hands shaking so violently she could barely unlock her personal phone. She pulled up an encrypted vault app and tapped a twenty-digit alphanumeric code.

“This is the secondary key,” she whispered. “But it’s useless without Grant’s half. The system is designed to delete the data permanently if the two keys aren't entered within seventy-two hours of the initial download.”