I told them enough to let them stop being afraid, and I secured their written statements, and I made certain, whatever else happened, that they would be protected.

They had risked something to tell a truth no one wanted to hear.

I was not going to let the firewall protect everyone but them.

That was the part of the case that mattered most to me, and the part no strategy required.

It would have been easier — cleaner, even — to let those three accountants stay frightened and quiet until the evidence was ready to speak for itself.

They were not necessary.

The servers were enough.

But I had spent eight years being the person who noticed the wrong thing and was made to feel unstable for noticing it, and I knew precisely the specific loneliness of seeing a truth clearly while everyone around you insists you’re imagining it.

Those three had seen it, and said it, and been threatened into silence for their trouble, and were now going to work every day sick with the fear that they’d be the ones destroyed when it all came out.

I could not undo what Rupert had done to them.