“That’s a stunt,” Rachel said.

“It is a stunt,” Adeyemi said. “It is also not frivolous, and I need Ms. Harper to hear the difference and I need her to hear it from me and not from a headline.

“Ms. Harper. Over five years, you personally designed and maintained the masking architecture that concealed the movement of forty-five million dollars in misappropriated defense appropriations.

Your credentials authorized the routing protocols. Your digital signature is at the base of every phantom invoice — not a forged signature. Yours. Applied by you, from your terminal, using your key.”

“He was setting me up,” I said. “Rachel found that in the first week. He was building me a fall.”

“He was,” said Adeyemi. “He absolutely was, and I will say so in court. And here is the problem with the way you’ve been thinking about that for fourteen months.