And because of eleven days with two encrypted drives, I had an answer, and it was not the one I would have given in March.

“I ran an audit query in November of 2021,” I said. “It would have shown me. I cancelled it eleven minutes later. I’ve since read my own logs and I can tell you the exact timestamp.

I didn’t know. I made sure I didn’t know. Those are not the same thing and I’m not going to let you leave here thinking they are.”

Maya Ellis stood at that window with her arms folded for what felt like a very long time.

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

“For what?”