I set up an automated email that would release the complete evidence to the authorities in seventy-two hours unless I stopped it myself.

And I put duplicate records into three sealed envelopes and mailed them — one to an investigative financial reporter, one to a federal prosecutor’s office, one to Harlan’s private address.

If I disappeared, the truth would not.

I made sure of that first, before anything else, because I had learned from my son that the evidence was the only real protection either of us had.

There was a strange thing I noticed, doing all of it: I was good at it.

My hands knew what to do.