“Your own expense reports led our auditors straight to the illegal clinic payments.

Your access was suspended this morning.

Federal investigators have the records.”

I watched the blood leave Cassian’s face in real time, watched the whole architecture of his confidence come down floor by floor as he understood that the lonely old man across the road — the punchline, the landlord, the sad widower he’d sneered at in a hallway — had owned the ground under his feet the entire time.

“You did this,” he said to me, and his voice had gone thin.

“I found what you did,” I said.