My hands shook as I grabbed a flash drive from my desk drawer and plugged it into the laptop.

I dragged the entire folder onto the drive, watching the progress bar crawl across the screen.

*Ten percent.*

*Thirty percent.*

My phone vibrated on the desk next to me.

The caller ID showed my mother’s home number.

I let it ring, my eyes locked on the transfer window.

*Fifty percent.*

The phone stopped, then immediately began ringing again.

I snatched it up.

“Mother, I can’t talk right now,” I said.

“You will listen to me, Grace,” her voice was cold, harder than I had ever heard it. “I have just off the phone with the Managing Partner of your old firm.”

“I don’t work there anymore, Mother.”

“And you will never work in this city again if you proceed with this madness,” she said. “The Whitakers have been our friends for thirty years. Ethan’s future depends on this marriage.”

“The Whitakers are covering up the deaths of American soldiers, Mother. Aaron Vale is being framed.”