A thin woman in a dark trench coat was waiting inside, sitting at a metal desk under a green desk lamp.

“You’re late, Ethan,” she said, without looking up from her laptop.

“We had a security breach on the fifth floor,” Ethan replied, closing the door behind us and sliding the bolt lock into place.

The woman looked up, her sharp gray eyes settling on me.

“You must be Hannah,” she said. “I’m Maya Lin. I write for the *Chicago Ledger*.”

She reached out to shake my hand, her grip surprisingly firm.

“Maya has been investigating my father’s biotech firm for six months,” Ethan explained.

“I have the offshore bank records,” Maya said, tapping her laptop screen.

“But I need the internal clinical trial data to connect the dots.”

Ethan pulled a black USB drive from his pocket and set it on the metal desk.

“It’s all on here,” Ethan said. “The patient names, the falsified consent forms, and the payments.”

I sat down on a plastic chair, my knees shaking.

“What clinical trials?” I asked.

Ethan looked at me, pain etched deep into the lines of his forehead.