“She told me to put them in the incinerator,” he said, looking at me with a wet shine in his eyes.

“Dad,” I said.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as he looked over his shoulder into the foggy street. “But you need to hear the rest of it, Sarah. Before the bank opens tomorrow.”

He reached into the box and pulled out a small, black USB drive taped to the inside cover of my eighth-grade physics notebook.

“She didn’t just try to buy your company,” he said, handing the drive through the open window. “She’s been talking to your primary lender for months.”

I stared at the plastic drive resting in my palm, its red LED light catching the glow of the streetlamp.

“What did she do?” I asked.

My father swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward the dark intersection behind me.

“She didn’t just trigger the default,” he said. “She bought the debt.”

A car door slammed somewhere in the fog behind us.

My father flinched, his hand immediately moving to the gear shift.