I pulled the black drive out and placed it on the table.

“This contains the original mass spectrometry data from three years ago,” I said. “Every file has a digital signature that cannot be faked.”

Vance pulled a silver laptop from under the table and opened it.

“May I?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “The password is the sequence for the target protein.”

I watched her fingers fly across the keyboard.

She plugged the drive into her machine, and a series of loading bars appeared on her screen.

“We have been monitoring Arthur Hayes for eighteen months,” Vance said as she waited for the files to transfer.

“Eighteen months?” I asked. “But the patent was only filed last month.”

“Arthur Hayes has been selling pre-market shares of Hayes Industries based on the promise of this therapy,” she said.

“That is insider trading,” I said.

“It is worse than that,” Vance said. “He used those funds to pay off several university board members to expedite your department’s approval.”

She turned the screen toward me.

A document appeared, showing a bank transfer from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.