The heavy oak door slammed against the wall inside, and Mercer’s heavy boots clicked on the tile.

“Hale!” Mercer shouted, his flashlight beam cutting through the darkness of the kitchen, splashing across the open pantry door.

I pulled Emily behind the thick brick pillar of the patio, shielding her from the rain and the sweeping light.

“What ledger, Emily?” I asked quietly, keeping my eyes on the doorway we had just exited.

“The federal housing contracts,” she whispered, her teeth chattering from the cold air. “The entire Fairmont development project.”

She wiped a mixture of rain and tears from her cheek with the back of her hand.

“It’s all dummy corporations, Dad. Millions of dollars diverted from the government directly into Charles’s offshore accounts.”

“They used substandard materials for the foundations, falsified the safety inspections, and kept the difference,” she said.

“I found the digital keys on Ryan’s laptop last night.”

“He caught me copying the files to a drive.”

She looked down at her wrists, which were chafed red and bruised from where they had bound her.