“He’s trying to set me up,” she whispered. “They both are.”

“Why would Hayes say that?” I asked.

“Because he knows what I found,” Madison said.

She pointed a shaking finger at the computer monitor.

“I didn’t just stumble on these files tonight,” she confessed.

“Explain,” I said, keeping my hand near my weapon.

“Three weeks ago, I went into Dad’s private study,” Madison said.

“The one at the end of the hall upstairs?” I asked.

She nodded quickly, her chest rising and falling.

“He forgot to lock his desk drawer,” she said. “He thinks because he’s old-school, nobody will look there.”

“What did you find?” I asked.

“An external hard drive,” she said. “It had military encryption, but he had written the passkey on a slip of paper inside his desk diary.”

I stared at her, assessing her posture, her micro-expressions.

She was terrified, but she wasn’t lying.

“I copied everything onto a secure flash drive,” Madison said. “The files link Dad directly to the black-market military contracts Hayes manages.”

“The ones Hayes manages?” I repeated.

“Yes,” Madison said. “Hayes isn’t the victim here, Natalie. He’s the facilitator.”