The documents Renata Cole produced over the following days filled three banker's boxes, meticulously organized, each folder labeled in a precise, careful hand that spoke to fifteen years of a woman who'd made competence her armor against conscience.
Desmond worked through them with the focused intensity of a man finally holding the missing pieces of a puzzle he'd spent a decade assembling, and Wren found herself drawn, despite everything, into the process — sitting beside him at the compound's long table for hours at a stretch, cross-referencing names, dates, the slow unraveling of a network that had operated in the shadows of American politics for longer than she'd been alive.
"This is bigger than I ever suspected," Desmond admitted one evening, rubbing his eyes after another long sessi
