The breakthrough came three weeks later, in the form of a manila envelope with no return address. Inside was a flash drive and a single sheet of paper with a typed message: "You're not the only one they've done this to. Look at the files marked Alpha."
I called Patricia immediately. "We need to look at this. But I want to do it somewhere secure."
"My office. I'll get the tech guy to check for spyware."
The tech guy was a man named Omar, who worked for a forensic accounting firm that Patricia had used for years. He plugged the flash drive into a secure laptop and scanned it for malware. When he was satisfied it was clean, he opened the files.
There were hundreds of them. Emails, invoices, bank records, all going back ten years. There were names I recognized, other executives who had bee
