Chapter 4 - The Offensive
I knew we were in danger the moment I looked out the window and saw the black sedan parked across the street. It had been there for twenty minutes.
"They found us," I said, my voice dead calm.
Sarah stood up, her posture changing. The homeless woman disappeared, replaced by the sharp, brilliant woman I had known—the woman who had navigated boardrooms and managed million-dollar projects. "We don't run," she said. "If we run, we’re prey. We have to go on the offensive."
"How?" I asked. "They control the police, the media, the legal system."
"They control the institutions," she corrected. "But they don't control the data. I spent the last six months in the streets listening, Michael. I wasn't just surviving. I was gathering."
She reached into the lining of her coat and pulled out a small, unassuming flash drive. "Everything is here. Their private communications, the signatures of the directors, the blueprints of the embezzlement. I didn't just survive them. I documented them."
May you like
I looked at the drive. It was the key to our salvation, or the trigger for our destruction. We needed to get this to someone who couldn't be bought. We needed a journalist, a federal agency—someone who had the muscle to fight back.
"I have a friend," I said, the realization hitting me like a lightning bolt. "David. He’s an investigative journalist. He’s been working on the city’s corruption beat for years. He’s the only one they haven't been able to silence."
