The Anonymous Tip

Priya Anand's office was a corner desk in a shared newsroom, three monitors, a wall of sticky notes that meant nothing to anyone but her.

"Isaiah's driver," she said when I introduced myself, not looking up from her screen. "He talks about you sometimes. Didn't expect you to actually show up."

"You know who I am."

"Grandpa doesn't forget people who watched him fall and said nothing." She finally turned. Her eyes were his — same steady, unimpressed weight to them. "But you're here now. So. What changed?"

I set the folder on her desk. The torn report. The clinic file. Everything.

She read for a long time without speaking. When she looked up, her jaw was tight.

"This is real," she said. "This is really real."

"I need to know what happens if you run it."

"Harrowgate Holdings has lawyers who eat stories like this for breakfast. They'll bury you in filings before the ink dries. Your name, my name, my grandfather's name — dragged through every headline for months."

"I know."

"Do you?" She leaned forward. "You've spent thirty years protecting them. Are you sure — really sure — you're ready to spend the next thirty being the man who exposed them?"

I thought of the hallway. Of Reginald's quiet voice. Of the drive home yesterday, keys left on a hook, thirty years reduced to a line item.

"I'm sure," I said.

Priya studied me another moment, then closed the folder carefully, like it was something breakable.

"Okay," she said. "Then there's something you should know before you decide this alone."

I waited.

"You're not the only one who's reached out this week." She turned her monitor toward me — an email, sender address blacked out, subject line: RE: Harrowgate Textiles, 30 years ago.

"Somebody inside the company sent me this four days ago," she said. "Before you ever walked in that door."