WHAT SHE TRUSTED

She checked the facts. She challenged the source. She was certain she had it right.

Investigative reporter Mara Fenn doesnt trust theories. So when civil-rights attorney Daniel Carver claims someone is digging into his clients private lives to pressure them into settling lawsuits, she starts by trying to prove him wrong.

Instead, she finds a pattern.

Private medical histories. Family secrets. Financial vulnerabilities. Information that should have remained hidden—surfacing at exactly the right moment to make people afraid.

Mara follows the evidence to a private investigations firm and a program designed to uncover the weaknesses people will do almost anything to protect. She eliminates the cases that dont hold up, verifies the ones that do, and publishes only what she can prove.

Then the story begins to come apart.

A source changes his account. Facts Mara thought were settled become uncertain. And the investigation she believed she had nailed down threatens to become the story that destroys her.

Mara has always known how to question a source. She never thought shed have to question herself.