THE EXIT INTERVIEW

When a dyslexic investigator discovers five women accusing engineers of sexual harassment are reciting identical scripts, she uncovers a labor trafficking conspiracy hiding behind the #MeToo movement—and her learning disability becomes the weapon used to silence her. Claudia Reeves has built her career on a singular expertise: reading micro-expressions, body language, and the nonverbal truth people can't hide. As a workplace harassment investigator, she knows when someone's lying—not from their words, but from the involuntary signals their bodies betray. Her dyslexia means she struggles with contracts and reports, relying on voice-to-text software and assistants to compensate. But she can detect deception with uncanny precision. It's a trade-off that's served her well—until Vertex Technologies hires her to investigate coordinated sexual harassment complaints from five women against senior engineers. The accusations seem straightforward at first. Five women, similar stories of inappropriate comments and unwanted advances by high-earning engineers on H-1B visas. But Claudia notices something disturbing: the women's eye movements suggest they're remembering rehearsed words, not lived experiences. Their body language lacks genuine distress markers. They're performing trauma, not processing it. When she interviews the accused engineers—socially awkward immigrants confused by the allegations—their emotional responses suggest innocence, not predatory behavior. Claudia realizes she's witnessing something unprecedented: a coordinated false accusation scheme targeting vulnerable foreign workers. Digging deeper into the employment fraud, she discovers HR director Robert Gaines has been recruiting undocumented women with promises of legitimate tech jobs and visa sponsorship. Once hired at below-market wages, these women are coached to memorize harassment scripts and file coordinated complaints. The targeted engineers, facing career-destroying scandal, resign quietly. Their visa sponsorships end. They leave the country. Vertex saves $800,000 annually replacing expensive senior staff with trafficked labor, and Gaines collects performance bonuses. It's labor trafficking disguised as workplace justice—a criminal conspiracy exploiting both the #MeToo movement and immigration vulnerabilities. But proving it requires analyzing dense employment contracts, visa applications, financial statements, and payroll records—precisely the text-heavy evidence Claudia's dyslexia makes nearly impossible to parse. She's spent her career hiding this learning disability, fearing clients would question her competence. When she confesses to forensic accountant Marcus that she "can't read the evidence," they form an unlikely partnership: she reads people, he reads documents. Together, they compile proof of the visa fraud and immigration crime scheme. Before they can report to federal authorities, Gaines learns of their investigation and strikes first. He files a professional complaint attacking Claudia's credibility, weaponizing her dyslexia and dyscalculia against her. His argument: someone who "cannot properly review documentary evidence" is "unqualified to conduct investigations." He's forcing her to choose between admitting her disability publicly—potentially destroying her reputation—or staying silent while trafficking continues. The FBI opens a human trafficking investigation based on Claudia's behavioral evidence and Marcus's financial forensics. Federal agents discover the scheme extends beyond five women—twelve have been trafficked over three years, and forty engineers have been pushed out through fabricated accusations. When the story breaks as "Tech Company Used #MeToo as Cover for Labor Trafficking," Claudia faces public scrutiny. Critics ask why she didn't simply believe the victims. She responds with nuance that becomes the book's moral center: "I believe victims. That's why I investigated carefully. These women were telling coordinated lies