My date spent the entire evening acting like the richest man in the room, but when the bill landed he just crossed his arms and waited for me to pay — and then the front door opened.

Her name was Karen Whitlock, and she met us on a Tuesday morning at a coffee shop far enough out from downtown that none of us were likely to see a familiar face.

She was younger than I'd pictured. Early forties, dark coat, a recorder she set on the table and asked permission to use before she turned it on. She'd brought Eleanor's folder plus a second one she'd built herself.

"I want to be clear about what this is and what it isn't," she said, before any of us had said Derek's name out loud. "This is not a criminal investigation. I'm not law enforcement. What I'm building is a documented pattern of behavior that's caused financial and emotional harm to a number of women. The end result is a published piece that names him, lays out the pattern, and has enough sourcing behind it that it can't be shrugged off."

Rachel had both hands around her cup. "Will it stop him?"

"Maybe not legally," Karen said. "But it makes him searchable. Anyone who looks up his name finds it. Dating apps. Employers. Anybody doing five minutes of homework before a first date." She paused. "That changes the terrain quite a bit."

Eleanor was watching the recorder. "How many sources do you need?"

"I already have enough to publish. What I want is enough to make it airtight." She looked around the table. "Each of you adds weight. The more specific you can be — dates, places, exact words, dollar amounts where you have them — the harder it is for him, or a lawyer, to call it vague."

I'd brought nothing but my memory of that Friday. I told her all of it. The restaurant. The two-hour monologue. The folder in the center of the table. The silence. Rachel walking through the door.

Karen took notes even with the recorder going. When I finished, she asked, "Did he say anything to you directly you'd call deceptive? Not just bragging — actually false."

"He implied he was currently employed in a senior role. He talked about his investment portfolio in the present tense. He talked about the car like it was a recent purchase he'd paid cash for."

"All false."

She made a note. "And when Rachel showed you the $47 balance — how did he react?"

"He didn't deny it. He changed the subject. Then on his way out he made the comment about her account. Like he wanted her to know he still had a card to play somewhere."

Karen turned to Rachel. "The transfer attempt. You have documentation from the bank?"

"They're sending written confirmation this week," Rachel said. "The attempt was logged at 7:52 p.m. We were still at the table."

"He tried to move money while he was sitting across from a woman he expected to pay for his dinner," Karen said. Not a question. She wrote it down.

The coffee shop filled up around us. A mother with a stroller. Two guys in work coats. A kid with headphones. Everybody having a regular Tuesday.

Eleanor opened her folder and slid a page across. "That's from my bank. The transfer he pulled from our joint account. Dated, account number partly blacked out. My lawyer said I could share it for the article."

Karen studied it. "This is strong. This is very strong."

"I want him named," Eleanor said. "I've waited a year. I want his name in it."

"It'll be in there," Karen said. "I've already run it past our legal team. With this much documentation and this many sources, they've cleared it."

Rachel set down her cup. "When?"

"I'm aiming for three weeks. I want to give him a chance to respond first — that's standard. I'll send him a summary of the allegations and a deadline. He'll almost certainly either ignore it or deny all of it. Either way, his response goes in the piece."

"And if he tries to kill it?" I asked.

Karen looked at me. "He can try. People do. It almost never works when the paper trail is this clean." She closed her notebook. "What he should actually be worried about is what happens after it runs. I've done stories like this before. The response from other women tends to be — significant."

She said that last word carefully. We all understood it.

Eleanor gathered her papers back into the folder. Her hands were steady. "I keep thinking about the ones who haven't found each other yet. The women he's going to meet next month."

"That's exactly why we publish," Karen said. She reached over and clicked off the recorder, dropped it in her bag, stood, pulled on her coat. "I'll be in touch by the end of the week. If anything else surfaces before then — anything — call me directly." She left a card on the table. "Thank you. All of you."

She walked out. The three of us sat in the quiet she left behind.

"Do you think he'll respond to her?" Rachel asked.

"Yes," Eleanor said, no hesitation. "He won't be able to stop himself."