Page 8 of Duality

“Once I finish this article, I can help,” Maya said. “I’ve got one more round of edits and then I’m sending it off and publishing it on the web. It should get picked up pretty quickly.”

“This one is on the judge, right?” I asked around a mouthful of food. We had discovered a corrupt judge in the next city who gave lighter or heavier sentences depending on how much the accused lined his pockets.

“Yep.”

“Liam, are we ready to go when the story goes live?” Izzy asked, ticking off something on her paper.

“Yes, ma’am.” Liam grinned. “Ready to stop, drop, and roll into his bank accounts.”

“The money is going back to the families, right?” Maya asked.

“The families for the legal fees they’ll need to get the cases retried,” I reminded her.

Maya scribbled down a few notes in the notebook they were always carrying around. “Got it. I’ll make sure that’s in the article.”

“Perfect. Next item.” Izzy read down the list of cases we took on.

In the early years, everything had been by word of mouth, but now we were a bit more organized. Liam had organized an anonymous tip line where people could submit tips or ask for help. Danny still kept our network of informants strong in the streets, but we also took a digital approach as well. Izzy kept track of the caseload, and Grace kept track of our resources.

“I need another computer,” Liam said, giving us a view of his half-chewed food.

“Ew! Finish chewing first.” Maya threw a scrunched-up napkin at him.

He rolled his eyes but finished chewing. “I need another computer. And another hacker, if we can afford it.”

“What for?” Grace asked.

Grace was in charge of most of our logistics, including the supplies we needed for missions. Liam already had eight computers in his main station, and we employed five additional hackers. We couldn’t afford to pay them what they were worth to us, but we paid them a decent wage for their skill. They all had personal stakes in our mission, so that helped.

“I’ve got an algorithm going to help collect information, and I need someone to babysit it. That person could also fix some small things in our software that I don’t have time for. Hell, they could also research if we needed. We’re getting kind of backlogged.” In addition to being our resident hacker, Liam managed a team of five other techies that helped pull research in about our cases. Everything from background checks to deep dives. The information he and his team collected might be the most valuable thing the Archers had.

I looked at Izzy. She shrugged and nodded. “The request volume has almost doubled since the start of this year.”

“Fuck. Do we know why?” I asked.

“It’s probably due to the fact we had some big busts at the start of the year,” Izzy said.

“Shake the tree and watch the apples fall,” Grace murmured.

Maya nodded. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. We peeled back one layer, but there’s always another waiting.”

I groaned and ran a hand over my face. It was a never-ending battle. We really needed to be more proactive instead of reactive in fighting corruption in the city, but we just didn’t have the resources. This wasn’t really a cash business, although we did okay “borrowing” from the rich assholes we busted.

“Can we afford it?” Danny asked Izzy, eyeing me with a worried look on his face, his brow furrowed.

“We can, but we’ll need to review the operational budget soon.” She directed her answer at me.

“If I ever get out of the office before 8 p.m., I’m all yours.”

“Your handsome bosses keeping you late?” Maya teased, and the table laughed when I buried my face in my hands.

My lieutenants were convinced that the Stone brothers had a thing for me. Danny, more than anyone else, as he often showed up at the office at lunch to “take me out.” I was pretty sure the brothers thought he was my boyfriend, though, from how much they glared at him when he was around.

“Y’all really need to let this go,” I complained good naturedly.

They enjoyed teasing me, but they all knew I would never take it there. The information we got from SDS was too valuable for me to risk it on a fling with my boss. Or bosses. When I originally started at SDS, I thought the brothers were just like all the other rich and wealthy of the city, but I quickly learned they were good men. They truly did care about their employees and clients, and they did a lot of philanthropy work as well. Sometimes I got twitchy about compromising their systems, but the information we gleaned from their network had helped in so many missions over the last six years that I tried my hardest to bury down the guilt. Emphasis on the wordtry.

“Any more visits from the charming Adrian?” Danny teased. “I swear he nearly burned me last week with his glare.”