Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,2

the lives of their employees or customers, so long as they can squeeze a few million more. It’s bloodless, calculated crime and forensic accountants are the ones who are smart enough to not only catch them, but explain to a judge and jury exactly how they did it.”

He nodded at the business card. “We make the bloodless bleed.”

Nora still didn’t understand exactly what forensic accounting entailed, but she was also sleep-deprived, exiled from her family, and living off the last thousand dollars in her savings account. She pocketed the card and offered Jim Parrish her hand.

That was fifteen years, a hundred audits, countless investigations, and sixty-five convictions ago. The summer after Nora came on board, Jim hired Corbett MacDermott, an Irish transplant who specialized in artificial intelligence, and he and his wife began having one baby per year like they were doing a companion experiment in organic intelligence. Corbett liked to stroll into Nora’s office at the end of the day and talk about cases while she worked over three monitors and her analysts bustled in and out. Both of them bought into the partnership at the same time and they celebrated with a round of beer at Ike’s, which had turned into a round twice a week ever since.

* * *

“You’ve got to let Sam White go.” Corbett said as they walked into the skyway, leaving the conference hotel behind.

“He’s been dead for fifteen years.” Nora replied. “I think he’s sufficiently gone.”

“You know what I mean.”

“How was your seminar?” While she’d taught the principles of fraud detection, Corbett had lectured on developments in artificial intelligence, a topic that consistently drew audiences from across the country.

Corbett chuckled. “Steering me back into my box, are we?”

Nora smiled and pointed to the sandwich board of one of Corbett’s favorite lunch spots. “Your pork belly ramen’s on special today.”

“And now she’s speaking my love language.” Laughing again, he elbowed her in the shoulder as they joined the pedestrian traffic flowing above the streets of downtown Minneapolis.

Nora had always appreciated the planning and design of the Minneapolis skyway. She’d taken an underground tour of Seattle on a business trip once and marveled at how the entire elevation of the city had risen one story, leaving a ghost town of empty storefronts and subterranean alleys beneath it. The Minneapolis skyway was similar, except the actual ground hadn’t shifted at all. The streets, sidewalks, and plazas remained where they’d always been, crowded with food trucks in the summer and coated with a gristle of snow and ice in the winter. The skyway simply layered another city on top of all that. Glass-encased walkways connected every skyscraper in downtown, a ten-mile labyrinth of convenience stores, salons, bakeries, sushi counters, farm-to-table hot spots, burger joints, and pop-ups for every conceivable Kickstarter product and signature-starved petition. It was the largest system of enclosed, second-story bridges in the world and, for Nora and Corbett, it was home.

“Where are we going for lunch?”

“You’re on your own.” Nora swerved to avoid a group of businessmen as her partner stopped abruptly in front of a pizza place. Corbett never watched where he was going in the skyway. He didn’t have to. The crowd parted around him like pedestrian male privilege, or maybe tall person privilege, while he obliviously perused the lunch counter menu.

“They’ve got Hawaiian barbecue pizza.”

She checked her watch and shook her head. “Strike’s in twenty minutes. I don’t have time.”

At this point, she’d barely be able to grab the gym bag from her office and get to Strike’s building before class started.

“Ah, come on, Ellie.”

Nora sighed. No one else called her that. Most people didn’t even know her full name was Elnora. Ellie was too light, too easy on the tongue. Ellie was someone who changed her schedule around at the drop of a hat, who acquiesced to her friend’s cajoling.

“They aren’t holding any lunchtime classes next week. I don’t want to miss this one.” She’d reached the top of the waitlist for the exclusive gym six months ago, and since joining, Strike’s kickboxing sessions had become an integral part of her week. It was the exact opposite of the mental challenges that filled her work days; Strike was visceral, a world distilled into sheer physical effort and power. It was also her only chance to see Logan.

“Fine, fine.” Corbett gave up. “I’ll fend for myself.”

They moved back into the crowd and turned a corner past a six-story waterfall cascading into a pool at the bottom of an atrium. Just before