“I don’t. But I want to know what they know, and then I’ll make my own decision.”
“I don’t know…” Hari said.
And she didn’t. This did not seem to be in her bailiwick.
“One week,” Art said. “Give me one week and I’ll pay you one hundred K. In advance. If you solve it in less than one week or even if you don’t solve it at all, the hundred-K is still yours.”
A hundred thousand for a week’s work…her hourly billable rate was high, but no way she’d ever amass that number of hours in a week. But first offers were rarely the final offer. Could she goose a boost?
“Tempting…” she said slowly.
“One fifty,” he said. “That’s my final offer. And don’t forget: The answer to my question could have a big impact on your future as well.”
“I might have expenses, like travel and such.”
Hey, if you don’t ask…
“I’ll give Donny a credit card to charge what you need—within reason, of course.”
Okay, nice to know what she was worth to this guy, but time to be up front.
“I’d love to take your money, Art, but I don’t know if I can deliver. You’re in no position to get a court order to make this Septimus Foundation open its books to me, and they aren’t going to do it because of my good looks and scintillating personality. The only option is hacking their in-house system and that’s—”
“—illegal?” Art said with a smile. “Donny’s already done it.”
Just as she’d suspected. “Donny?”
“The kid’s an ace. We’ve been in for a while but it’s a messy maze in there. We need someone who knows what they’re looking at.”
Hari had a thing about privacy. An almost extinct concept now, but that didn’t diminish her reverence for it. Still, Art was talking about a group that had profited from the Internet outage—which might mean they’d been party to it. That put them on the Hari Tate shit list. A long list, to be sure, but always room for one more.
Her job was to study a pile of numbers and know what she was looking at when people didn’t want her to know what she was looking at.
She nodded slowly. “Might be worth a try.”
“Super!” Art said. “And since it’s our hack, you’ll be working from here.”
“Oh, no. I need my office staff to—”
Art shook his head. “In the course of trying to do this on our own, we’ve learned some stuff about Septimus. They’re not nice people.”
“‘Not nice’ how?”
Donny spoke up. “For one thing, they’ve become pretty cozy with the Kickers lately. They’ve got their own security people, but the Kickers seem to act as their Brown Shirts.”
Kickers…everyone knew the Kickers. Supposedly a self-realization group, but it seemed to Hari most of its members had a knack for embracing their inner thug. Rumor had it they’d contributed to the Internet outage by helping to damage its infrastructure, but nothing had been proven.
“For safety sake,” Art said, “everything’s got to stay under one roof—this one.”
Hari considered: her office was only a few blocks away…she’d be tied up for a week tops…she could have some of her associates service her other clients during that time.
She gestured around. “Doesn’t seem to be room enough here for the three of us.”
“You’ll be working with Donny in the basement.”
“All right.” She turned to Donny. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Along the way they stopped in the kitchen so Hari could get a coffee refill and she noted with approval that Donny used a French press.
“So…” she said. “You’re the in-house hacker?”
She expected some dodgery, but he nodded immediately and said, “Yep.”
“Exclusively for Art?”
“Lately, yeah. Used to be an on-and-off thing, but now he’s got a bug up his butt about this Sedam brokerage and the Septimus Foundation and what they know and what they’re up to.”
“In a nutshell,” Hari said, “what do we know about what they know—so far?”
“Well, for one thing—”
“Let’s take this downstairs so I can see if your man cave is going to work for me.”
She wanted to get him out of earshot of Art.
He opened a door that led off the kitchen and motioned her to follow.
As they descended the steps he picked up where he’d left off. “We know they’re spending their cash and not keeping good financial records.”
“Even a charitable foundation’s got to keep records—to show where the money’s coming from and where it’s going. Else the IRS’ll getcha.”
“They used to keep great records. I mean, their past records are as scrupulous as all hell, as if they were terrified of an audit. But now it’s like they don’t give a shit. Almost as if they’re not worried about an audit. Like it’s never gonna happen. And that’s got Art worried. To be perfectly honest, I’m a little worried myself.”
Hari wasn’t crazy about it either. The Septimus order had won its bets on the Internet meltdown. Were they expecting a civilization meltdown next?
“But that’s not the strangest thing I found,” he said as they reached bottom. “Come over here and I’ll show you.”
Hari followed him across the basement to where two rolling desk chairs sat before a counter supporting three monitors. Donny held a seat for Hari.
“Appreciated,” she said as she sat, “but that’s the last time you do that, okay?”
“Gotcha.”
He dropped into the other chair and moused a monitor to life.
“I did some editing in advance to bring you up to speed. Since I can’t make sense of their financials—that’s why you’re here—I’ve been delving into—”
“Let’s hold it right there on why I’m here. I want to hear something a little more truthful than that ‘Tate is great’ bullshit and how you didn’t know I was female.”
He reddened again. “How did you know?”
“I’d love to play poker with you sometime.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, I really suck at poker. Okay, I’ll give you the skinny, but you might not want to hear it.”
“I’m wearing my big-girl panties. I can handle it.”
He took a breath. “I hang out on the dark web. That’s
