My meeting with Wayne McCain had begun at a blisteringly early half-past-seven, and our meeting was focused enough that I was already walking back into the office at nine o’clock. First things first: booting up my PC, billing the time I was busy (even if it was technically mandatory pro bono, the firm still needed that time billed for the sake of metrics and accountability), and checking my emails.

  The most important email was from Megan, letting me know that she’d penciled me in for Wednesday at 11:30am, which had me going into my calendar and marking that I’d be out of the office for a good chunk of time that day. I also sent a reminder to myself on my personal devices to get it into those calendars, yes… but also so that Gorou knew what was up, and to ensure the Japanese Embassy would know not to accidentally double-book him.

  Ah, the hassle of having a minor god in your family tree… or, wait, was it having a demigod in your family tree? Which one did Gorou count as, actually? I could see the arguments for both, but… hmm.

  Also, depending on what Gorou counted as being, what did that mean for me?

  … you know what, actually? No. That was very much the wrong tree to be barking up at the moment, plus I was the wrong species to be barking up trees, or even barking in the first place.

  Ugh.

  Weird thought tangents aside, once I had that in place, it was time to focus on the other thing I’d been concerned about: the two boys McCain’s “old Army buddy” was protecting, and the fact that their parents were card-carrying white supremacists. There was a lot that could be explained away by the parents being “fine, upstanding gentlemen from well-respected police families”, but it didn’t change the fact that two teenage boys had been all but missing for the past four months. There should have been something out there somewhere to suggest their absence — a police report, missing person’s report, court records in Virginia, something.

  But no. Nothing. And that was, well… a bit worrying. Why?

  Because the one time I needed to help somebody temporarily disappear without arousing suspicion, I’d had a doctor (… okay, fine, she was a nurse practitioner) whose morals were stronger than her ethics work with me to provide an excuse. It wouldn’t have held up against harsher scrutiny, but for a brief, couple-month stopgap? It worked like a charm. And it worked because of HIPAA and privacy laws — medical records were protected by very strict privacy requirements, and if all you needed to do was buy time, that was perfect.

  It was probably what the boys’ parents had gone with, just given both what would let them prevent any kind of paper-trail-generating inquiries, as well as the kind of networks I could imagine them having access to as law enforcement officers. It bought them the time they’d needed to cast off suspicion, but also the time I’d needed to get caught up to speed in time to intervene.

  Unfortunately, however, that need for time had just about run out. Schools were letting out for the summer. That gave the Neo-Nazis three months to find the boys before they needed to answer uncomfortable questions, come up with a paper trail, or both.

  The time crunch meant that they’d have to start looking for the boys in earnest, which meant I needed to lay down some feelers to catch wind of any such attempts. Feelers that I… didn’t have. But they could also be put into place by friends in positions to do so, or by people in those positions who owed me favors, which I… also didn’t have.

  Seeing the problem? I sure did.

  At the end of the day, most of my friends were in high places, which was entirely the wrong place for what I needed. This wasn’t an “eye in the sky” situation, this was an “ear to the ground” scenario — and let me tell you, I physically can’t put my ears to the ground. The anatomy doesn’t work, which… uh… damn it. Okay, fine, I might have just killed the metaphor there. But my point still stands!

  I needed ears to the ground and eyes on the street. I had none of these things, and none of the people I would ordinarily go to could get me those things, either.

  But I knew somebody who could.

  A quick check of the calendar told me that my quarry was both in the office and free, at least for the next thirty minutes. That being said, thirty minutes of ‘free time’ in a law firm had a funny way of disappearing on you, so I had to make my move quickly.

  The office I needed was just underneath the server room. While its location was absolutely perfect for ease of access to the break room, the restrooms, and the exits, nobody actually wanted this office because of the server room, which made it hotter than every other office on the floor by a few degrees. Well, correction — nobody except its occupant, who absolutely despised the cold, but could tank a hot summer day in full business wear without batting an eye.

  Once I drummed out my usual ‘shave and a haircut’ on the door and didn’t hear anything telling me to go away, I turned the door handle and went on in.

  “Please say this is the distraction brigade,” the office’s occupant said, one hand tapping a harsh staccato rhythm on the desk, while the other clicked through half a dozen documents spread across three monitors. He hadn’t even looked up from his computer, but I had no doubts he knew it was me — to my knowledge, nobody else in the firm tapped out a specific beat when they knocked.

  “Rejoice, Julio!” I exclaimed, genuinely happy that the perfect opening just happened to lie before me. “It is I, the ever-distracting fox!”

  “Thank fuck.” Julio’s fingers spread across almost the entire keyboard as he hit a four-button hotkey without looking, and all of the open windows shrank down before sorting themselves by application. Damn; was that a custom hotkey? Not bad, not bad. These young’uns had some neat tricks. “Okay, real quick before you distract me, need your opinion.”

  Julio Cabrera was a younger Hispanic man, even if in some ways he didn’t look it anymore. Despite being in his late twenties, his thick, short-cropped black hair already had notable amounts of gray at the temples, which stood as a permanent reminder of the stressful two years he spent as a public defender. While his time in those trenches had visibly aged him, it had also tempered him in one of the most vicious crucibles law had to offer — though it might have been a bit too much, frankly. Whereas my other co-counsel on that case, Fatima, had an issue with aggression, Julio’s problem was passivity. He was too used to being the underdog, too ready to cushion an inevitable loss, and it hurt his ability to gauge the relative strength or weakness of a case.

  It was the kind of thing that only time could cure. Fortunately, he had plenty of that to go around. And even though a more hands-off approach would probably force that growth sooner, I wasn’t the type to favor the sink-or-swim approach.

  Plus, I was about to ask him a favor. Better to do that after having just helped him out, so he’d feel more inclined towards a tit-for-tat.

  “Shoot.”

  Julio didn’t answer immediately, instead getting a few windows ready to show me. I used the brief delay to pull out one of his chairs and sit sideways on it, letting my tail hang off the other side.

  “So I got a medmal case,” he said, turning one of his three monitors to show me a few records. “Patient came into the ER with chest pain, and since he’s got COPD they admitted him for observation overnight. Around 10pm he complained of leg pain and asked for something to help him sleep, they gave acetaminophen and Ambien, resident on rounds noted his blood oxygen was a bit low, but everything else was fine.”

  “Seems pretty normal to me,” I frowned. “Although… real quick actually, is Allstate one of the co-defendants?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Just a hunch,” I murmured.

  In reality, my friend-and-sometimes-foe Amir had tried to recruit me for another case while I’d been on leave — actually, he sent the email while I was in the air, meaning I needed to use in-flight wifi to reply — and I’d had to let him down gently. I guess this meant that he’d chosen to stick with the firm, even if he didn’t get me, specifically.

  “Anyway, that means this is one of the cases Amir sent over, and knowing him, there’s a catch. So!” I clapped my hands and offered Julio a curious little grin. “What’s the catch this time?”

  “He came back a week later, leg was necrotic, had to be amputated.”

  Oh! Well, then. Leg pain to necrosis in a week? That escalated mighty quickly.

  “Ah. Right, in that case, we’re clearly missing a few things here. Pull up the medical history?” Julio obliged, then pushed the mouse over towards me so I could scroll. “Alright… ER records, ugh. Let me guess, EMTALA lawsuit?”

  “Yup, plaintiff wants a hundred mil.”

  “Yeesh.”

  I visibly winced, grimacing and folding my ears down, though it was more for Julio’s benefit. He was still green enough to maybe not know what was at stake here, and while I didn’t want to outright tell him (on account of, you know, the self-confidence issue I’d mentioned earlier), I could still give him a hint to be wary when dealing with EMTALA.

  … oh, right, that was a long acronym. Which I probably need to explain.

  EMTALA, or the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, was the law that meant the ER needed to treat you, and treat you properly — no dumping patients, no refusing service, no cutting corners, no skipping steps, none of that shit. And the number one red flag of medical malpractice law was an EMTALA violation. Such violations almost always became front-page news, which was the hospital administration’s death knell — the monetary loss could be particularly awful, yes, but it was the PR hit that made EMTALA so notorious for killing hospitals outright.

  Nobody, nobody, wanted to go to a hospital that’d been found liable under EMTALA, let alone work there.

  That being said? EMTALA made this a big case for Julio, almost as big as the one we’d brought to trial earlier this year, so him pulling down this one was a major vote of confidence.

  “Right, that week of time is gonna need to get filled in, and we’ll want the rest of his medical records,” I told Julio, rotating the monitor back. “I’ll forward you the list of investigators I prefer, along with the templates I use for discovery and interrogatories when dealing with medical records. Once you’ve got those records, start looking for comorbidities, other explanations, and other doctors. Rule one for defending against an alleged EMTALA violation: see if there’s someone else to blame. These things don’t happen on their own, so don’t try to tank it on your own. Okay?”

  “Okay, I think I got it. Even just getting some boilerplate should be a huge help…” Julio sighed, deflating into his chair and reaching for a coffee cup I hadn’t noticed before. His attempt to chug the damn thing seemed to meet with failure, though, and he tossed it past me into a trash can in the corner of his office. “Mierda.”

  “Distraction time?” I asked.

  “Please,” he groaned.

  “Right!” I clapped my hands, both to fully get his attention and to sort of separate the prior conversation from this one. “So. I’m going to preface this by saying it’s me asking you for a favor, in a roundabout sort of way. Beyond that, it’s not something that I can realistically credit you or anyone else with, because it needs to stay under the radar. Given this, feel free to tell me to take a hike.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “… seriously?” Julio leaned back up, interest gleaming in his eyes. “Really, pendeja, you can’t dangle that in front of me and then seriously think I’d say no. C’mon. Tell me.”

  “Well, if you insist…” I affected a put-upon sigh, lowered my ears in apparent contrition, and offered a shaky smile. “So, um. I know you worked in the public defender’s office before joining the firm. You wouldn’t happen to still be on good terms with your old coworkers, would you?”

  “That depends.” Julio sat back in his chair and crossed his arms with his chin tilted up slightly, some part of him recognizing he had the upper hand in this matter. “Why do you want to know?”

  “To give you a summary with far too little context, Arlington’s police community has a neo-Nazi problem, two of those cops’ kids are hiding out in DC rather than get forced into being Nazis, and with schools letting out for the summer, those Nazi cops can start looking for the boys without having to pretend they aren’t missing. And given that these problems aren’t exactly uncommon among police in general, well, they’re probably going to ask DC police for help.”

  “… damn,” Julio muttered, giving me a somewhat wide-eyed stare as he relaxed his posture. “You really don’t do anything by half, do you?”

  “Not for lack of trying,” I shrugged. “Regardless, if the police start changing their patterns searching for these two, that’s going to reflect in their arrests, because of course they’d want to kill two birds with one stone.”

  “And the ones who’d see that are the prosecutors and the public defenders,” he agreed. “I get where you’re going. Okay. Say I know a few people who’d help. What do I tell ‘em to look for?”

  “Well, the police are nothing if not creatures of habit, and the communities that already don’t like the police will pay attention to any changes in those habits out of self-preservation if nothing else. So basically, just listen for any gossip, watch for odd surges in arrests, and keep their ears to the ground for anything out of the ordinary.”

  “I can let ‘em know,” Julio nodded. “But you’ll probably need to treat the public defender’s office to bagels and coffee if this gets anything.”

  “Julio? When this goes loud — not if, when,” I emphasized, “then I will happily give each and every one of those public defenders a gift certificate to one of the local steakhouses.”

  “Of their choice?” he pressed.

  “Of their choice,” I agreed. “And one for you too, of course. Deal?”

  “Deal.” Julio extended a hand, and we shook on it. “Alright, I’ll get an email out to them,” he said as he turned back towards his monitors. “Want me to cc you?”

  “I’d appreciate it, yes. Thank you, Julio. I appreciate it.”

  “Hey, you’re letting me help fuck over some Nazis,” he said with a shrug. “Might as well be doing me a favor there.”

  “Eh, debatable,” I half-heartedly argued. “Anyway, let me head back to my desk so I can toss you those templates and form letters, then I gotta get back to work. Keep me posted?”

  “Will do!”

  With that, I let myself out of Julio’s office, and headed back to my own so I could package up the goodies for him. There was a new email in my inbox, but there were always new emails in my inbox, so it and all the others could wait the two minutes I needed to get Julio kitted out, especially since that was just a matter of attaching the contents of the right folder. I kept my boilerplate, templates, and form letters sorted by field of law and subtopic — so in this instance, I clicked through “Personal Injury”, then to “MedMal”, skipped past “Battery”, and opened up the “EMTALA” subfolder. Then I just clicked on the top document, shift-clicked on the bottom, clicked okay, and sent it off.

  Alright, now to see what that email was abo—

  RINGRING

  … or not. Rule number I-don’t-remember-what-number-we-were-at of law firms: no matter how urgent any one email was, nine times out of ten the phone call was more important. Your email could be missed by something so simple as the recipient being in a meeting, and you’d have no way of knowing. A phone call? Not so much. I looked over at the phone and… huh. Huh. That was an international number.

  I knew that international number.

  Well. Guess there was only one thing to do! I tapped the speakerphone button to accept the call, idly noting that my tail had started wagging a little bit.

  “Ambrose! What a pleasant surprise!” I greeted, feeling a smile spread across my face regardless of the fact that the man on the other end couldn’t see it. “You usually call my cell, though. Was the call not going through?”

  “A pleasure to hear from you too, luv,” Ambrose replied. A slight exhale came through from his end, which let me know he was smiling too; he always let out this little amused huff whenever he got anything more than a cheeky grin. “Alas, your reception is not the issue here. Unfortunately my call is more business than pleasure, hence trying your work number first.”

  “Even though it costs more?”

  “Naomi, luv. The cost is no object, you know that.”

  “You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes at you,” I told him, and actually did roll my eyes for effect. It was more amusement than exasperation, though. “Anyway, what can I help you with?”

  “Perhaps a little, perhaps a lot,” he answered, being deliberately wishy-washy. “There is only so much I am allowed to say at this juncture—”

  TAP TAP

  The sound of fingernails on glass drew my ears away from the phone, dragging my attention away from the call with it, and I looked up to see who was tapping at my office’s inward-facing window. When I saw who it was, I blinked, then hurriedly waved them in while I tried to process what I’d missed.

  “—and as a result, I now have a list of seventeen suspicious wire transfers of varying amounts. Now, I seem to recall you mentioning the transfer of a rather large sum to an offshore account, and that you had not yet ascertained its whereabouts, correct?”

  “I did mention that, yes; give me a moment right quick, would you?”

  “Gladly.”

  I hit the mute button right before the door to my office opened, and I pointed towards one of the chairs in front of my desk, then put one finger in front of my lips in the universal symbol for quiet before instead extending my pinky and thumb to signal that I was on a call. Thankfully, my surprise (yet welcome) guest closed the door and took a seat without complaint, and I was able to unmute the call without issues.

  “Alright, sorry about that,” I offered, then started clicking through a few windows for the documents I needed. “Let me see… okay, so what did you say you have, there?”

  “Wire transfers from thirteen accounts in the Cayman Islands, with the deposits spread across five accounts in the Bank of Ireland,” Ambrose explained. “My contacts in Interpol know that three of these accounts are of consequence, but alas, they do not have sufficient information to clear any of the five from suspicion, nor the available resources to do so through other means. And perhaps this is a shot in the dark, but if there is any chance that you might be able to shine some light on this, it is worth taking.”

  “Not enough…” I trailed off, remembering something Ambrose had mentioned several months back. “Does this have anything to do with that ‘kerfuffle’ you were in town for in January? The one that needed you to calm the Irish and British ambassadors?”

  I very studiously ignored the strangled gasp of incredulity that came from the other side of my desk.

  “Precisely,” Ambrose agreed. “Admittedly, ‘kerfuffle’ was rather strong of an understatement, but that is neither here nor there. Regardless — could you perhaps provide me with the sum at issue in your case?”

  “Of course. Let me see…” I found the number in question, then frowned as a thought came to mind — but one I would need to consider later. “Okay, so: the base sum is seven hundred twenty-seven thousand, five hundred thirty-two dollars and eighty-six cents. The wire transfer fee was fifty bucks, so deduct that from the total… oh, but if it was deposited as euros, then assume that new amount is still before any currency conversion fee.”

  “Which would bring the total to… aha. Marvelous, bloody marvelous. Naomi, luv, you’ve been a grand help, I need to get this to the fine—”

  “Wait wait wait wait, Ambrose, wait!” I forced out, ears low and eyes wide. “Please send me the information on that account and who you got it from, I do not have that yet and I’m going to need it!”

  “… ah,” he muttered. “I see. Very well, I shall have it for you anon. Cheers, dear girl.”

  And with that, the line went dead.

  “Ireland?” I murmured, deep in thought. “Why Ireland?”

  “Tax haven?”

  I glanced across my desk and flicked one ear.

  “That’s a thought, yes,” I replied. “But, better question: Casey, it isn’t that I’m not glad to see you, but aren’t you supposed to be at your Barbri class right now?”

  Casey briefly bristled, then looked a tad sheepish.

  “It starts in an hour?” they offered. I just stared at them for a moment, then sighed, my ears folding low in concern.

  “So, um. About last week,” I began, my ears flicking out of nervousness. “You asked for the weekend, and, well. I think the question still stands.”

  “What do I want to do, you mean?” they asked.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “That question.”

  My boss, Alice Tanaka-Schotz, had poked a bit of fun at me for getting quite so attached to Casey. She’d even called me a mother hen. And while my response had been to say I’d just stolen the henhouse keys as a proper fox should, I couldn’t deny that I had indeed let myself get attached. This was the first time I’d ever been in quite so direct a mentorship role. For all that I’d handled many a pro bono seminar on Moonshot law, for all that I’d enjoyed teaching people new things, it had always been impersonal and disconnected. Hands-off.

  This wasn’t. I’d been teaching Casey one-on-one, guiding them through the ins and outs of the job that their time as a summer associate and intern/extern hadn’t covered, showing them the sorts of things that I only wish I’d had someone to help me sort out as a baby attorney. And I wanted that to continue! But…

  But it wasn’t up to me. There’d been a breach of trust here. I’d discovered something that shouldn’t have been mine to find, and that changed things. Or, well. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. But only Casey knew for sure.

  “If you need more time…” I suggested, only for Casey to shake their head.

  “I’m staying,” they said with a shaky smile, voice firm and head high. “You won’t be rid of me that easily.”

  I sat there for a moment, really letting those words sink in.

  Then I stood from my chair, circled around to the front of the desk, gently tugged Casey up from their chair, and wrapped my most favorite new hire in a firm hug.

  “Thank you for staying,” I murmured, tightening my grip when I felt them hug me back.

  “Mm, mhmm,” they mumbled, and sighed heavily enough I could feel it along the fur of my ear. Casey loosened their grip, and I let go at the same time, stepping back to give them space. “I, um. Should probably get to bar prep class.”

  “Yes you should,” I agreed, “and make sure you’re taking good notes!”

  “I am!” Casey protested on their way out the door. “Oh!” They snapped their fingers and turned back from the doorframe. “Ah, that man on the phone? Ambrose? As in… Sir Ambrose?”

  “Hm?” I blinked. “Uh, yeah?”

  “A-and he just — calls you?” Casey squeaked. “First-name basis?”

  Ah. Okay, that’s what was going on here.

  “Casey, I know he’s a big deal in international affairs, but to me, he’s just Ambrose,” I explained. “He’s a good man who does his best to help. Nothing special about it.”

  “O-oh,” they wilted. “Okay? I guess?”

  Aww! I giggled a little at Casey’s reaction. They were adorable!

  “Tell you what,” I began, drawing their attention. “Next time Ambrose is in town, I’ll get you set up for a sit-down with him. Sound good?”

  “Really?” Casey gasped. “I-I mean yes! Of course, that’d be great!”

  “Wonderful!” I clapped. “Now, you have a Barbri course to attend, so don’t be late!”

  Casey let out an odd noise, somewhere between a strangled gurgle and a gasp of realization. Then they were out the door, tearing their way out of the building at incredible speed, though how much of that was residual excitement as opposed to “oh shit I don’t wanna be late”, I couldn’t tell. I just shook my head and smiled, closed the door to my office, and circled back around my desk to sit down.

  When I checked my emails, I saw that Ambrose had sent over what information he could share. It was… less than I’d like, admittedly: the last four digits of the account number, the last six digits of the routing number for international wire transfers, the account holder’s first initial, and the first five letters of their last name. Not enough to stand on its own, unfortunately. And I couldn’t ask Rachael Cruz to use her powers and find this for me, what with how her predilection towards using her technopathy as a shortcut in all things had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

  “Who are you, ‘Ander, M’?” I asked nobody in particular. “Ugh, now I feel silly, talking to myself…”

  I leaned back in my chair, and set the thought aside. Ambrose’s help might not have gotten me anywhere special, but it was more than I’d had fifteen minutes ago. Maybe it’d be useful with a bit more information? There were still some outstanding documents in that case, which I should be getting in this week… and then Casey and I would need to go through all the video footage. Ugh. Ugh.

  Eh. Whatever. I sat back up in my chair, imported those documents to our case management software, and added a note as to their origin. At least I could use these ones. Hard to be fruit of the poison tree when it was evidence in an Interpol case. Which… huh.

  Now that I thought about it, what was Ambrose even doing to help Interpol? Hmm… well, since it had to do with bank records, it was probably something uninteresting.

  Like spreadsheets.