Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,15

can spontaneously reverse.”

The bartender set their drafts down and gave the mahogany a knock for his regulars before working his way down the bar.

“I had ’em take my balls, too, for good measure.”

“That explains why Rajesh keeps circling and sniffing. He’s so confused.”

Corbett laughed and shook his head. Despite the quaking in her gut over this new client, Nora felt an answering smile tugging at her mouth as she clinked her glass against his.

The Friday happy hour crowd was the usual mix of loosened post-work ties and tight preshow dresses. Ike’s was an institution in downtown Minneapolis, a street-level bar built of gleaming wood and dark, nestling corners. Heavy curtains blocked out the urban glare and everything that buzzed impatiently beyond the windows.

Normally Corbett filled their happy hours with anecdotes and family stories, but today he seemed more interested in staring at his beer, and in the absence of his usual energy, the two of them lapsed into silence. Nora had never been great at casual conversation. She could have a two-hour debate about the appropriate amount of internal controls for small businesses, but commenting on the weather seemed as brainless as an emoji text string. She didn’t admit it to anyone, but she actually prepped for small talk with clients; she read BuzzFeed articles, kept track of popular TV shows and local news so she could chat with seeming ease about Game of Thrones (that ending!) or whichever road construction project was creating the most headaches. It was an investment, just not the tax-deductible kind.

When Nora could get employees engaged in small talk, they started to forget why she was there. She became a faceless friend, an anonymous confidante. They opened up about more things—weaknesses in the business or witnessing improper behavior—pointing out possible avenues of investigation that saved Nora’s team valuable time. Chatting for hours with strangers, though, was exhausting. After a long day of client interviews, her jaw would ache from smiling and her sentences bloomed bright and brittle, “like a robot impersonating a human” Corbett once joked.

“Thanks,” she’d deadpanned and then drained her beer in a way that would put a robot to shame.

“But a really good robot. An Inga-quality robot.” Corbett had designed the computer program named Inga, so in a way it was a compliment, like Frankenstein comparing a villager to his monster.

Once, last winter—and perhaps to prove she wasn’t a robot—she’d convinced him to try a class at Strike. It was bring-a-friend-for-free day. He’d grudgingly filled out the forms and sweated through half the session until Logan came by and tried to correct his form. When she jabbed his ribs under his “chicken wing” elbow, he fell into the bag and groaned, “Good god, woman. I’m an accountant. My opponents cheat their investors, they don’t take potshots at my ribs.”

“Are you kidding me? I saw that movie.” She’d laughed into the mic. “Who saw that Ben Affleck movie, The Accountant?”

Shouts went up among the thumping of bags. “We’ve got Affleck right here, guys. Let’s see how much ass he can kick.”

He didn’t walk normally for days and refused to ever go back. For weeks afterward, he called her Affleck and she called him Chicken Wing. But regardless of whether he teased or challenged her, asked for advice or offered it, he brought out a casualness in Nora that she’d thought only lived in other people. She’d never had to prep for conversations with Corbett.

When their beers crept past the halfway mark and they passed on another round, Nora sighed. She was running out of time. Katie’s tenderloin was cooking, the fat bubbling to an inevitable crisp.

“Can we talk about this client?”

In the hours since she’d escorted Gregg Abbott out of Parrish Forensics, Nora had tried to focus on her other cases, but even as she reviewed field status reports and prepped testimony for a court appearance, she could feel herself rearranging things, considering what she could reschedule or hand off to subordinates to clear a space in her head big enough to examine that spine-tingling voice with its impossible deadline. One week. A twenty-million-dollar chase. It wouldn’t be the largest fraud of her career, but it would be the most challenging, an all-out sprint requiring every trick and tool and ounce of energy she had. The lure was almost irresistible, but—she had to keep reminding herself—taking it was out of the question.

She was trying to choose her next words, dreading Corbett’s reaction, when he pushed his chair back and said, “You’re taking it.”

Nora