Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,75
deleted them before sending. It didn’t take a computer programmer to know what her artificial intelligence program would say about emails delivered at three in the morning, regardless of syntax. It would say I was desperate, and it would be right. I needed to know she’d found the money, but now—after that interview with the police yesterday—I also needed to know if her partner had woken up. If he’d said anything about Logan.
Why had she lied to Detective Li about knowing this accountant? There was only one explanation. A twenty-million-dollar explanation. I kept flashing back to the deposit slips in her old apartment, specifically the one Nora had found in the garbage, covered in grease stains. Had Logan and Corbett MacDermott been there together? Were they having casual lunch meetings to discuss fraud? If so, why admit she knew him? Why claim to have seen him on Tuesday night, right before a mysterious accident, unless she was afraid someone would place her at the scene and wanted to get ahead of the story. Controlling the message, just the way I’d taught her.
A braver man would have investigated, would have confronted his wife without regard to the fear of being thrown off his own balcony or tossed in front of an oncoming car. I was not that man. I’d left the stadium last night during a thunder of detonation and Technicolor flashes reflecting off the skyscrapers of downtown, as Logan’s unscheduled, unscripted blog filtered through my head. No one is right or good and it’s not about that anyway. It’s about physically hurting them to show them who’s in charge. I walked past our building and imagined the penthouse terrace covered in a shroud of ash, while Logan watched the sky burn. God bless the fighter in me, I thought grimly, the one who would live to fight another day.
The office today was deserted. Every Strike employee had migrated to the stadium by this point in the tournament, except Darryl—who’d taken another sick day and was, if he had a single goddamn brain in his head, working on his résumé right now—and the Parrish team had apparently left last night. According to Sara, they’d “processed all necessary on-site information” and retreated back to their own office tower.
By midday, I broke down and emailed the lead analyst, requesting an update, and received an infuriatingly political reply. They were “aggressively pursuing all avenues of opportunity” which meant they didn’t have the money yet. The deposit slips we’d found in Logan’s old apartment were nothing, just pieces of paper. They wouldn’t cover the thirty-six giant cardboard checks waiting to be awarded to tonight’s winners.
One of those winners had to be Merritt Osborne. At least twenty percent of my tweets last night were dedicated to highlighting some aspect of Merritt’s preliminary fights, where she’d dominated every opponent in the ring. Her blond braid, streaked red and blue for Independence Day, had lit up Instagram and already become a viral gif. I stopped at her hotel to check in on the way to the stadium, and she met me with another bone-crunching hug.
“How are you feeling about the Brazilian tonight?” Merritt’s final round opponent was a highly decorated fighter who’d broken a Russian woman’s jaw in the ring earlier this year.
“Honey, this bitch is going down.”
It was all I needed to hear.
Less than an hour before the great glass doors opened, I stood alone on the concourse of U.S. Bank Stadium. The interior lights were on, but the spotlights hadn’t been booted up, leaving the center ring in shadows. The jumbotrons remained dark, all their slow-motion moments of glory and despair still locked in an unknown future, waiting to be relived at a hundred times their size. Soon tens of thousands of people would flood through these gates and watch a champion ascend, bringing a new face, a new age in the life of Strike. I ignored the buzz of my watch and phone and stared at the vast, empty world I’d created. That’s where Nora found me.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.” The analyst who’d replied to my email told me “they” would be in contact, which I assumed meant any of the underlings, one of the ubiquitous suited people who’d prowled headquarters all week, but the sight of Nora left me physically weak. They must have found the money. It was back in Strike’s account. Why else would she be here in person?
“Forgive me for intruding, but I do need a few minutes