“You’re late,” Sonia snapped once Brad and Jolene entered the room she was using at the network cafe, completely without looking up from her computer. “What took you so long?” Sonia Ray, a brunette in her mid forties, was not the typical Hollywood stereotype of the female computer programmer, with the mousy hair and coke bottle glasses, nor was she the heavily-pierced goth or punk rock archetype.

In fact, judging from her physique, you’d think she was a professional athlete. Which wouldn’t be that far off, as her biggest hobby was basketball, something she took great pride in. In fact, Brad was pretty sure she’d be a lot more personable towards him if he’d play a few rounds of one-on-one with her, because she’d absolutely destroy him.

Brad quickly responded, “Sorry, I kinda got held up.”

“My fault,” Jolene quickly added.

Sonia looked up from her computer to acknowledge Jolene, before saying, “Who’s the kid? Here I thought your type was people your own age like that Elena or whatever her name is.”

“Elaine…” Brad muttered, while Jolene piped up, “Kid? Ma’am, I’m 24 years old.”

“Yeah, and Brad here’s in his 30’s.”

“I am not! I’ve still got…umm…” Brad quickly did some math, “Thirteen months left!”

“Ah, my mistake, five years’ difference ain’t so bad. About as much between me and my ex-husband.”

“Look, I’m not dating either one of them,” Brad said defensively.

“Yeah, whatever you say. So what am I doing for you?” Sonia asked, trying to hurry this along.

“Ah, right,” Brad, caught up in the topic of his love life, had forgotten about the hard drive. He pulled the hard drive from his pocket and laid it on Sonia’s desk. “I’m trying to get at what’s on this.”

Sonia looked at the drive, then back to Brad, saying in disbelief, “You want me to pull some files. Can’t you do that?”

“Look, I tried to get into it before but I struck out with the password.”

“You struck out with the password? Sounds like a you problem. Why is this stuff so important anyway?”

“I explained before that this is stuff people seem to want buried. At any rate, do you want my money or not?” Brad hated this part of the dance with Sonia. Without outright saying it, Sonia seemed to enjoy berating Brad for not having an expected level of basic computer proficiency.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Right, about that…” Sonia began, not looking up to notice Brad’s grimace, knowing what comes next. “I’m gonna need a little extra to cover the risk. Dead journalist and police officer? Possibility of police corruption? Seems a great deal more complicated than your usual cases. I thought you didn’t take murder cases.”

“Yeah, so did I. I’m still questioning why I took the case. Best case scenario, we survive and people start asking me to investigate riskier things.”

“Like you wouldn’t pawn the hard stuff off on me,” Sonia muttered.

“Hard stuff? I don’t hear about you getting stuff thrown at you. Nobody knows I even work with you!”

“So you’re taking credit for my work?”

“I guess if you put it that way. Would you rather me credit you on every case I subcontract with you, possible risk and all? From where I’m standing you’ve got a pretty sweet gig.”

“Fine, fine, let me see what I can do.”

While she was working, Sonia made a modest attempt at some small-talk. “You never answered my question, Brad.”

Brad, who had been scanning news articles on his communication device, looked up. “What question?”

“The girl. Where does she fit into all this? I’m guessing you didn’t just take on a decently-armed intern.”

“Ah, right, sorry, I guess I forgot. She’s a pretty new officer. Kind of an adopted sister to Jill.”

“Oh, is she the one who hired you?” Sonia asked, feigning interest.

“Actually, no. Kind of an unintended passenger in the ride.”

Sonia stopped working and looked up from her monitor. “Excuse me?”

Brad quickly explained everything that had happened.

“Hold on,” Sonia said. “You mean to tell me that you brought her along even though she tried to kill Alicia or whatever her name is?”

“Elaine, and…yeah, that’s accurate. She was drugged.”

“Even if I wasn’t,” Jolene broke in, “Don’t you think it’s better that I’m with Mr. Asher than back at his office?”

“Stop calling me Mr. Asher,” Brad asked, somewhat fatigued.

“Right, you wouldn’t want him to feel old or anything,” Sonia replied smugly.

Brad rolled his eyes. “Look, regardless, she failed and the people behind this aren’t going to take that sitting down. She’s in as deep as any of us.”

“All right, it’s your funeral.” She continued working, eventually saying, “Well, I gotta hand it to you, Brad, you certainly knew the best time to stop trying to brute force the password. You were extremely close to triggering the failsafe and having all of the data wiped.”

Guess that’s one thing I’m gonna have to thank my stalker for.

She worked for a bit longer, and then said, “That’s it, I think we have a winner. Just taking a brief look through the files, and he probably should have given them less incriminating names. They’re all shipping records. Firearms. Construction equipment. Not purchased by a specific company, but through a name. Shoji Matsumoto. That can’t be someone’s real name, right?”

Brad looked at Jolene, whose complexion had gone a few shades more pale. “No, that’s…definitely someone’s real name. He’s one of the police captains.”

“Brad…don’t credit me for this case if you get out of it alive.”