Dead Accounts

"I need the Bureau's best forensic accountant on this case," Director Faure said. "In a dedicated capacity." He slid a second file across the desk. "The task force is co-led."

She picked it up. Read the name on the cover.

Detective Brynn Kade.

She looked up in forty seconds flat — because the file didn't require longer than that — and said: "I'd like to register a formal objection."

Veyra Ashcroft has spent two hundred and forty-seven years building a life of precise, unassailable competence. A...