Page 57 of Dichotomy

I covered his hand with one of my own and squeezed softly.

“Okay.” I straightened. “Have you found any connection to the director yet outside of their being brothers-in-law?”

“Not that I can find yet. There are a lot of files to go through.”

“Send some of them over to me, and I can start going through them.”

“Wecan start going through them,” Sebastian corrected.

“Don’t you have product testing today?” I frowned. I distinctly remember blocking that out on his calendar last week.

“I moved it,” Sebastian said. “This takes priority.”

His blue eyes were intense, and my heart warmed. His blue eyes were intense and steady, and something in my chest loosened as I understood what he was really saying.

“I can do that,” Liam said, interrupting the moment. “How do you want to break them up?”

“Send me anything regarding his financial transactions,” I said. “You keep digging into any mention of the director, and Sebastian can look for anything related to the Kingfisher or Luke Jones.”

“You think the judge has dealings with the Kingfisher, right?” Sebastian asked.

I had told them all about the conversation I had with Dominic and our suspicions that both the director and the judge were involved somehow.

“At this point, I would be shocked if he didn’t,” I said. “Both are powerful, corrupt men. That feels like it’s right up the Kingfisher’s alley.”

“Got it,” Liam said. “Sending now.”

Sebastian pulled a laptop from the center of the table to him while I scooted my chair in. Our secure messaging platform dinged, and I navigated to the shared file link. Liam wasn’t wrong. There were hundreds of documents in the folder. This was going to take time. Time we may not have.

I chewed on my bottom lip as I thought through a way to narrow the search. My eyebrows shot up. I had just done this with Citadel’s documents. We knew Citadel worked for the Kingfisher. Maybe there was some kind of crossover. I navigated through my laptop to my notes on the Citadel case. I didn’t remember exactly where I’d placed them, as it was kind of achaotic time and the concussion had scrambled my brain a bit, but it would be faster than going through all the judge’s financial documents one at a time. Maybe I could run a hybrid search for keywords and semantic words that had the same meaning but may be worded differently.

“I’ve got a lot of emails from the director to Jefferson on his work email.” Liam interrupted my searching.

“Anything interesting?” Sebastian asked.

“Not yet. Mainly arranging dinners or golf outings as well as evenings at a gentlemen’s club.”

“Which club?” I frowned.

“It’s one in Washington, where the director lives,” Liam said. “Maya is reaching out to some people they know out there to see if they can find anything.”

“I may have something,” Sebastian said. “I was combing through his email account for any email addresses that aren’t in his contacts, and I found one from a few years ago. It’s just a file about a case. It was forwarded to the judge’s official work email, but it seems like the judge forwarded it to himself? I don’t recognize the email address, so maybe it’s a burner email?”

“What’s the address?” Liam asked. “I can see if I can get into it.”

Sebastian rattled off the address, and Liam typed for a few minutes. I located the list of shell corporations Citadel dealt with and ran a simple script to search the files for the names of any of those companies. There were over fifty companies on the list, so it would take some time.

“Gold mine!” Liam crowed. “I got into the email inbox. It’s definitely the judge’s burner account.”

Sebastian’s eyes lit up, and he started typing furiously. I glanced at him curiously. What would take his attention away from the emails Liam was starting to flash on the screen?

“I have an idea,” he murmured. I waited for him to elaborate, but he was focused on his screen.

I shrugged and turned back to Liam’s screen. “What have you found?”

“He primarily communicates with a few other burner addresses. Give me a few minutes to go through them and create some data sorting structure,” Liam said.

Turning back to my own project, I started looking through the shell companies that pinged in my cross-reference search. Of the fifty-plus companies Citadel dealt with, six companies appeared in the judge’s files as well. My hacking skills were nowhere near as good as Liam’s, but I picked up enough from him over the years that I could start digging into each of them. I studied the list of companies.