He’s right; I’ve never had a problem sharing strategy with Joe before. But weirdly, I just feel resentful of him for asking. Optimal is mine—my mess, my mystery, my case.

It has to be. Otherwise, the magic won’t work, and finding the truth won’t help me forget what happened.

But Joe is watching me, and there’s no reason to lie. “I took a tour of the community center,” I say. “It seems more and more like Optimal’s determined to buy their way into the town’s good graces.”

“And ours,” Joe says. He pivots and goes to his desk, returning with several binders so stuffed with paper they could double as bludgeons. When he dumps them on my desk, I have to reach for my bag to keep it from skipping straight off the table.

“What is this stuff?” I ask. But as soon as I fan open one of the binders, even before I make sense of the 1099s, I know. “Optimal delivered.”

“They didn’t deliver,” Joe says. “They dumped. Most of it is still boxed up in the basement of the courthouse.”

I stare at him. “There’s more?” Each binder is five inches thick, and packed with data. It will take weeks for us to make a picture of expenditures, even if the whole team did nothing else.

All the humor has vanished from his face. Joe hates mistakes—especially his own. “One hundred and seventeen binders in all. And in no order, from what we can tell.”

“They buried us.”

“They did what we asked them to do,” Joe says, through gritted teeth. He just manages a smile. “But yes, they buried us.”

“And we have no idea where to start,” Flora adds.

Thanks, Flora.

Flipping through pages and pages of expenditure reports and 1099s, I feel increasingly hopeless. Of course it’s our fault. I don’t know what I was expecting. Big red arrows, some helpful Post-its flagging payments to the EPA, maybe a few expenses politely filed under “Bribes.”

—

We spend the day trying to piece a thousand pages of data into some kind of story—or the beginning of one, at least. It’s too hot to think—by noon, it reaches ninety-eight degrees outside—and more and more I get the feeling that the answer I want can’t be found in any numbers.

At six I give up and pack the boxes of documents into the trunk of my car, swearing to myself I’ll look at them later. I’ve promised to see my father for dinner, and although I can’t think of anything I want to do less, I’ve run out of ways to put him off. I swing home to take a shower as cold as I can stand it, soaping hard, as if I can wash away some of the day’s frustration.

I’m surprised to find the garage door open when I arrive, and my dad’s car is running, although the driver’s-side door is open. I can almost hear my heart slamming against my chest.

“Dad?” As I step into the shadow of the garage, fear falls on me like the pressure of a hand. I reach into the car to shut off the engine. “Dad?” I keep calling for him, even though he’s clearly not here.