She expected some dodgery, but he nodded immediately and said, “Yep.”

“Exclusively for Art?”

“Lately, yeah. Used to be an on-and-off thing, but now he’s got a bug up his butt about this Sedam brokerage and the Septimus Foundation and what they know and what they’re up to.”

“In a nutshell,” Hari said, “what do we know about what they know—so far?”

“Well, for one thing—”

“Let’s take this downstairs so I can see if your man cave is going to work for me.”

She wanted to get him out of earshot of Art.

He opened a door that led off the kitchen and motioned her to follow.

As they descended the steps he picked up where he’d left off. “We know they’re spending their cash and not keeping good financial records.”

“Even a charitable foundation’s got to keep records—to show where the money’s coming from and where it’s going. Else the IRS’ll getcha.”

“They used to keep great records. I mean, their past records are as scrupulous as all hell, as if they were terrified of an audit. But now it’s like they don’t give a shit. Almost as if they’re not worried about an audit. Like it’s never gonna happen. And that’s got Art worried. To be perfectly honest, I’m a little worried myself.”

Hari wasn’t crazy about it either. The Septimus order had won its bets on the Internet meltdown. Were they expecting a civilization meltdown next?

“But that’s not the strangest thing I found,” he said as they reached bottom. “Come over here and I’ll show you.”

Hari followed him across the basement to where two rolling desk chairs sat before a counter supporting three monitors. Donny held a seat for Hari.

“Appreciated,” she said as she sat, “but that’s the last time you do that, okay?”

“Gotcha.”

He dropped into the other chair and moused a monitor to life.

“I did some editing in advance to bring you up to speed. Since I can’t make sense of their financials—that’s why you’re here—I’ve been delving into—”

“Let’s hold it right there on why I’m here. I want to hear something a little more truthful than that ‘Tate is great’ bullshit and how you didn’t know I was female.”

He reddened again. “How did you know?”

“I’d love to play poker with you sometime.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, I really suck at poker. Okay, I’ll give you the skinny, but you might not want to hear it.”

“I’m wearing my big-girl panties. I can handle it.”

He took a breath. “I hang out on the dark web. That’s like my employment agency.”

“There really is such a thing?”

“For sure. I can’t exactly advertise my hacking services on Craigslist, so…anyway, last fall your name came up in a chatroom about getting too close to piercing a legend some powerful folks would have preferred you leave alone. They were talking about making a move against you if you kept poking, but apparently you stopped. They were pretty impressed with how far you’d penetrated, but they weren’t going to let you get any deeper.”