Bri sighed. “Yeah, you can say that again. My mom, the toughest person I’ve ever met, won’t even attempt to fight this stupid disease. It pisses me off. And it pissed off my brother too. She should have told us sooner. But that has nothing to do with what happened tonight.”

“I looked into your company. It’s a start-up, right?” the detective said, looking at her blank papers again.

“Yeah. We build computers and help businesses launch websites…”

It hasn’t been as profitable as you probably would have hoped for so far,” the detective said.

“Again, what does that have to do with anything?” Bri said, exasperated.

“Did you ask your mother for money? For help?”

Bri shook her head. “Of course not. My mom has enough to worry about.”

“What about your brother or his fiancé?”

“Nope. Not them either. I was figuring it out on my own,” Bri said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You know, they say that more money gets stolen with a pen than a sword,” Detective Smalls said, lifting her own ink pen in the air.

“Okay…”

“I know about the investor who screwed you out of tens of thousands of dollars. Not a lot in your mother’s eyes, but for you… that was probably devastating,” the detective said, solemnly.

“Yeah, well… shit happens.”

“Does it?” the detective asked. “Because that seems pretty unusual.”

Bri wrung her hands together, throat dry and scratchy. “Who told you about that?”

“Your employees. When I talked to them on the phone, they were more than willing to share this information. I think they thought I was calling to help. But you never reported the incident to the police. Why not?”

Bri shrugged. “It’s embarrassing, okay? I was so excited to get an investor and they seemed legit. I didn’t realize that I was transferring money to a god damn hacker.”

“You must have been angry. Did you ever find out who was behind it? You’re pretty savvy with computers, you graduated from the best computer college on the planet. Surely, you tried to figure out this hacker situation on your own,” the detective said.

Bri frowned. “I wish it were that easy, detective, but it’s not. The email and IP address were untraceable. If I can’t track them down, then the cops can’t either. It was a huge loss. But I tightened up my ship and let it go.”

“But filing a police report on the incident wouldn’t have hurt,” the detective said.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Try selling yourself as a computer guru to software companies when you can’t even prevent your own self from being hacked. That would be stupid to share publicly, catch my drift?” Bri said.