Page 141 of Sugar & Shadows

It was all hands on deck for the Maplewood Games. We had three days to put together a proposal and strong-arm Brooks Bramble-Rutledge into approving it.

Meg had already begun a search for weaknesses we could exploit. “He owns the general store; he would benefit from more tourism. This seems like a no-brainer,” she said.

“Then you don’t understand small towns,” I told her. “His wife is a dictator wannabe with an undiagnosed personality disorder.”

She sighed, making the line between us crackle. “I’ll do what I can. But do you want my other intel now?”

“Hit me.” I uncapped a dry erase marker with my teeth. I was alone in the war room for the time being. Harper was in French class and Nina had nail clients. Mom was working, and I’d sent Marigold to attend chair yoga at the senior center to work on galvanizing the support from her peers.

“Canada,” Meg said. “Arcadian lawsuits.”

“Yes. I got the emails. I think Will knew.”

“He might have,” she said. “But you need to hear the next part.”

I braced myself, marker held aloft.

“I did some digging in a local network, some files from a processing plant. Most of it’s been professionally scrubbed.”

“Of course it has.”

“But you know me. I can find things stuck in cracks.”

My pulse quickened. “Yes. What did you find? A file?”

“Not much, but I got a name. BGX9.field.data.final.”

I gasped and a jolt of excitement hit me. “Field data? As in actual results? Not marketing bullshit?”

“Actual science,” she confirmed. “But it’s gone. Someone made sure that the data no longer exists. I ran other searches, poked around Sugar Moon, but nothing.”

My shoulders sank. “Fuck.”

“But…”

I held my breath, waiting.

“Will was a subcontractor for Sugar Moon, but he did have a company email address. The metadata indicates that he sent this file.”

“Where?”

“No clue. Scrubbed, remember? But we can at least confirm he saw this data. And that supports the whistleblower theory. He was poking around.”

I exhaled loudly. “Poor kid.”

“This is not confirmation, and you know my, um, methods won’t hold up in court. But at least the theory holds.”

I closed my eyes. I wanted to help Nina so badly. To give her hope. And free Caleb Dunne in the process. But these fuckers were really good at covering their tracks.

A crashing noise echoed behind her. “I gotta go. But remember one thing.”

“What?”

“This was done by professionals. Arcadian spent a lot of money making all of this disappear. And you and I both know that snakes like this don’t appreciate it when problems resurface.”

I closed my eyes. She was right. Problems like this had to disappear permanently. “Caleb didn’t do this,” I said.

She hummed. “Probably not.”