The Intelligence Unit Series

Delia Sutton saw numbers in color. An unusual phenomenon, she knew, but at least it matched the rest of her. For as long as she could remember, numbers appeared in her mind's eye in a vast assortment of pigments and hues. Five was bright, bold red. Two, turquoise. Prime numbers glowed gold on the page, different patterns and sequences emerging in all manner of the rainbow as numbers lined up and followed familiar, predictable rules of order. Except the rainbow in front of her right now wasn't adding up, and, to use the vernacular, it was driving her bat-shit crazy.

"Okay, Delia. Think logically," she whispered, although she probably could've yodeled it without being noticed. Talking to herself as she worked was one of those peculiar habits everyone at Cromwell A&M had long since accepted as "Delia being Delia", and judging by their glazed-over stares as she murmured statistics and mathematical theory in every place from the break room to the bathroom, she'd become little more than white noise to them. Quirky Delia, with her Dr. Who T-shirts and her affinity to mentally catalogue everything from pop culture tidbits to facts about seventeenth-century composers. Oddball Delia, whose native language was numbers and who had been born footloose and filter free.

Weird Delia, who no one understood, therefore everyone brushed off. Oh, that's just Delia. Don't worry about it.

The thought slid into her chest with a pang, there and then gone. She was an anomaly, she knew. Becoming Vice President of Finance of a successful acquisition and mergers company at the age of twenty-seven was practically unheard of unless you were that good with mathematical data. But Delia had earned her undergraduate degree with a dual major in applied mathematics and statistics (a year early, which had thrown the symmetry of the numbers off a bit, but she'd learned to live with it), then graduated first in her class when she'd earned her Master's in Finance with a specialty in data statistics. As far as numbers went, she wasn't just good. She specialized in the ridiculous.

And as far as the rest of the world went, she specialized in the awkward, the peculiar, and the painfully forthright. Oddly enough, she was mostly fine with being unusual, even when it earned her too-long stares and two-ton pauses in conversations that met quick endings shortly thereafter. The facts were concrete and immutable-she couldn't be something she wasn't. Plus, she had a dad who loved her, and her best friend, Camila, who'd stuck by her since they'd been freshman-year roommates at Remington University nine years ago. Quality versus quantity, and all that.

Although, quantity could be small, too. In fact, one was a quantity, as were all fractional numbers larger than zero, and-

"Hope I'm not interrupting," came a voice from the door, at the same time the person owning it sailed right through without so much as a knock. Peyton Willoughby wasn't the sort of woman to knock, though. With her glossy, chestnut-colored hair, her runway-ready sheath dress, and confidence so big it resided in its own ZIP code, she simply expected that everyone and anyone would want to be in her presence.

And she was very rarely wrong. Peyton had everyone from the building security guards to CEO Kent Cromwell, himself, wrapped around her elegantly manicured pinkie finger. Men wanted her, and women wanted to be her. When Peyton was in a room, everyone noticed. She was smart. Smooth. Self-assured.

She wasn't the Chief Financial Officer-a.k.a. Delia's boss-for nothing.

Delia's smile arrived in a delayed reaction after she balanced out the surprise of the woman's unexpected presence. "Oh! Hi, Peyton. Come on in."

Of course, the words were mere formality. Already front and center in Delia's office, Peyton's gaze traveled over Delia's 1950's-style swing dress, taking in the cheery red bodice and the little strawberries embroidered on the full white skirt with an arched brow. "Oh, look at you. That dress is so...interesting."

"Do you like it?" Delia brightened. She'd known this dress was perfect for a late-summer Friday. "It even has pockets! I got it at my favorite vintage place on Birch Street. You know, the one..."

She trailed off, catching the lofty edge in Peyton's not-quite-a-smile. Oh. "Well, I guess you probably don't shop there."

"I'm more of a Prada girl, really," Peyton said, saccharine-sweet. "Although, I occasionally treat myself to a Chanel or two. Too hard to resist, you know. Anyway"-she waved, the gesture as graceful as it was effortless-"you said you needed to see me?" Saved by the email. Whew. "Yes." Delia straightened against her desk chair, turning her laptop far enough so both she and Peyton could see the screen. "I was going through the account spreadsheets for this month, and they didn't quite add up. So, I pulled the last three months' worth of data for a trend analysis and full comparison."

Peyton's mouth formed as much of an O as her lip filler would allow. "You did a trend analysis on the last three months' worth of our financials? For the entire company?"

Only in that moment did Delia realize how odd it probably seemed to anyone other than her. "Well, in order to uncover any patterns that would lead to the root cause of the inaccuracies, I needed a comprehensive look at all the data in chronological order, so yes. I analyzed everything. But as you can see here, the numbers still aren't adding up."

"On the contrary, it looks as if these numbers add up perfectly fine," Peyton said after a minute-long perusal of Delia's laptop screen. She gestured to the balance column as if the numbers were something Delia could miss.

They weren't. "I understand that they add up here, on the final page," Delia started, but Peyton sighed before she could continue.

"Is there anywhere else that matters?"

"Of course. Everywhere matters," Delia pointed out. "These numbers aren't open to interpretation. They're absolute. They represent money, and the way that money moves through the system-"

Peyton smiled. "Really, Delia, I know how much you love numbers, but we can skip the accounting lesson, can't we? I am the CFO of this company, after all. I'm quite well-versed in how all of this works."

Rather than holding any heat, Peyton's tone translated to a silly Delia head-pat that reminded Delia she was talking to her boss, who was-in addition to someone who wholly outranked her-no dummy.

"I'm sorry. Of course you're familiar with our reporting methods." Ducking her head to mask the flush creeping across her cheeks, Delia focused on the pattern of her mouse clicks as she moved through the screens, the predictable rhythm of the tap-tap, tap-tap soothing her. "To address your question, yes, the final numbers do add up, but the process itself doesn't. Look."

She scrolled through the financial records for one of their recent accounts, the acquisition of a construction supply company by a commercial builder. "On the surface, everything looks as it should. But if you dig in deeper, you can see that the flow of funds is off. They're either not where they're supposed to be"-Delia positioned the arrow icon over a column of numbers, highlighting several figures as she went from top to bottom-"or the money temporarily disappears, only to pop back up again a day or two later. Some transactions even seem to be routed to a bank that isn't designated to the account, or to the same bank twice. But then, without warning, everything switches back to normal and the numbers all add up again, like some sort of mathematical hiccup. And there's no username attached to the transactions, like usual. See? It just says 'unknown user' instead. I've never seen anything like that before."

"How on earth..." A look Delia had never seen before flickered over Peyton's features, gone before she could be sure she'd seen it, let alone process what it might have been. "You must be seeing things. That can't be accurate."

Delia blinked. "You're seeing what I'm seeing," she said past her confusion. "It's right here on the screen."

"Oh, Delia." Peyton smiled at her as if they were sharing an inside joke, but Delia had missed the punch line. "You're so literal. What I mean is, you must be mistaken. A mathematical hiccup that can't even be traced that magically moves money around all on its own? Unknown users making transactions? Don't you think that's just a little...I don't know, odd?"

The word panged through Delia's chest, followed by a curl of self-doubt. "I know it sounds a little improbable and the discrepancies aren't easily quantified-it took me a full three days to see all of them, and there don't seem to be any specific patterns to predict where they'll appear. It's as if the occurrences are truly random. But if you look really closely, these numbers don't add up." Reaching out to guide the mouse from Delia's grasp, Peyton clicked to the first screen. "Yes, they do. It says so right here."

Frustration built in Delia's belly. "Okay, but the process to get to the end point isn't as it should be. Yes, the inconsistencies are really subtle-"

"One might even say questionable," Peyton said gently. "I mean, I appreciate that you clearly have a far deeper understanding of this system than anyone else. I really do. But isn't it just the tiniest bit possible that you're overthinking this? I mean, there isn't even a username attached. It must all be some silly error."

Delia opened her mouth. Closed it. Swallowed the argument on her tongue in one gulp. Yes, she'd been crunching numbers like carrot sticks for the past three days, and yes squared, that amounted to enough mental bandwidth to border on overthought. "I still think something's not right here," Delia said as her last ditch, and Peyton held up both hands as if to surrender.

"I understand that you think this is serious, and if there is a problem, I want to get to the bottom of it, just like you. But just to be clear, no money is actually missing. Is that correct?"

Well, when she put it like that... "No. Technically, no money is missing. In the end, the sheets all balance."

"Okay, good," Peyton said, her smile bright with confidence. "Nothing serious, then."

A thought occurred to Delia, instantly bypassing her brain-to-mouth filter as most of her thoughts did. "Do you think we should let Kent know?"

He was, after all, the CEO. A little soft-spoken and awkward, like Delia, as if he was perpetually shocked at how quickly and how high his star had risen in the world of acquisitions and mergers. But, like both Peyton and Delia, he was no slouch when it came to the numbers, and he had some pretty vast technical knowledge, to boot. Maybe he could shed some light on this weirdness.

Peyton's smile grew solemn. "Delia. You know Kent is terribly busy with the McElroy Technologies merger right now. He doesn't have time for anything that isn't an emergency, and we're perfectly equipped to deal with this on our own without bothering him. Look"- she leaned in as if she wanted to share a secret, friend to friend-"Why don't you go on to lunch, and I'll take care of this?"

Surprise formed a starburst behind the bodice of Delia's dress. "You don't want me to stay and help figure out where the problem is?"

Peyton gave up a little wave, the slender silver bangle on her wrist sliding up her forearm. "You've already put so much time in-three full days of analysis is no small feat! You really deserve the break. Plus, I'm sure you didn't get all dressed up just for work today. You must have a lunch plans."

"Oh." Crap, how was it already a quarter to noon? "Well, I'm meeting my friend, Camila, but I don't have to-"

"Nonsense." Peyton smiled. "Go on and have fun. It's probably just a glitch."

Peyton was perfectly capable of giving the data an expert read, Delia knew. For pity's sake, it was why she'd emailed her for help in the first place.

But still, she hesitated. "It's not the same problem repeating itself, though. Each of these anomalies is different, and I tried all morning to find the source with no luck." The chances that there were several glitches all simultaneously at work were statistically zero. Peyton, however, was entirely unfazed. "Glitches happen, Delia. As good as it is, the system's not perfect."

"Technically speaking, it actually is," Delia replied, the response tumbling past her lips unchecked. "I designed it so there would be no room for error." Well, unless it was human error, anyway. But Delia never made mistakes with the numbers. Ever. Oh, God, had she made a mistake?

Reaching out to pat her hand, Peyton said, "Of course you did. But don't you worry about a thing. If it'll make you feel better, I'll take a closer look right now. If I can't figure it out, I'll bring in IT so they can get to the bottom of it. By the time you get back from lunch, I'm sure this will be all figured out."

Peyton's expression was so reassuring, so smart and take-charge, that Delia exhaled in relief. Of course, she was right. There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for the discrepancies, just as there was a logical explanation for everything. They'd find them and fix them. No problem.

"Are you sure you don't want me to stick around and help?" Delia asked, but Peyton wasn't having it.

"One hundred percent. Now, go. Have a nice, long lunch with your friend and don't give any of this a second thought."

"Okay. Thanks."

Delia grabbed her purse and headed for the elevator, ready to put all of this weirdness behind her. By the time she got back, the whole thing would be past tense.

Just as long as the numbers added up the way they were supposed to, everything would be fine.