"What are you doing?" Abby asked, staring intently over Nate's shoulder as he poured through client files.

"I am researching a client. Getting background information, them, the guy we're taking down," he replied, not looking up from the paper.

"So the usual?"

"Pretty much."

"Can I help?" she enquired and Nate hesitated.

"I don't know if Eliot would.."

"Eliot said nothing illegal," she interrupted. "This isn't technically illegal."

"Well, the information in here was acquired by questionable means but I suppose the act isn't technically illegal," he concluded.

"Is that a yes?"

"I suppose," he said and she eagerly sat down next to him. He handed her a file. "Read through that and tell me what you think."

"What I think about what?"

"Just read it. You'll see what I mean," he reiterated and Abby opened up the file and began intently reading through the document.

"Done," she said around ten minutes later.

"Uh uh," Nate muttered. "I said read, not skim."

"I did read it. Go on, ask me something. Anything."

"Tell me about the company," the mastermind asked.

"That's broad but okay," she replied and then took a deep breath. "Hanlon Enterprises. Founded in eighty-six by Martin and Braiden Hanlon. It didn't say in there, but I'm gonna assume brothers. It's an acquisitions company; so they buy companies, pretty them up and then sell them to other, larger companies for a profit. Their largest sale was in oh-six when they sold a family owned business to the computer company Hardwire Industries for 20 million dollars."

"That's pretty good," Nate said, genuinely impressed by the amount of information she had retained. "But.."

"I'm not finished," she said proudly. "They're not real."

"How do you figure that?" Nate asked, knowing full well however that she was right.

"Their finances; too clean, too exact. They haven't changed business addresses since the eighties despite the fact that their finances say their business has expanded ten-fold. Now that's fishy."

"So if they're not a real company then what are they?" Nate tested.

"Money laundering?" she guessed.

"Ten points for Abigail!" he praised, still impressed. "How did you..."

"I have really, really good memory but I don't like to show it off too much," she stated. Abby had what was bordering on an eidetic memory and was smarter than most kids her age; something which she didn't like to display except, of course, in front of her 'family' who all had skills so bizarre that she almost felt as though she needed a special skill to fit in.

"And I get bored at school during class," she continued. "So I read the New York Times and economic stuff on my phone while the teacher's talking."

"You're smart kid but don't go flaking out on school," he said as Eliot walked through the door.

"Yes Uncle Nate," she said sarcastically then stood still for a moment, fiddling with her fingers.

"What's up?" the mastermind asked.

"Do you miss your son?" she enquired timidly.

"Every day," he replied, staring down at the paper in front of him.

"What was he like?"

"He was wonderful," Nate began as he smiled a bitter-sweet smile. "He loved baseball, he hated apples and had a crush on a girl called Lucy. What was your mother like?" he asked, tactfully changing the subject.

"She was the best mother any one could have asked for," she replied as they both turned their heads back to their work, a silent decision having been made that enough had been said.

So your requests have been noted and are being written; thank you for those.

Would anyone be keen on collaborating with me; mostly for one of the cons I have planned but have hit an impenetrable writers' block?

Thanks again

A Lyrical Dreamer