LITTLE DOE EYES

JEFF

It was Matt who knocked on the door of my office just after one a.m. I barely heard the rap on the thick wood, my eyeballs burning as I studied the ledgers in front of me. Most of my counterparts had long since learned to rely on machines for their bookkeeping, but I still preferred the old-fashioned way of doing things, my own hand dictating the numbers stored deeply in my memory once I’d written them.

“Jeff?”

“Hm?” I vaguely nodded for her to enter, still fixated on the pages in front of me.

“We’ve had an attempted robbery.”

Well, that was enough to get my attention. In the centuries of running my empire, I could count on one hand how many times someone had attempted to steal from me. My gaze flittered upward, eyes narrowing in disbelief.

“Come again?”

The man nodded, pursing her thin lips together.

“The girl didn’t take much, from what I can see, and she appears to be working alone.”

I pondered the scenario for a moment and drew an absolute blank. Short of full-on psyc