Alterlude #5Ashley McArthur looked out her office window onto K Street Mall in Washington DC, glum at the snow-covered buildings, disliking all the Christmas lights, wondering if the sun would come out before noon, or whether it would stay gray all day.
Assistant inspector general at Housing and Urban Development, Ashley brought her gaze back to the materials strewn across her desk. Three tactiface screens cluttered with information added their chaos to her desktop. Balance sheets, requisitions, invoices, correspondence, all added up to the massive fraud investigation into Colorado State Department of Housing and Community Development. She had personally spearheaded an audit into what was proving to be the biggest case of fraud at HUD in a hundred years, all because Colorado had contracte
