Chapter 153

“Sarah. Sarah!”

I blinked rapidly and dragged myself out of my head, back into the moment. Mila was squeezing my shoulder hard enough that it hurt. She must have been squeezing for a while because the muscles and bones were already sore. How had I spaced out on that?

“I’m fine,” I said dumbly. “I’m just…thinking.”

“You can think about this later,” Mila said. I looked away from the computer screen and watched her examine our surroundings. “Do you need to be here to figure out what’s going on with that?”

She indicated the laptop. My eyes almost went back to the employee ID displayed there, but the larger part of my mind decided that I’d probably lose even more time if I saw what was written there again.

“I don’t need to be anywhere.” I shook my head from side to side, trying and failing to clear it. “The gala doesn’t provide any special benefit, no.”

“Then maybe we should consider getting out of here?” Mila suggested.

“Why?”

“Why? If what you showed me is right, then you’re only exposing yourself to unnecessary risk by staying near your sister, Sarah. The smartest thing to do is to retreat, so that we can all meet up and figure out what our next move should be.”

That made sense. I understood her words, academically, but I couldn’t seem to put them into the proper context. According to the information Devlin and his team had recovered, the person who’d limited Minerva’s reach was my own sister. The code used to modify Minerva’s functionality had been a cooperative work, between the Mouse and me, before he’d revealed his true colors. Therefore, it stood to reason that Ayana was either affiliated with the Mouse or that she was the Mouse. With the information available, both options were equally possible.

Except the information had to be wrong. Ayana wasn’t as bad with computers as most people, but she also wasn’t a savant. Besides, the odds of two sisters ending on opposite sides of the shadowy war between the Lady and the Magi were impossibly small. It made for a good story, but it just didn’t make sense. I refused to accept the possibility that I’d so badly misjudged my own sister.

“What if it’s not her?” I asked Mila. “What if this is a setup, and she actually doesn’t have anything to do with this?”

“You just said that you can figure that kind of thing out later,” Mila said. “Preferably in one of Max’ signal-proof rooms. There isn’t a rush, is there?”

There was a rush. I couldn’t get into a car and leave the gala, thinking that Ayana Ford might be moonlighting as the most dangerous hacker I’d ever heard about. That thought would eat at the insides of my head the entire way home. By the time I got myself in front of a computer, the possibility would have already taken root. My opinions on the matter would color any information I managed to uncover. If that happened, I’d never be able to know for sure – at least, not until the timer ran out and the Mouse started gunning for my civilian identity – and that just wasn’t acceptable to me.

“Barrett.” I spoke his name out loud with consciously intending to do so. “Find Ayana. Get her over here; I don’t care what you have to say to make it happen.”

To his credit, Barrett didn’t flirt or banter. Maybe seeing my sister’s name on the screen had finally forced him to realize how close we were all playing this one out. He nodded once, exchanged a look with Mila, and then slipped back off into the crowd.

“Sarah,” Mila said slowly. “What are you doing?”

“Ayana’s here, now,” I replied. “And, even if I assume that she actually does have something to do with the modifications to Minerva, she has absolutely no reason to think that I know anything. I might be able to get more information out of her before we make an exit.”

The fact that I could read the doubt and uncertainty in Mila’s expression spoke more about her head space than the doubt and uncertainty itself. “That sounds a lot like a really stupid idea,” she said. “Especially when it’d be easier to have that kind of conversation when you’re more prepared and less stunned.”

I tried to clear some of the fog from my thoughts again with a particularly violent shake of my head. It was only moderately successful and, even then, it only took a moment before the tendrils crept back over my thoughts. “We’re on a timer, Mila. If she knows something, anything, then we need to know it as soon as possible. Even a day or two could be the difference between cracking this whole thing before my timer runs out.”

She didn’t have a response to that, which didn’t stop her from severely pursing her lips in frustration. “What do you want me to tell Devlin?”

A ray of clear, intelligent thinking burst through my mental fog. “Tell him to get his formal wear,” I said. “Wear the vest. I’m going to want him nearby to run interference, if necessary, and to be available in case things go sideways.”

Mila relayed my message to Devlin, listened to his response, and frowned slightly. “He agrees with me. This is not a smart plan. Things are bad now, but they can always get a lot worse, and this isn’t the place for a confrontation.”

“One: who said I have a plan? Two: since when have been in a position to do the smart thing?” I carefully avoided commenting on her third point. It went without saying that things could always, always get worse.

Her frown deepened. “Because that isn’t discouraging at all.”

I rolled my eyes at her. I started to form a response in my head, but abandoned the retort when I saw my father intercept Barrett several tables away from where I sat. There hadn’t been enough time to plant listening devices at every table and it hadn’t occurred to me to give Barrett one of Max’ new earbuds, so all I could do was watch the two men speak to each other and try to interpret their body language. Privately, I thought back to every time Devlin had tried to teach me lip-reading and swore at my past self for not taking the lessons seriously.

Raymond was, and had always been, a calming presence in my life. He picked his words carefully, spoke in a measured cadence, and generally went out of his way to soothe people who were around him. Even I could tell that his equilibrium had been badly unbalanced. I wondered if anyone else at the gala would be able to spot the subtle tells – a slight tremor in his fingertips, the infinitesimal hesitation in each action – and couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer. Elizabeth would be able to tell, certainly. Presumably, Ayana could do it, too.

“He knows something’s wrong,” Mila said. She slipped the phone back into her jacket as she stepped forward, subtly positioning herself as a shield in front of me. Or, I mused, as a kind of barrier to stop me from doing anything stupid.

“Devlin?”

She shook her head. “Your father. Did that contact say anything that might have unnerved him?”

“I’ll have to listen to the recording later to make sure,” I said, “but I don’t think so, no. He was expecting this, after all. If anything, the fact that they want him to look into something overseas should be a relief.”

Mila raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I don’t think he’d be as comfortable using Minerva to investigate anything domestic. But that’s just a guess. I could be wrong about that.”

She made a noise in her throat and nodded her head, so that I looked back at the conversation between Barrett and Raymond. My father had a tight grip on Barrett’s upper arm and their heads were close enough now that no one else could possibly overhear their conversation. Even if I knew how to read lips, I wouldn’t have been able to see enough to piece together what they were saying.

“What are you two doing?”

I jerked in surprise, smashing my legs into the underside of the table. I barely managed to stop myself from cursing out loud. Mila’s reaction was more controlled, of course, but I knew her well enough to tell that even she was jumpier than normal. Ayana had, somehow, approached us from behind. I’d been so focused on Barrett, on my own thoughts, that I hadn’t been paying attention to my surrounding, which wasn’t particularly surprising. That Mila had been caught off guard was yet another sign of her distress and preoccupation.

“We were just wondering where you’d gotten to,” I said, as calmly as possible. I angled my body in a way that blocked the computer screen from Ayana and, behind me, Mila surreptiously closed the laptop and slid it off of the table. “You have a speech coming up, don’t you?”

Ayana took the seat next to me and sighed in uncharacteristic frustration. “I’d been hoping to delay it until Marie got here, but it seems that won’t be possible.”

A surge of sisterly concern rose up from within me and, for the moment, it was almost too easy to put aside any questions of criminality in favor of simple empathy. “She isn’t going to make it?”

“I suppose we’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Ayana heaved another sigh. She gestured at a half-finished glass of wine in front of me and, after I nodded, she drained the remaining wine in a single pull. “It’s hardly surprising, I suppose.”

“Why is that?”

“Work,” Ayana said. “Marie has always been a diligent, almost obsessive worker, but that’s only become worse in the last few months. You don’t understand how lucky you are to have someone who shares a field of interest with you.”

I thought of Devlin before, belatedly, realizing that she was talking about Barrett.

“I don’t mean to burden you with all of this,” Ayana said. She looked longingly at the drained glass before visibly steeling herself.

“We’re sisters,” I said. Surprisingly, I actually meant the sentiment that came with the words. “If there’s anyone you can talk to, it’s me.”

Ayana gave me a small, sad smile. “That’s nice to hear, Sarah.”

The information I’d seen on the computer screen – her name, her employee ID, tied to an intrusion that had the Mouse’s fingerprints all over it – drifted back into clarity. I reached out for Ayana’s hand with both of mine. “I’m serious. I know I’ve been…distant…these last few years, but you can always talk to me. About anything, okay?”

Mila growled softly. I ignored her, in favor of focusing entirely on my sister. Ayana’s smile seemed to freeze on her face and her eyes flickered away from mine for an instant, then back. Then, once more, she looked away from me in…was it nervousness? Fear?

I sensed an opening and acted on pure instinct. “Is there something else going on, Ayana? Something you aren’t sharing with anyone else?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again without saying a word. A moment later, she repeated the process, and glanced away again. Everything in her body language screamed that she was keeping a secret. I wasn’t good enough to tease that information out of her, but I did remember Devlin clearly saying that most people, most of the time, desperately want to unburden themselves. Given even the semblance of an opportunity, people tended to talk.

Unless they were talented liars, who’d spent years crafting a double identity. Those people would probably be better equipped to keep secrets than most.

Mila growled again, more insistent. I turned to shoot her a look and, in the middle of my rotation, spotted what – or rather, who – had caused Mila’s nonverbal warnings. I blinked, rubbed at my eyes, and stared hard to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating.

The man who’d called himself Hunter wore a nice, but unremarkable, gray suit. His outfit seemed like the kind of thing someone would pick if they were going out of their way to blend in. Neutral colors, conservative lines. If Mila hadn’t alerted me to the presence of something amiss, I might have looked directly at him without noticing. In fact, had I looked directly at him before? Or had he just entered the gala in the last few minutes, while I’d been distracted and unfocused?

“Sarah,” Mila said. She didn’t invest the word with any particular emotion or intensity, but I could feel the tension radiating off of her like heat waves from asphalt.

She didn’t need to say anything else. “Ayana,” I said, “we have to go.”

Ayana blinked several times in rapid succession. “What? But you and Barrett only just got here. We still have -”

“No,” I said, cutting her off. “We have to go. The two of us. And we have to do it now.”

“I am not going to leave my own gala,” Ayana said. The moment of sisterly connection seemed to be evaporating in real time. “I have a speech to give, thanking everyone for attending this event and donating their time and money to a good cause.”

“And you can give that speech to them later.” I tried to catch Barrett’s attention with my eyes but his conversation with Raymond was too intense. “Or not. Whatever. I’m not really worried about that right now.”

“You’re the one who volunteered to help me organize this, Sarah. Why would you do that, only to try and convince me to leave?”

Any answer I could’ve given withered away as Hunter paused at a spot near the center of the room. Slowly, he pivoted and took in every inch of the space with the air of an appraiser or an architect. When his rotation pointed him in my direction, he paused and looked straight at me. I tried not to catch his eye or to seem too intent, but I was certain that my anxiety was plainly visible to everyone in the world. The weight of his gaze settled on me for a subjective eternity before, mercifully, he turned his head and broke the connection.

I allowed myself a millisecond of relief. But then Hunter’s eyes fell on Ayana and he smiled.

“Mila,” I said. “Can you take him out?”

“What? Who are you talking about? What are you talking about?” Ayana was picking up on the electric tension, without quite realizing why. The sense of unease and uncertainty was threaded through her words.

I ignored her and focused on Mila. “Can you?”

She shook her head. “It’s too late now.”

“Too late?”

She looked very deliberately at a point against the far wall. I followed her gaze and spotted another man, dressed in a similar nondescript suit. This man had his arms crossed in a way that kept his jacket closed. I’d seen Mila take up that position when she was trying to conceal her shoulder holster.

Mila’s eyes skipped across no less than eight other points around the perimeter of the room. People standing in isolation, or huddled with one or two other people, were at each spot. Some were dressed as waiters…except that the dress shirts weren’t quite right and the trays they carried seemed too heavy. Some were approximating the attire of the fabulously rich and powerful who’d cleared their schedule to attend a gala…but their clothes weren’t fancy enough and they lacked the presumption I could recognize from a mile away.

They looked like they belonged, but they didn’t. Only Hunter in his bland suit had dared to stand in the very middle of the room, assuming that no one would look too closely at him to notice the minute ways in which his costume was off.

“Sarah?” Ayana asked. Uncertainty had given way to fear in her voice. Without knowing why, she’d sensed something badly wrong in the air. “What is going on?”

Hunter finished his slow rotation in the center of the room and rolled his shoulders. Then, without the slightest change in his expression, he yanked the tablecloth from the nearest table. Glasses and plates crashed to the floor, shattering the polite murmur of voices like a baseball through a window. Every one in the building turned to face the center of the room.

When he was certain that he had everyone’s attention, Hunter calmly stepped up onto a chair and then on top of the table. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he called out, “I know that you all got dressed up tonight and I am so very sorry to interrupt your fancy gathering. I’d say that we all understand what it’s like to get orders from the boss, but I suspect that most of you have never actually had a boss, so…”

He pointed at the men clustered around the perimeter of the room, one by one. As he did so, they stepped forward and revealed handguns beneath suit jackets, sub-machine guns hidden under tray lids, and at least one assault-style rifle that looked serious. One of the men brought the assault rifle over to the center table and held it out to Hunter. He took the time to put on a pair of black leather driving gloves before accepting the weapon with a gracious nod.

“At any rate,” he continued, “I’ve got orders and you fine people are, more or less, in the way. And while I’d rather limit collateral damage, that’s just a professional consideration, not a personal one.”

“Who are you?” An older Asian woman that I’d read about, but didn’t specifically remember, stepped forward and glared up at Hunter. “What is this?”

Hunter laid a gloved hand over his heart. “I’m so sorry, was I not clear enough?” He raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired several times into the ground at the Asian woman’s feet. She yelped and retreated back to the safety of the crowd. “This isn’t a gala anymore, ma’am. This is a hostage situation now.”

The Most Dangerous Game

As he checked the equipment in the bus for the third time, Hunter mused to himself about the inherent difficulties of his chosen profession. Sure, he’d spent the better part of the last decade slipping from one safe-house to the next, always one step ahead of his enemies. And, sure, he didn’t trust the people he worked with any farther than the effective range of whichever gun was closest. And, technically, he earned a living by chasing otherwise unsuspecting targets on behalf of nameless, faceless bank accounts.

But it wasn’t personal. That’s what they all got wrong. He had a job to do and he performed that job to the best of his abilities. But it wasn’t as if he had anything against his targets. They were just names on a list or, occasionally, photographs in an unmarked envelope. The client told him to find someone, to detain them, and to deliver them to a specific location. That was all. Hunter didn’t participate in any acts of violence beyond what was absolutely necessary. That really should have counted for something.

In his down time, when he allowed himself to be introspective, Hunter didn’t think of himself as a bounty hunter. That title was attached to memories he preferred to leave un-examined. No, Hunter styled himself as a retrieval specialist. Point him in a direction, give him some vague direction, and behold! Whatever was lost or misplaced would soon be found and returned.

Or, as was often the case, captured and bundled off to parts unknown. Same difference, really.

“So you’re not going to tell us what we’re doing here?” The question came from one of the locals that Hunter had been forced to hire. The client had provided a generous expense account for that purpose, after all, and it would’ve been stupid to let that kind of budget go unspent.

“You’re still getting paid,” Hunter said to the local hire. He thought the man’s name started with a vowel. Abe? Anthony? “What’s the problem?”

“Don’t like working in the dark.” Several of the other locals grumbled in agreement at that. “If this is going to get messy, I want to know beforehand.”

“If this gets messy,” Hunter said, “it’s either because of something we couldn’t have known about in advance or because one of you makes a mistake. You’re not going to make a mistake, are you?”

The man scoffed. “Can’t make a mistake if I don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing, can I?”

Hunter shrugged. “Follow orders and you’ll be fine. Decide to go off on your own, and I can’t make any promises.”

“Like we should’ve had it under control at the fair?”

The man did have a point. This assignment was far more nebulous than he was used to. If it hadn’t been for the absurd bump in his usual rate, Hunter probably would’ve turned it downn out of hand. He’d hoped to capitalize on the twin elements of surprise and uncertainty to wrap up this job with a minimum amount of fuss. Normally, that kind of thing worked. But the targets hadn’t actually been in the boathouse and two of the locals had been far too trigger-happy. He couldn’t have anticipated that. After the two locals had begun spraying bullets through the wall, completely disregarding Hunter’s very strict instructions, things had quickly degenerated to the point where an ambush was out of the question. They’d captured the lone survivor instead, hoping to either trade him for the targets or to just lure them out of hiding so that his team could grab them.

He’d done his research, of course. That was the number one mistake other retrieval specialists made: not doing the research. There were rumors about the Sato twins than stars in the sky and Hunter had painstakingly read through every report as soon as someone noted their arrival in Dallas. The reports, as it turned out, had been woefully inadequate. She hadn’t been a vengeful, furious sister when she’d torn into them like wet paper; the woman was a force of a nature, closer to an F5 tornado than a slightly smaller-than-average individual. When she’d arrived on the scene, dropping his new hires with contemptuous ease, Hunter had hastily retreated.

That was mistake number two: not knowing when to fight and when to leave. Hunter knew when to leave, had always known, and he wasn’t shy about running. Failing once or twice wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle to his plans. He just needed to stop, to plan, to try something different next time.

“We’ve got a better idea of what they’re capable of, now. We’ve been assured that they can’t bring in any additional resources and we know they can’t leave, either.”

“How’s that?” The first man – Anan, Hunter remembered – crossed his arms and leaned over the top of one of the bus seats.

Rookie. The man was such a rookie. He’d been persuaded to accept Hunter’s terms – the offered sum of money was too high to ignore – but he hadn’t yet been willing yield to Hunter’s greater experience. Internally, Hunter wished that this man had been one of the two he’d executed for ruining a perfectly good plan; externally, he allowed a knowing smile to spread across his face.

“You,” Hunter said, pointing at someone a few years younger than he was. “What do you think? Why am I practically praying that our targets get onto a train or a bus or something like that?”

The younger man glanced at Anan before answering. “It’d be an enclosed space,” he said.

“And,” Hunter continued, “we’d know exactly where they were headed. We could set up at both ends of the line, just to keep them from slipping by, and then go room by room until we find them. Handcuff them, complete our business arrangement, and then we can all go our separate ways.”

Anan glared at the younger boy, who shied away from the other man’s intensity. Hunter watched the interaction, mildly interested. He didn’t think for an instant that Anan would actually do anything. The way Hunter had handled the trigger-happy locals earlier would have put a stop to any rebellious thoughts. Besides, he was the only one who knew how to contact the client or how to arrange final payment. Making a move on him now would only affect everyone’s bottom line…and everyone present knew that.

Grumbling, Anan turned away from both the younger man and Hunter, angling towards a cluster of tanned locals. That entire group seemed irritable but, so far, they hadn’t stepped out of line. He’d have to keep an eye on them, though.

Instead of belaboring his point, Hunter deliberately turned his back on Anan and returned his attention to his phone. The client hadn’t called in days, and he’d already read the latest email several times. Hunter unlocked the phone, opened the email, and read it again.

Mostly, it was just a response to his latest status update. The client wasn’t thrilled that Hunter hadn’t completed the job yet, but they also weren’t unduly upset. There were the usual enticements and banal threats of nonpayment; Hunter ignored all of those. Attempting a retrieval without proper prep time was often pointless, at best; it could be literally fatal, at worst. He’d turn down the opportunity to make a little extra money, if it meant he could dot his metaphorical i’s and dot his metaphorical t’s.

At the bottom of the email, there was something new. Since he’d landed in Texas, the client had only emailed him with heavy-handed encouragement to pick up the pace. There had only been new information in the first few emails – those had been weeks ago! – and nothing since. Hunter was beginning to think that he should just ignore his inbox until he had something concrete to report.

There was new information attached to this message, though: an image file and a PDF. The PDF had been formatted like a typical dossier, except that the information contained within wasn’t anything he could actually make use of. Maybe that would make sense later, with additional information. The photo had been immediately useful, though. His phone had been deliberately programmed not to save documents – fewer loose ends, in case he had to abandon it or if the police got their hands on it – so he had to download the image once more, in order to look at it.

While he sat there, his mind began to wander again. He thought back to his earliest jobs, when he’d been inexperienced and hotheaded. Those first few attempts at retrieval had been successful, after a fashion, but they’d also been needlessly clumsy. Until he’d started to think of his tasks as hunts, instead of wetwork, Hunter had been predisposed to utilizing violent solutions to nonviolent problems. Security guard blocking your way into a private estate? Some jumped-up secretary being cagey about his boss’ whereabouts? A target making it difficult to pass through checkpoints and toll booths?

The right threat handled all of those neatly. The problem had been that, on occasion, Hunter had been forced to actually follow through on those threats. Thus far, he’d managed to limit his demonstrations to people who actually deserved it, but that wouldn’t necessarily remain true. That didn’t bother Hunter, not really, but he was still passively aware of the fact. Eventually, someone would offer him a ludicrous amount of money to do something unforgivable and Hunter knew that, all things being equal, he’d probably take the money.

He’d never pretended to be a good person, not even to himself; Hunter was merely pragmatic. Money made the world go around and, as he was a denizen of the world, it only made sense to acquire as much cash as he could before someone got around to hunting him. When fortune turned against him, he’d have a nice little nest egg to purchase security forces and hired guns…until, of course, he found himself staring down the business end of a Beretta.

That was another thing that Hunter often thought about. He lived by the sword and, someday, he’d die by it, too. Thus far, he’d been able to eliminate any potential rivals before they had an opportunity to make a move against him, but that luck wouldn’t last forever. When he’d seen the Japanese women tearing through his men like wet tissue paper, he’d begun to think that his time had finally come, after all.

The image finished downloading. Two photographs, placed next to each other like before and after shots, were displayed on his screen. The grainy picture on the left was far too pixelated for him to make out any details, except that a woman seemed to feature prominently in the center of the frame. The picture on the right was a glossy, crystal clear shot taken by what must have been a professional. Comparing the two images, Hunter felt fairly confident that the subject of both pictures was the same woman.

Problem was, he didn’t have any idea who she was. Judging from the clearer picture, the woman in the picture was tall, thin without sacrificing muscle tone, and imperious. Her complexion went past dark brown into more ebony shades, but that only served to highlight the bright coloring on her lips. It was only a still image, but Hunter could easily imagine her in motion: elegant and graceful, with an air that commanded attention as easily as breathing. He stared at the picture for a few moments, committing the image to his memory, before he let his eyes slip away from the woman to examine the scene around her.

He did recognize the second woman, slightly off-center and out of focus. Just because Hunter chose to make his living in the darkest parts of the Underworld that didn’t mean he was completely oblivious to the movers and shakers of the civilian world.

He went back to the PDF and waited for it download. When it finished, Hunter found a document several pages long detailing several years worth of financial transactions. Numbered Swiss accounts transferred six and seven digit sums across country lines, dumped currency into dead-end stocks, and then retrieved that money when necessary. He’d known several financial wizards in his time – had even killed a few of them, both professionally and on his own initiative – but numbers had never been particularly interesting to Hunter. He was aware, however, that the amount of money being moved around was significant.

At the end of the PDF, exactly where they’d been hours ago, he found his newest marching orders. A single page, entirely blank except for a single sentence at the center of the white expanse, marked the conclusion and gave him his new marching orders.

FIND THE TARGET AND BRING HER TO US, IMMEDIATELY, TO SETTLE OUR ARRANGEMENT.

The men he’d hired weren’t ready to strike out yet, and they certainly weren’t up to the challenge of hitting what would almost certainly be a fortified target. The client wasn’t likely to be talked down, though. If they were forcing him into action without a reasonable amount of notice, Hunter knew that they wouldn’t respond well to anything that could be considered dereliction of duty. They wouldn’t just cut off his financing. It was likely – possible, even – that he’d find himself facing down that kill order, several years earlier than he’d expected.

“Well, well, well,” Hunter said to himself. He tapped an index finger against the back of the bus seat, thinking about what fresh complications this particular message promised for his hunt. Through the front window, the interplay of lights that signified Dallas grew closer and closer. “I haven’t been to a gala in forever.”

Chapter 152

What surprised me most of all was the steadiness of my hands and voice.  By all rights, my hands should’ve been shaking like leaves.  My voice should be filled with an undeniable tremor.  But, in my sudden and abrupt state of shock, I was perfectly, perilously calm. 

“Mila,” I said.  “You’re still carrying your work phone somewhere.”

It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway.

“Call the others.  I don’t care how many times you have to press redial, but I need to speak with them.  Immediately.”

Mila obeyed without question, reaching for her phone as she stood up and took a few steps away from the table.  Barrett looked at her, then at me, before he raised an eyebrow.  “Aren’t they going to be a little busy right now?”

“This is more important,” I said, distracted by the inexorable rush of my own thoughts.  What did Barrett know again?  He’d been told the broad strokes, but nothing specific about the Lady or our running battle against the Magi.  Bringing him more fully onboard now would be a mistake.  “I need a laptop.  A tablet would do, if that’s all you can find, but I’d prefer a laptop.”

“You need a…what, now?”

“A computer.  I need one.  You need to find me one.”  I met his eyes and bored into them with a heavy gaze of my own.  Barrett blinked first.  “Do you understand?”

“I can try,” he said.  “It’s not like everyone brought entire computer setups to a fundraiser, though.”

“Don’t try.”  I reached out and took his hand into a fierce grip.  Barrett’s fingers were stronger than mine, but he didn’t squeeze back.  “Find one.”

“Okay, okay.”  He shook his hand free and got to his feet.  “Don’t go anywhere.  I want to know what’s got you so spooked and if it’s something I need to be concerned about.”

He lingered for another moment or two, probably hoping that I’d spill some detail about the conversation I’d overheard, and then retreated when he realized that I had no intention of elaborating.  When he was gone, I returned my full attention to my earbud.  While I’d been issuing orders, a few lines of conversation had passed, but it seemed that my father and the contact were still on the same general subject.

“I won’t use my program to interfere with or undermine proper law enforcement officials,” Raymond was saying.  “Especially not overseas.”

“You won’t be intruding on anything,” the contact said.  “Trust me.  The test case that we have in mind for Minerva isn’t a matter of any official interest, in England or here in America.”

“But unofficially?”

The contact didn’t say anything.  I glanced up and saw him in the alcove, lifting and dropping his shoulders in the sort of noncommittal shrug that professional liars learned to master early in life.

“The contract in question is quite lucrative,” the contact said in a lower voice.  I had to strain my listening to catch the words.  “And I can assure that you won’t be stepping on anyone’s toes, so to speak.  If anything, your program could prove quite instrumental in connecting a few dots that have proven frustratingly difficult to connect.”

My father hesitated for a long time before answering.  For all of our arguments about his defense contracts, he’d always made sure that the company navigated the thin line between outright support of the military industrial complex and explicit disavowal.  What the contact was offering could open new doorways for the company and his legacy; refusing to help the man could, likewise, slam those doors shut in his face for another few decades.

I couldn’t see my father’s face from where I sat and the contact was far enough into the alcove that I could only make out the barest outlines of his body.  Still, I saw the moment when my father made a choice.  He gave a single, short nod and folded the manila folder in half, before slipping it into his jacket pocket.

“Excellent choice, Mister Ford.”  The contact clapped him on the shoulder and I noticed, in some distant part of my mind, that the man’s hands seemed unreasonably pale.  He didn’t suffer from albinism or anything like that, but they seemed like the hands of a man unused to physical labor and accustomed to an indoor lifestyle.  “Excellent choice.”

“What are the…rules, so to speak…of this test?”  Raymond asked. 

“We want to know whatever you and your program can learn.  Primarily, we’re interested in identifying patterns and then seeing if those patterns repeat at other times, in other places.”

Again, my heartbeat should have spiked at that sentence.  Any pattern that Minerva could identify from our efforts in London – witness statements, camera footage, similarity in techniques, and so on – would, by definition, point directly at us.  Creating an algorithm that could search for patterns like that would lead Minerva to the other hotspots we’d visited in the last six months.  Eventually, it would lead straight to Atlanta, where we’d robbed the Sovereign of something I still didn’t understand, and to Dallas, where people were turning up dead just as the Underworld went into a frenzy.  And, ultimately, the program would likely point a digital finger directly at me.

I stayed calm, though.  I stayed rational and focused on the moment, instead of spiraling into an endless morass of what-ifs and what-abouts.  There were questions that needed answers and, more than ever, those answers might end up as the only wall between us and the Magi’s tender mercies. 

One: who was the contact?  If he was actually working for the Department of Defense, did that mean the Magi had co-opted a single individual?  Or were there moles planted deeply within the infrastructure of the DoD, ready to act in service of the Magi’s interest with a single command.  The former scenario would be problematic, but not untenable.  The latter would be…considerably less manageable.

Second: how much did the contact know?  Moreover, how much of what the contact knew was contained within that slim folder?  The Magi would want to keep information to themselves, of course.  And, without any concrete idea about the members of my team or our motives, they couldn’t know what information would necessarily prove relevant.  If they’d played it safe, we’d have more time to organize some sort of counter-stroke.  If they’d sensed danger at the gates and responded by taking some risks, the smart move was to hide, to wait, and to pick a better time to attack.

Mila returned to the table and held out her encrypted phone.  I shook my head in response.  “I’m still listening to this,” I said.  “Tell Devlin that the contact is trying to turn Minerva against us.  Specifically, us.”

Both of her eyebrows went up mildly, but she didn’t allow any other physical tell to reach her face.  She relayed my message to Devlin in my exact words, then listened to his response.

My father was speaking, so I tuned back into his words.  “What would qualify as victory or success, then?”

“We’re aware that such a pattern does exist,” the contact said, “although we have thus far been unable to come up with it on our own.  If we are able to use what your program uncovers, that will be satisfactory.”

“Is there a time limit?”

“No.  But we would, of course, prefer that you endeavor to provide results as soon as possible.”

“Why?  Are lives at stake?”  Raymond asked.

The contact chuckled and the sound was just barely picked up by the concealed earbud.  “Not in the way you assume, Mister Ford.  Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

I watched intently but the contact – a smaller man than my father – managed to maneuver out of the fundraiser in a way that didn’t allow me a clear glance at his face.  No matter; there were security cameras and I was certain that Max could unearth their secrets given enough time.

Mila was waiting patiently.  When she saw that I was actually seeing her, instead of simply staring blankly in her general direction, she spoke.  “Can you talk to him now?”

I held out a hand and took the phone from her.  “Devlin, this is going to be a problem,” I said, instead of a traditional greeting. 

“You don’t say.  How do you know they’re going to aim Minerva at us?”

“He gave my father a file about a drug dealer in London,” I said.  “Unless you know of any other huge events in the last six months, it seems reasonable to assume that we’re in the crosshairs.”

Devlin was quiet for a few moments.  “It might be about that Interpol agent, couldn’t it?  That’s definitely something that the DoD might be interested in.”

I hadn’t thought of that.  A highly respected Interpol agent disappearing in a fiery conflagration, only to turn up months later in a different country at a filthy stash house was probably the kind of thing that the US Government might be interested in.  At the same time, the Department of Defense wouldn’t be tasked to deal with anything like that.  The Justice Department would be running point on any operation dealing with Interpol.

Slowly, I shook my head.  “I don’t think so.  I followed the newspaper articles on what happened in London for six weeks after we left.  At first, everyone assumed it was just Hill being vindictive.  When Adlai found the agent, the story gradually changed to paint him as some kind of traitor to the cause.  But nothing big enough to warrant the DoD was ever mentioned.”

“Even still,” Devlin said, “it might not be us.  There are other criminals working across state and country lines for their own nefarious purposes.  Some of them were even directly involved in the London events.”

He must have been near Kira.  Nothing else explained how carefully he’d phrased that rebuttal.  I got his meaning anyway.  While we had definitely made a splash in London, Asher and Hill had been working there even longer.  And, presumably, the Magi had been weaving their insidious tendrils through the Underworld for years or decades prior to them.  The possibility of a global network of criminal terrorists might be the kind of thing to attract the attention of the DoD.

“You’re still assuming that this contact was legitimate,” Mila said. “As far as we know, this whole thing is a put-up job and we’re just finding out about it now.”

“I’m not assuming anything,” Devlin countered, after I relayed Mila’s thoughts to him.  “I’m throwing out ideas.  We should absolutely act as though they’re coming after us.”

I nodded.  He wasn’t going to be contrary for its own sake, which was good.  We didn’t have the time to deal with whatever issues the both of us continued to ignore.

The line was quiet for a few seconds.  People continued to mill around us, greeting Mila and I in soft voices before returning to their own conversations.

“What do you think we should do?”  Devlin asked.

I blinked.  I’d expected him to have some idea.  Now that he’d asked the question, I understood that I’d been hoping in vain.  This was a threat beyond his reckoning.  Beyond everyone’s reckoning, really.  If someone was charging at me with a knife, Mila would step up to deal with him.  If we were stuck in traffic with a caravan of pissed off marks in pursuit, I could rely on Michel to find a path to safety.  And if I was stuck in a room, surrounded by laser grids and attack dogs, I’d know – in my deepest, truest heart – that Devlin would figure out some way to extract me.

This was a digital warfront, though.  My warfront. No matter how much they wanted to, the rest of the team couldn’t fight this battle the way that I could.

“Did you get Minerva?” I asked.

“Max thinks we did,” he said. “But there’s something…strange…with the code. Kira noticed it when we were downloading it.”

“Define strange.”

Devlin made a sound that was the audio equivalent of a shrug. “According to Kira, it looks like someone modified the code. But since I don’t know what any of this is supposed to do in the first place, I certainly can’t tell you what was altered about it.”

I pursed my lips for a moment. “Max can’t tell you anything either?”

Devlin covered the phone with his hand and said something in a muffled voice that I couldn’t make out. “She says that she’s isolated the general area where the code was changed, but she can’t be certain what the actual effect of the change was.”

Barrett jogged back over to the table with a Macbook under his arm. He set it down on the table and flashed a grin at me.

“Impressive,” I said. “Do I want to know where you got that from?”

“I asked some of the catering staff very nicely. And I might have flirted.” He paused. “Definitely flirted, actually. I’ll probably have to take someone out to a nice dinner before this is all said and done. Anyway. Will this work for…whatever you need?”

I opened the laptop, took advantage of a security flaw that the user hadn’t yet patched, and checked the computer properties. It wasn’t ideal. Attempting to run Minerva would probably turn the machine into an expensive brick in milliseconds, but scanning through a text rendition of the code barely required resources.

I tapped my phone with a finger to let Barrett know that I wasn’t speaking to him. “Devlin, tell Max to convert the altered code into a text file and drop it into our shared drive.”

He covered the phone again to convey my request. This time, I heard a second muffled, distinctly female voice say something indignant. Devlin replied and, a moment later, returned to the call. “It’s on the way.”

By the time I installed some basic security – including, but not limited to, patching the flaw that had allowed me access in the first place – and logging into our private VPN, the text file was already there.

“How far are you?” I asked.

“Not far. We’re a couple of blocks away, driving in circles until we know what our next move is.”

“Talk to Mila for a bit. I’m going to look through this.”

I handed the phone off to Mila, so that I could devote all of my attention to the text file. To the untrained eye, the document was a mess of symbols, letters, and numbers without any commonalities. But I’d written more than a few programs and exploits and, at the end of the day, it was just another language.

The excerpt of code focused mainly on parameters and classifications. I imagined that Minerva often updated its own search parameters as new bits of information were uncovered, using those snippets to fine-tune its work. Whoever had edited the code, then, had been attempting to either exclude information or to force Minerva to follow specific lines of inquiry. Without the rest of the program to look at, however, I couldn’t know exactly what had been changed.

I changed tack. If I couldn’t know what had been done, maybe I could figure out who had done it. Or at least when the edit had been made. With a few quick keystrokes, I switched over to examine the change log. Any alteration to the code would, by design, produce a facsimile of the original program and a log of which users had accessed the program. Something as all-encompassing as Minerva was probably accessed by an entire department of trained professionals on a semi-regular basis. This would give me a list of suspects and, from there, the rest of the team might be able to dig up some new leads.

I only had to scan the code once before I spotted an irregularity. According to the log, changes had been made, but all backups to the original code had been erased. So, whoever had been digging around in Minerva hadn’t wanted to leave behind a blueprint that could be used to erase their alterations. Some further digging revealed that, according to the log, the changes had been performed immaculately. Every user who accessed Minerva was listed, clear as day…except for the one who’d played with the program’s inner workings. That meant we were dealing with a professional. Corporate saboteurs who weren’t very well trained hardly ever remembered to erase their footsteps.

“Close,” I muttered, “but not quite good enough. You’ll have to try a lot harder than that if you want to hide from me.”

“What was that?” Barrett asked.

I waved him away. Outside of the change log, there were several other places where someone might have left digital fingerprints. I went through those, one at a time, and came up with nothing. I considered shelving the project for later in the evening, after I’d left the fundraiser and could really roll up my figurative sleeves, but stopped just before shutting the laptop down. There had been something else in the code, I knew it, but I’d let my eyes skip over it without really pausing to consider what it meant.

Slower, more carefully, I read through each line of the change log until the flaw materialized from the alphanumeric strings. Our saboteur had used a very unique exploit to disguise their identity. Years ago, I’d been the first member of the Community to realize that, with a little bit of work, it was possible to conceal your fingerprints almost totally. Frizzle and Gates had taken that breadcrumb of an idea and spun it off into specialized hacks of their own. Max hadn’t shown any interest, shockingly, so it wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t noticed it herself.

But the Mouse? Oh, the Mouse had seized upon the exploit with the ferocity of a starving animal. He’d written dozens of variations in a matter of weeks, showing them to me in private chats whenever we were online at the same time. I remembered spending long hours detailing the main issue with the exploit: no matter how well it worked, there was still a loose thread in the form of the hack itself. If anyone knew what to look for, the deletion of a single line of code was enough to reveal anyone seeking to hide themselves.

“He was already in there,” I said. Barrett and Mila didn’t respond to me immediately; I had to wave to get their attention and repeated myself.

“He?” Barrett asked.

“The Mouse.” Mila wasn’t asking. “How?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “and I can’t undo whatever he did to Minerva. He went to a lot of trouble to hide his identity, though. Maybe there’s something there we can use.”

Mila held out a hand before I could delete the offending line of code. She listened to Devlin on the phone for several seconds. “Devlin doesn’t think it’s a good idea to mess with that. AT least, not right now.”

“It’s just a text file. Anything executable literally can’t activate. Even if it did, this isn’t my computer. There’s nothing on here that connects it to me or to us.”

She seemed unsure. “Could it be…I don’t know, booby-trapped?”

“The exploit?” I gave the question several seconds of serious consideration. Then, I shook my head. “I don’t think so. But, either way, what else are we going to do?”

She relayed that to Devlin, listened thoughtfully to whatever his response was, and then nodded to me.

I highlighted the exploit in the text file and deleted it with two keyboard macros. Without the junk code in the way, I exported the relevant parts into a spreadsheet so that it would display properly. Every user who’d gone into Minerva over the last three weeks was listed – first name, last name, employee number – but I’d already looked through those. Max could cross-reference those with the payroll information she’d stolen earlier. I cross referenced the list of names in the spreadsheet with the information in the text file, hoping to spot the one person who’d tried to remove any evidence of his trespassing.

I didn’t know what I hoped to find. The Mouse was too good. He’d been too good to leave any sort of trail, even before I’d known about his double identity as Caelum. Whatever name I uncovered would likely be a pseudonym connected to a dead end of a personnel file. Still, it was something. And I desperately needed something.

When I spotted the name of the user who had, presumably, monkeyed around with Minerva, my blood turned to ice floes in my veins. I stared at the laptop screen, paralyzed and unblinking. Every single gear in my brain ground to a screeching halt.

“No,” I said weakly. Then, with more force, “No. I must have made a mistake earlier.”

“You make mistakes?” Barrett asked. He winked at me and then, seeing my complete lack of response, dropped the flirtation. “Sarah? Are you okay?”

“What’s his name?” Mila asked. She took the laptop from me and I watched her eyes skip from the spreadsheet to the text file and back again. When she saw what I’d seen, Mila’s eyebrows went straight up and she took in a sharp, shocked breath. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t.”

“What are you two talking about?” Barrett struggled to take the laptop from Mila’s hands. She ultimately gave it up and stepped away to speak fervently to Devlin.

He found the name faster than Mila. “Well, this…complicates things.”

Barrett set the laptop back down in front of me, with a single name highlighted at the bottom of the list. I read it over and over again, silently mouthing the words to myself, as if I could change what was written there through force of will and repetition.

Ford, Ayana. Employee ID: 00001

Chapter 151

Almost two hours had passed since the last time I’d heard anything from the break-in team and I was starting to get nervous. Although…that wasn’t quite accurate. I’d been nervous since setting foot into the fundraiser. Nervous that my parents would somehow find a single question that unraveled my entire cover story; nervous that one of the guests would withdraw an assault rifle from beneath the table, before spraying haphazardly into the crowd where my family milled around; nervous that I’d say the wrong thing and torpedo the entire operation with a single accidental word.

After two hours, that nervousness had transcended general paranoia and crystallized into a very specific sort of uneasiness. If things had gone badly, surely I would have heard about it. Barring that, I definitely would have seen it. Raymond would be in the next car headed to the local office, as if he could do anything against professional thieves on his own. I wouldn’t have missed that.

Mila picked up on my unease. Her continued insistence that she didn’t understand people grew thinner by the day. I was beginning to suspect that she meant she couldn’t understand facial expressions or wordplay as well as someone like Devlin. But her grasp of body language was intuitive and, thus far, unfailing. It probably came with the job, or else it had been a skill she’d honed during her time with Aiden.

“What do you want to do?” Mila asked.

I blinked at her. “What do I want…what?”

“They’ve got another…fifteen minutes before we’re expecting a check-in,” Mila said, patient yet insistent. “If we leave now, that would put us only thirty minutes out. Not perfect, but you’d be in range to help them quicker; otherwise, we’d have to disappear right after they miss the call-in.”

“They’ll make it,” I said. I even managed to sound somewhat sincere, even though I wasn’t so sure myself. “With the monsters we’ve gone up against, you think they’re going to let some rent-a-Cops get the better of them?”

“Kira certainly wouldn’t let that happen,” Mila said.

“What was the deal with you and the Twins, anyway? I assume there was some sort of deal.”

Mila grimaced. I thought she might decline to answer, but she surprised me by snatching a single crab cake from a passing tray and then taking a deep breath. “Without getting into the specifics,” she said, “the Twins found themselves working against me a few years ago. When you’re dealing with the pair, it’s basically impossible to get an advantage. But I managed to get them separated and, when they can’t do that freaky Twin thing to cover each other’s back, they’re easier to handle.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I’d heard about them before. The three of us all occupy a very small, very particular sphere of influence inside the Underworld. They weren’t my targets and I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t actually have an issue if I did kill the guy. But they had orders, so they were bound by their word to do everything in their power to stop me. Failing that, they’d need an awfully good excuse to take back to their boss.”

I relieved a passing server of some champagne and lifted it to my lips. Mila’s eyes narrowed in warning and, after a reluctant moment passed, I put the glass down on the nearest table. Devlin had been drugged at a party once. I didn’t have any desire to experience that sensation, firsthand.

“What’d you do to them?” I asked.

“I hurt them,” Mila replied. There wasn’t a trace of guilt or shame in her words or expression. “Not so bad that it’d be permanent, but bad enough that no one could accuse them of not doing their best to get between me and my mark. Akumi – she’s really the fighter, but I think you know that much by now – isn’t traditional like that, but her brother is. As soon as they recovered, the Twins both swore to pay back the lives I’d given them when I’d decided not to kill them earlier.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

I thought back to our time in London. “You burned that favor when you asked them for information about Aiden and Hill, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “And then they called in that favor when they met us here and wanted to know more about what was really going on. It’s…complicated.”

It didn’t seem that complicated to me. The Underworld operated on two currencies, the value of which fluctuated from one day to the next: hard currency and favors. Of those two, cash was often preferable. One party offered a set amount of money for some service, the price was agreed upon, and then paid out upon completion of said task. Favors were intangible and liable to depend on the whim of the person who owed the favor and on the person who was owed it in turn.

Mila was difficult in a lot of ways, often unpredictable, but she was reliable. If she said she’d do something, she would do it.

“Long story short,” Mila said, “if something went wrong on the job, we would have heard about it. Kira can make a hell of a lot of noise on his own. And if he called Akumi to get her involved?”

I knew she was trying to comfort me, in her own weird way. But the people working in my parents’ building were, as far as I knew, just regular people doing a job. If the choice was up to me, I wouldn’t just point someone like Mila in their direction and hope for the best. With the Twins…all I could do is hope that Mila had read them correctly.

“Can you tell where they’re at in the process?” Mila asked.

I shook my head. “If I had my other phone, yes, but my civilian line is deliberately isolated from all of that. The remote connection I used to transfer my father’s key card frequency was dangerous enough; I honestly wouldn’t have risked that, if the stakes weren’t so high.”

“So we won’t know how things went until they can call in? If they call in?”

“Or until my parents suddenly start looking for the exits,” I said. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Mila heaved a sigh. “Fifteen minutes. That’s all I’m saying.”

I gave her a look filled with sympathy before I noticed Virginia and Elizabeth approaching in my peripheral vision. The two women were bickering like rich, famous people bickered in public: low voices, furtive glances, and sharp gestures that everyone else pretended not to notice. Barrett and Raymond were off working the room, hoping to secure additional donations to Ayana’s charity. Ayana herself was…somewhere. Personally, I suspected that she’d found an isolated room where should call her absent wife to bitch her out, but that was just a guess. It wasn’t even my only guess.

“Sarah,” Virginia said, as soon as she knew she had my attention, “will you please tell your mother that neither you nor Ayana want this to become one of her pet projects?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that.” Elizabeth stuck out her chin in a very undignified pose. “They are my daughters. Of course I want to be involved in whatever it is that they’re choosing to do with their lives.”

Probably not whatever we did. I kept that thought to myself, though.

“Being involved is one thing. What you’re talking is about is more like a hostile takeover than simple participation.”

I raised a hand to get their attention and was, predictably, ignored.

“Not everything has to be talked about in those terms, Virginia.”

“Those terms? What do you think we’re talking about, Greenbacks and stamps? You and Raymond are individuals. But if the Ford corporation itself starts donating? Then that’s what the story becomes.” Virginia outlined an imaginary television screen in the air. “Breaking news: Raymond and Elizabeth Ford fund children’s health initiative!”

“And? Is that so bad?”

“It would certainly be bad for Ayana, as the person who actually came up with this idea and built it from the ground up? Without, I might add, relying too heavily on her family name.”

Elizabeth didn’t have a quick response for that. I raised my hand ever higher and even waved it back and forth in the air. Nothing. Mila caught my eyes momentarily and shrugged. I cleared my throat, loudly, and finally succeeded in drawing their eyes to me.

“This isn’t my thing,” I said into the sudden lull. “I mean, not really. But I know how I’d feel if you and Dad swept in and took over something I’d built by myself, and it wouldn’t be good.”

Virginia just barely had the grace to keep herself from gloating. Elizabeth openly pouted, however. “It isn’t like that. Why do the two of you think that I would take the credit away from something Ayana did?”

“You wouldn’t do it on purpose,” I said. “But intentions might not matter when it comes down to the media. They’re going to find a story and run with it; an international corporation starting up a fundraiser and appointing their eldest daughter to handle the day-to-day is just a better story, that’s all.”

It seemed I’d gotten through to her where Virginia had failed. That probably had something to do with our respective motivations. While I was only interested in reaching Elizabeth, Virginia was consumed entirely with the desire to beat my mother. Alcohol almost certainly hadn’t made either woman more willing to concede their point.

“Virginia? Where’s your, uh…security guy?”

The tiny smile on Virginia’s face bled away. “We discussed the guest list and decided that, for the evening, it might be better to rely on a less noticeable profile.”

Translation: we didn’t want to be too affectionate when the entire Ford clan was planning on attending this fundraiser. There was a follow-up question which I couldn’t ask, implicit in the phrasing of her answer. Had CJ decided to step back? Or had Virginia asked him to?

Either satisfied with the argument or simply finished engaging in it, Elizabeth plucked a glass of champagne from a passing tray and downed half of it in one go. “It does seem to be going well, doesn’t it? You and your sister did very well, all things considered.”

Instead of asking what ‘things’ needed considering, I decided to accept the compliment in the spirit it was intended. “Impoverished children, hospitals, and free booze are like the holy trifecta for the idle rich. Ayana’s doing a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like we had to drag these people inside. Who wouldn’t want the PR bump from attending an event like this?”

Both Virginia and Elizabeth frowned. Their twin disapproval was shocking enough that I actually took a half-step back.

“Sarah,” Elizabeth said chidingly. “You are aware that you, yourself, are a member of the ‘idle rich,’ aren’t you?”

My mouth gaped open. “I am not like the rest of these people and you know it. When I donate, I do it because I’m actually hoping to make a difference.”

“And they aren’t?” Elizabeth swept a hand out to encompass the gathered men and women, the stockbrokers and investment bankers who’d cleared their evening schedule long enough to get dressed up and rub shoulders with other wealthy people. “Can you honestly say that, out of all the people in attendance, that you’re the only one who actually cares?”

In truth, researching the attendees had ranked at the very bottom of my to-do list of the last few days. But, even before joining up with Devlin, I’d made an entire illicit career tracking down concealed funds and robbing corrupt charities. If there was anyone who knew what the rich actually did with their money, it’d be me. But I couldn’t exactly say that to my mother.

Virginia, who knew slightly more about my professional life than my mother, didn’t appear to approve of what I’d said, either. “I’m here,” she said softly. “Do you think I’m only here because I need the PR bump?”

“You’re different,” I said immediately. “You, me, my parents…we all have a personal stake in this. It’s not the same and you know it.”

Elizabeth sighed. She turned her eyes to Virginia and the two women shared a look that I couldn’t immediately read. “She’s always been like this,” my mother said

“Been like what?” I asked.

“How can I say this delicately?” Elizabeth pursed her lips in thought for a few moments. “You always see the worst in people, Sarah. Especially people…well, people like us, but it doesn’t stop there. As soon as you think you know someone, you don’t stop to think that maybe you read them wrong.”

“Or,” Virginia added, “that they might have changed since the last time you saw them.”

I looked at Mila for support. She shrugged ambivalently instead of picking either side in the debate. Typical.

“People are a lot more flexible than you give them credit for,” my grandmother said. “And I think you’ll find that you’re a lot more like some of these other idle rich than you think.”

No quick response came to mind that wouldn’t also risk my cover. I reminded myself that, as far as either woman was concerned, their opinion was wholly accurate. They didn’t know hard I worked to ensure that the fabulously rich weren’t able to pilfer from charity funds with impunity. They didn’t know that I’d gone from spoiled rich kid to college activist and, ultimately, to professional hacker and thief. I had nothing in common with the men and women milling about the fundraiser, patting themselves on the back for their magnanimity and generosity.

Barrett approached from my left, saving me from any further participation in the discussion. I met him with a wide, fake smile and a kiss on the cheek. He blinked in surprise at the affection before realizing that I was still playing a part. That didn’t stop him from indulging in a hug and returning the kiss.

“If this is the kind of welcome I can expect every time I wander over,” he said, “I’ll have to wander off more often.”

I placed a hand on his chest, both as a warning and to further the image of a loving wife. “What were you and Father up to?”

“Nothing interesting.” He paused to fix his cuff-links before continuing. “There were a few local businessmen, all of them trying to figure out what brought the great Raymond Ford to Dallas. He isn’t giving them any details they couldn’t find out on their own, but that’s only making them more curious.”

“He does that,” Elizabeth said drily. She took a shallow sip of her champagne. “It’s part of his allure. At least, I think he thinks of it as part of his allure. I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes out of this with two or three business offers and about twice as many people, clamoring to be his next investor.”

Virginia didn’t seem as willing to drop our previous topic but, after a significant look that I pretended to ignore, she did put it temporarily aside. “If it’s crazy and it works, Elizabeth.”

My mother sighed. “I suppose.”

“Your sister doesn’t give her speech for another…what, fifteen minutes? Twenty?” Barrett checked his watch. “Your father seemed like he was waiting for something.”

I perked up. “Oh? You don’t know where he is, do you?”

He pointed off, in the direction of an alcove by the back entrance. Due to some overlap between faux arboreal arches and the architecture of the building, there were several square feet of darkened corner. Someone standing in that alcove would be very difficult to spot incidentally. Moreover, while someone could discreetly get close enough to overhear any conversation, it would be exceedingly difficult.

Unless, of course, the person who’d positioned those plants in that configuration had planned ahead and taken steps to ensure that certain listening devices were concealed nearby.

I caught Mila’s eyes and then flicked my vision over to the alcove. I had to repeat the gesture twice for Barrett before he caught on.

“Would you three ladies mind terribly if I borrowed Sarah?” Barrett asked, in his most charming voice. “I feel like I haven’t seen my wife all night.”

“I’ll go with you,” Mila said immediately. A beat passed before she elaborated. “I’m just going to rest my feet for a bit. That’s all.”

Elizabeth tilted her head to one side as Mila, then shrugged off her concern. “Just make sure that you’re back in time for the speech.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Barrett said.

The three of us quickly scouted out and secured an empty table, where we had visibility of the alcove. I dug around in my purse until I found a lone earbud – one of my original designs, not the upgraded versions that Max had put together – and activated it.

“This was the only pair I had left,” I said. Mila nodded in understanding, while Barrett frowned slightly. “I’ll fill you in on everything that’s important.”

Then, I tried to tune out the sounds of the room around us. Most of the chatter had been background noise to begin with, so the process was easier than I expected. I listened to dead air for about thirty seconds. Then, with a slight crackle to account for the ambient noise, my father and his mysterious contact began to speak.

“You know what I’m here for,” the mysterious contact said. He didn’t phrase it as a question.

“I know that you’ve got some kind of test for our new software,” Raymond said. “I don’t know what, exactly, you’re hoping to test.”

“Data collection,” the contact said. “Pattern recognition. Nothing beyond what you claim your software is capable of, of course.”

“I need more to go on that.”

There was the sound of rustling paper, like an envelope being passed from one man to the other. “I think you’ll find everything you need to know inside that,” the contact said.

Several seconds of silence. Then, “What is this? It doesn’t look like a test.”

“Think of it as a field test. We need to know whether your program is able to operate at full capacity in the field. If it proves itself capable, we’ll be eager to see what else it’s capable of.”

Raymond scoffed. “I saw this story in the news months ago,” he said. “Time isn’t a factor, of course, but I still have to wonder…”

The contact sighed. “I can’t answer everything, as I’m sure you understand, but I suppose one question couldn’t do too much harm.”

My father shuffled through the papers in his hands. “Why does the Department of Defense care about a drug dealer in London?”

Chapter 150 (Devlin)

The server room was cold. There were no windows, obviously, and someone had cranked the air conditioner to its absolute limit within the confined area. I exhaled slowly, deliberately, and could see my breath condense in the air in front of me. I shivered, rubbed at my arms in a vain hope that friction might alleviate the worst of the abrupt change in temperature, and blew out another cloudy breath when my efforts proved useless.

Kira’s breath also came out in puffs, but he gave no other indication that the temperature even affected him. From where we stood, inches in front of the door, he narrowed his eyes and tilted his head to one side. After a few moments, he tilted his head in the other direction. Then, satisfied by something he’d heard – or, potentially, not heard – he nodded a single time.

“I do not think there is anyone here,” he said. “Except for us.”

“No guards? No technicians?”

Kira shook his head. “I do not think so, no.”

But I could be wrong came through loud and clear, from the tension he still held in his shoulders to his tightening grip on the switchblade. I’d brought a single stun gun, but I didn’t have experience with the device. If I tried to use it on someone in close quarters, odds were high that I’d electrocute myself. If things went badly, I’d be almost entirely defendant on Kira for self-defense. As I wasn’t certain that his solutions would be anything less than lethal, I crossed my fingers and hoped that we didn’t find ourselves in a situation that would require action on his part.

“Max?” I asked out loud.

Except for the occasional whisper of static, the earbud was silent. Max had anticipated that – had even warned Kira and I to be prepared for it – but it was still unnerving. Her voice in my ear was no substitute for Sarah’s, but it was something, at least. Now, without either of them to walk me through this field of servers, I was alone with an untested asset, attempting to steal something I barely understood.

While I was sure that I’d been in worse situations before, I certainly couldn’t remember any at that moment.

“We’re looking for an Ethernet port,” I said, quoting Max as precisely as possible. “At least one of these servers, if not more, should have an available port.”

Kira swept his eyes across the servers directly in front of us, then stepped forward to repeat the process on the second row. “There is one here,” he said.

I fished out a short cable from my pocket as I went to join him. With Max’ assistance, I’d personally run the wiring through the cable and she’d tested it to ensure its viability. At one end, there was a plug that wouldn’t have looked amiss on an old fashioned land-line; a USB adapter adorned the other end. I plugged the USB into the bottom of my latest burner phone and, when I was close enough, connected the phone line into an unremarkable server. Immediately, my phone came to life.

From what I understood, each server would have a sort of road map for every other server on the network. What wasn’t stored on a particular rack of machinery would still need to access and be accessed by other servers for different tasks. The program Minerva would, therefore, be in near-constant communication with every other function of the network, if it wanted to perform its tasks. Said program would, however, only be stored on a single machine.

The program uploading from my phone into the server was supposed to perform several functions. First, it would identify and analyze the traffic patterns – pings and queries, Max had called them – entering and leaving a given server. With that information, the program would be able to isolate routine communication and focus exclusively on the most unusual or atypical requests, complete with IP and MAC address. Neither of those terms meant anything to me but, to the program on my phone, those alphanumeric strings would translate into a layout of the server room. Information stored throughout the network would be highlighted and marked for easy perusal.

Minerva wouldn’t be marked as such, but it would at least allow us to ignore many false leads. It’d be down to brute force eventually, though.

My phone wasn’t as powerful as Sarah’s or Max’ customized computers and the process would take some time. I leaned against the server, facing the direction of the door, and met Kira’s eyes. “So,” I said. “Is this what you expected?”

His eyebrows drew together. “Expected?”

“You and your sister came here to find answers, didn’t you? Sarah and Mila filled us in.”

Kira nodded. “This is true, yes. We want to learn what is really going on.”

“And when you got on that flight out of Japan or wherever you were? Did you think you’d be robbing a multinational company for some highly proprietary software?”

He shrugged. “I did not expect anything. I was prepared for many possibilities.”

“Must be nice,” I said. “I personally wasn’t prepared for any of this, but here I am anyway.”

The phone continued its work. After another few moments of silence, Kira cleared his throat significantly. “What do you do with the money?”

My guard went up before I consciously told it to do so. “What money?”

“You are a thief?” I gave Kira a cautious nod. “But it does not seem like you keep the money. What do you do with it?”

I didn’t see a reason to lie, but I answered warily nonetheless. “When I accepted contracts and commissions, most of the money went towards expenses and splitting the spoils. I spent the rest of it on…other things. Clothes, nice trips…that kind of thing.”

“Clothing,” Kira said. A smile spread across his face. “Yes, I understand that. But what else? When you did not…accept commissions? Did you steal anything for yourself?”

Again, I carefully plotted my answer, so as not to reveal any information by accident. “In the past,” I said. “It’s not as lucrative as you might think. High risk, no real security net. If things go wrong, you’re completely on your own.”

“But you were not,” Kira said. “On your own, I mean.”

“Not the entire time, no.” I paused. “Wait, what do you mean by that?”

“You and Sarah. There was something between you?”

I suppressed the desire to roll my eyes. Kira had been around Sarah and I for all of fifteen seconds and even he’d picked up on the tension in the air? I didn’t even want to think about what Akumi would do with that knowledge.

As if he could read my thoughts, Kira shook his head. “My sister is perceptive in other ways. This is not the sort of thing that would interest her.”

He’d read my face, my micro-expressions. God, that was irritating. I made a mental note to apologize to Sarah for the million or so times I’d pulled that trick on her.

“It’s complicated,” I said, for what must have been the thousandth time in the last few days.

Between Michel’s gentle questions and Mila’s unspoken, insistent curiosity, I was getting tired of telling people that things were complicated. There just wasn’t a better answer, though. How could I explain to anyone the impossibly dense web between Sarah and me? I’d fallen for her soon after our first impromptu job together, but I hadn’t known how to handle those feelings. She was beautiful, intelligent, ferociously motivated to right wrongs when she saw them. I had been – I still was, in point of fact – a thief. A thief with a code of professional ethics, sure, but that code didn’t change the blunt reality. That we’d worked so well together had been a miracle. That our professional chemistry had, eventually, transformed into a romantic connection had been more than I’d allowed myself to hope.

That I’d eventually fucked it all up had been…inevitable.

“I understand,” Kira said.

“Do you? At least that makes one of us.”

The phone made a sound, saving either of us from any more deep conversation. I checked the screen and saw that Max’ program had worked as promised. Drawn in blue lines with black callouts, a miniature map of the server room told me in plain English which of the server racks contained valuable, if irrelevant, information. I put those out of my mind and identified the two or three possible servers that might contain Minerva’s source code.

I passed Kira a second cable and indicated two racks on the far side of the room. “You take those,” I said. “I’ll check over here. Let me know if you find the right one; I think we’ll be able to download the program faster if we’re both plugged into the same server.”

He nodded and hurried away to do as instructed. I lingered where I stood for a moment longer. My phone’s clock told me that we were quickly running out of time. Our original exit plan had been designed around the idea that we would be heading down from the upper floors, back towards the lobby. Leaving from underground was functionally the same, but it presented new logistic difficulties that we hadn’t considered beforehand. Even if we were operating by our original timetable, we would still only have another ten minutes – fifteen, at the absolute most – before the man upstairs started to ask questions. And, when the alarm started sounding, I had no doubt that the sub-basement floors would be the first to be locked down.

The first server I plugged into was filled with what I presumed to be trade secrets. Pages flew across my phone’s screen too fast for me to read them all, but I could recognize balance sheets with nothing more than a glimpse. I wondered why Max’ program hadn’t ruled out this information but, as I reminded myself, I only barely understood the framework of what she’d created. Obviously, I wouldn’t use anything I accidentally acquired during this theft, except for Minerva. This was Sarah’s family, after all. But it still might be useful to have in the future, so I didn’t immediately disconnect and terminate the file transfer.

“Here,” Kira called. “I think that this might be the one.”

I yanked the cable free, almost damaging it in the process, and joined him. He’d connected his phone into the USB port of what seemed like a detached keyboard and, instead of staring down at the comparatively tiny screen, was perusing through information displayed on a large monitor attached to a swiveling arm.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He shook his head. “This is beyond me,” Kira said. “This is a program, but…”

“But?”

He pointed at the screen. I nudged him aside and examined the lines of code displayed on the monitor. It might as well have been Cyrillic as far as I was concerned. There were bits and pieces of data that made sense to me – a date, perhaps, or an account balance – but the majority of what I saw consisted on strange syntax and commands that made no sense to me.

“Do you know what any of this means?” I asked Kira.

“This,” he said, touching a point on the screen with an index finger, “is an activation date. And this is a location, in map coordinates, I think. Sarah said that they used this Minerva in different countries, yes?”

I nodded. “So, that’s why you think this is the code we’re looking for?”

“Yes. But.” He moved his finger to three different points on the monitor. “She told us that Minerva had only been used three times. There are four dates here.”

I thought about that. “The local techs might have activated it just long enough to make sure that there weren’t any obvious problems,” I suggested. “Or maybe they wanted to implement some last minute fix before they run it through the DoD’s test?”

“Maybe,” Kira said.

He sounded as uncertain as I felt. It was far more likely that there was some mundane reason for the slight discrepancy. There were technicians and specialists who doubtlessly updated and monitored Minerva, stepping in to make sure that any errors in the code were immediately resolved. Or Raymond might have wanted to demonstrate Minerva on some smaller problem for the local executives, just to impress upon them the importance of the DoD test.

But I couldn’t forget about that unlisted camera. And, thus far, paranoia had never led me astray.

“Can you tell if anyone else tried to download this?” I asked.

Kira entered a series of command on the keyboard, cursed in Japanese, and then tried something else. “No,” he said finally. “If there is a way to track that, I do not think I have access to it.”

My first thought was that Sarah would have been able to figure out a way. On the heels of that, I realized that I wasn’t being fair to Kira. And, on the heels of that, I remembered that Sarah wouldn’t have been able to do much remotely anyway. She would only have had access to the server in the first place if she’d physically entered the room with us. And, while she’d been forced into the field more often lately, that didn’t mean she’d transitioned entirely into an operative like me.

I thought around the problem, instead of simply through it. It was a trick I’d picked up a long time ago and, with the increased focus on technology due to our current enemy, it was proving more and more useful. The specifics of what we were doing escaped me, no matter how hard I studied and practiced in my off-time. But the generalities? Those were easier to grasp.

“Can you tell me anything at all?”

Kira went to work, clicking through multiple windows faster than I could follow. He began to mutter under his breath, obviously irritated, and then froze. He navigated back through two windows and squinted to read through the tiny text on the monitor.

“This was accessed from in the building,” Kira said, “but the program was not used. It was…modified?”

My eyebrows shot up. “You can’t tell me what changes they made, can you?”

He shook his head. “There is too much information for me to read through. And, even if I had the time, I do not know what each line of script is supposed to do, so…”

It was something. It was inscrutable to me and Kira, but Max might be able to make sense of it. Even knowing what changes had been made to Minerva might be a clue to figuring out why it had been activated before the scheduled test.

“Download everything,” I said.

“I can damage this program,” Kira said.

I stared at him.

“I do not understand it,” he said, “but that does mean I cannot damage it. I have given myself enough privileges to…poison it?”

It wasn’t the right word, but I got his meaning. “You can make it non-functional?”

Kira made an uncertain gesture with one hand. “I can try, yes.”

Minerva was an incredibly powerful weapon. I knew that much. If the Mouse or the Magi got their hands on it, it would only be a matter of time before it was turned against us. But…I still had questions. Who had set up the isolated camera? What had their goal been? What changes had been made to the program’s code already, and why?

I thought about what Sarah would do and, as soon as I committed to that, I knew what I had to do, as well.

“Leave it alone,” I said. “Don’t change anything. I don’t want anyone to know we were ever at this level or that we even know Minerva exists.”

Kira entered a quick command into the phone and we waited while Max’ program did its work. When it finished, and we’d transferred Minerva’s source code into a detachable hard drive, we packed up the cords and headed for the exit.

Max was in my ear, almost immediately. “Did you find it?”

“I think so,” I said. “If not, then we weren’t going to find it.”

She accepted that with a rueful grunt. “What you downloaded is being mirrored on my hard drives right now. As soon as it’s finished, I’m going to disconnect that computer from the internet entirely and come up with a more secure method of toying with Minerva.”

“Did we miss anything while we were out of touch?”

“Nothing to worry about, no,” Max said. “Your friend from upstairs finished his work and was about to start looking for, but I gave him a mathematically impossible spreadsheet to balance. That should buy you enough time to get out of the building. Anything that I should know?”

I shook my head, even though I knew she couldn’t see the gesture. “I don’t want to bias you. Look at the code when you have it, tell me what you think?”

“I can do that.”

We started up the stairs, but Kira paused beneath the camera he’d disabled. He looked down at me and tilted his head. “Are you so sure that this program cannot be used against you?”

“Of course not. I’m terrified. But whoever is playing in this arena, whoever is trying to get ahead of us…I can’t beat them if I don’t know what they’re trying to do.” I looked up at the camera, staring deep into its dead eye. “Your move.”