Leaning back away from me, he struggles to answer. “I don’t have a letter from the Board.”
My heart skips a beat, sinking in my chest as a thousand incoherent thoughts flit in and out of my head. I’m starting to get used to this feeling, but I’ll never learn to like it. “Brady,” I seethe, “did you even try to get one?”
“I did. I swear I did,” he mumbles. “But I’m being taken off the Yearly Audit and Inquiry Regarding Systemic Shortfalls in Currency Supply. So I no longer have a reason to need a letter like that.” He pauses. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” I demand, struggling to suppress my anger. “Why now?”
“I got my promotion,” he blurts as though confessing to a crime. Quietly, he adds, “Deputy Auditor.”
“So that’s it? Suddenly you’re done?” Someone, somewhere, has pulled strings to make this happen. It’s one more way to bury the truth, or the lie, or whatever it is I’m so close to finding. “Who made the call?”
He stutters a bit. “The Board.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I put in the paperwork for an expedited records request, y-you know, for the video footage, and a few hours later I got a call congratulating me on the move up.” He glances around, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Taryn.”
“This doesn’t make you one bit suspicious?” I ask, forcing myself to keep my voice down. “The timing of this?”
He shakes his head, adamant. “I was told it was in the works before I even started this whole thing.”
I close my eyes, trying to shut away the humdrum noise and light of my surroundings even though I know I should stay alert and ready, even though I know that I’m in a busy public area and I’ve drawn attention to myself here and that some guy who wants to kill me might be walking discreetly toward me right now, slipping a poison promise onto an anxious finger. “You really fucked me over, Brady.”
“Taryn, I’ve wanted this for a long time,” he responds, sounding genuine but rehearsed, like he’s been thinking through what to say to me. “In this new role I’ll have a lot more ability to act, a lot better chance to make a real difference. Try to understand what that means to me.”
I grab him tightly by the arm, pulling him close. “I hope it’s worth it in the end for you, Kearns, because that’s what I’m looking at now. The end.”
“Kearns,” he mumbles, “I probably deserve that.”
“Can you do anything else to help me, or did you just show up here to piss me off?”
“Taryn, I can’t.” He stares at the ground. “There’s nothing more I can do.”
Saying nothing more, I turn my back to him to walk away but stop after a few paces realizing that I now have no plan. The way to the door out of here is relatively clear. I could easily walk through it, get on my ride, and leave. What then? Go into protective custody, maybe change my name, start over? Look over my shoulder until the day I die, worried that facial recognition software or word of mouth will betray me to the shadows of my past? Who knows? In the other direction are the tellers’ windows and the lines of customers. If I try to twist the arm of some bank manager to get video evidence right now, they’ll balk, and I’ll tip my hand. Whoever is hiding the truth from me will learn what I’m looking for, and next time I come for it, it will be gone. Looking back at the doorways out, I think maybe I could go into Collections and apply for a warrant, but I know I wouldn’t get one. I lack probable cause, and I’m not even on this case—if it even is a case. I’ve got no choices here. Any way I go I’m done for.
Promising myself I won’t second-guess the choice but breaking that promise immediately, I walk toward the tellers’ windows, passing the customers waiting in line.
“Hey!” a voice cuts through the background noise, “Hey, wait!” Glancing over my shoulder, I see that it’s Brady running to catch up with me.
I stop, annoyed. “What?”
“Taryn,” he says, flustered, “look, I still want to be there for you.”
“Super.”
“You need a safe place to stay, right?”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. “You’re a creep, Kearns.”
“I care about you, Taryn. How can you not believe that?”
“You let me down.”
“This is not personal.”
“You’re not personal.”
“Can we be mature for just a few seconds, please, can we?” He’s desperate, talking too fast. “We’ve been through all this together, and it’s… I just… It’s… I just haven’t formed a connection with someone like—”
“A connection?” I cut him off. “You think we’ve got a connection?”
“I’ve done all I can,” he pleads. “You’ve got to believe that. Anything you need, I’m on it. You can get a warrant for the video. We just need to back off for some time… ”
“Back off,” I tell him. “Good advice.”
“Wait, wait,” he says. “Let me make it up to you at least?” Looking me in the eye like he’s in some grandiose Yagami romance movie, he asks, “The Eridani, eight tomorrow night?”
“Idiot.” He’s more of a clod than I ever suspected. Shaking my head, I turn and walk away from him again, toward the tellers.
“Is that a no?”
This time I don’t bother to look back. Stepping up to a view-glass window, I lean in front of the old man trying to sort through a bag of cash chips. He tosses me a mean look. The teller, a young-ish, overweight woman with thin hair, dressed in a crisp button-down shirt patterned with the yellow-and-white SCAPE logo, glances at the hexagonal Collections Agency badge on my arm.
She purses her lips, tense. “Can I help you?”
“Agent Taryn Dare, Collections Agency,” I tell her, authoritative. “I need to see your manager immediately.”
The teller stiffens. “What should I tell him this is about?”
“I can’t share that,” I respond, leaning against the counter. “Go get him.”
She gives an annoyed sigh but gets up and leaves her station. The view-glass turns translucent. I step aside from the counter, putting a couple of meters between me and the waiting customers, glancing around with paranoia. I don’t see Brady behind me. He must have left.
A minute or two later, a short, chubby, gray-haired man in a black suit with a changing holographic white-and-yellow SCAPE pin on the lapel comes walking toward me, the sound of his footsteps audible on the stone tile. “Hello,” he calls, waving. I say nothing, sizing him up as he approaches. “How can I help you, Agent?”
“I need access to some security camera footage.”
“Oh? Might I ask why?”
“I’m afraid I can’t divulge the details.” I’ve done this bluff before, and it usually works on less sophisticated people, but in my experience, banks have rules limiting what info they’ll give up without a warrant, and the staff are trained in those rules.
“I’m sorry, Agent, but our policy is not to divulge any Bank records in the absence of a warrant or court order.”
Exactly what I feared. “I just need the lobby. The investigation involves cash withdrawals,” I argue. “Lobby space is public, no privacy rights or proprietary info involved.”
“Of course,” he says, “and as soon as you procure a warrant, we’d be happy to cooperate fully.”
“You can cooperate now.” I lean in, getting in his face a little. “This is urgent. You want me to go to your superior with this and tell him you’re obstructing justice?”
“No staff of SCAPE Credit and Finance would ever obstruct justice. We cooperate fully with the authorities and vigorously support the work of law enforcement, but we have an obligation to our customers and shareholders to protect proprietary information.” He smiles, completing the lines he probably read out of a corporate manual five minutes ago. “I’m sorry, but you understand my job is to follow policy.”