I missed August. Hated to admit it, but I did. I wanted to trust him. But I couldn’t trust Special Projects, not after what they’d done to me. ‘A compliment. Thanks. I can encourage Mila to talk to you. But I don’t know where to find her, and that’s the truth.’
‘Getting your kid back, that’s huge to me. But I’m going to find Mila, Sam, with or without your help, and if you get in my way the friendship does not trump my duty.’ He folded his heavy arms. August played college football at Minnesota, and he’s a lot bigger than me. More pure muscle. I am smaller and faster and a little less naive.
The worst enemy is a one-time friend. I knew that.
‘I’m not your enemy, Sam, and I won’t be, unless you choose to be mine.’ His word choice made me feel like he’d read my mind. He picked up the martini, finished it with a toss.
‘It’s too warm now, it’s no good.’
‘Things don’t stay good,’ he said, and I knew: something had happened. ‘I hope you get Daniel back, safe and sound. You know I hope that more than anything else, Sam.’
‘I know.’
I used to fight with my brother Danny and the awkward, awful silence between us felt like the one now between me and August. A bitterness that could be sweetened with a word, but neither of us was willing to add that ingredient. He turned and he walked out, and I turned to go upstairs to pack for Las Vegas. The Round Table had a private jet I could use, and I wasn’t waiting a moment longer. I would head for Vegas tonight.
7
Amsterdam
Jack and Ricki had met under less than auspicious circumstances: she appeared in a hacker’s chat room when he was still in New York City, looking to trade piracy software for counterfeit DVDs. Jack didn’t think film piracy was really very cool, he knew it was theft, but in her postings Ricki was funny and charming and she was Dutch and so he thought she was hot. No one on the hacker discussion group knew he was Jack Ming, the guy the New York police wanted to bring in for questioning.
I got to run and hide. My parents are so uncool, he’d written.
Come and hide in Holland, she wrote in answer.
So he had, just on impulse, and he and Ricki had met for coffee in Delft after he arrived on a fake passport a friend back in New York helped him get. Instead of the dainty Dutch girl he imagined, Ricki was half a head taller than him and an immigrant from Senegal. She was funny, smart, pretty, and oddly tough. He was thoroughly overwhelmed and intimidated by her. He didn’t know what to say. Their coffee dates became fewer; he figured she was disappointed in him. He was a geek on the run. And he kept too much hidden in himself for her taste. How unappealing was that?
The hacker community tended toward what Jack thought of as a distant tightness. They stayed close online but they didn’t hang out much in real life. A person who was socially nimble behind the cocoon of a screen could be one who consistently missed normal interaction cues in a cafe or a pub. Ricki was one such individual. She arrived at the coffee shop thirty minutes late, stuck a wad of cash into one hand and a bag of cheap clothes into his other hand and said, ‘You owe me.’
‘Where’d you get the clothes? All the stores are closed.’
She shrugged. ‘Old boyfriend before you left them behind, but I think they should fit. You’re about the same size.’
He tried to ignore the stab of jealousy he felt. ‘Yes, I know. I’m going to owe you more. I need a place to stay. Just for tonight.’
‘Please.’ Ricki rolled her black-lined eyes. ‘Now you’ve decided to talk?’
‘Just one night.’ He glanced in the bag; the clothes were a lot more colorful and stylish than he would have selected.
‘What kind of trouble are you in?’
‘Nothing major, I just need a place to crash.’
‘Do the police know you’ve checked yourself out of hospital?’
Information was currency. ‘Look, I’ll write a program for you, a Trojan that’ll send you back information from the infected computer. Could be valuable.’
Ricki touched the corner of her mouth with her tongue. Please be greedy, Jack thought. Please.
‘You don’t need to bribe me to help you, Jack!’ She looked wounded. ‘I took a huge risk to find you.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘No. I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean that. I was going to give it to you as a gift. For helping me.’ His voice trailed off.
She sighed. ‘So smart, so clueless. Buy me a coffee with the money I brought you and we’ll go back to my place. I’m just glad you’re okay.’
‘You are?’
‘Duh. No, I’ve often wished you dead. Honestly, you are dumb as a rock.’ But Ricki smiled at him. A short, sweet flick of a smile and it nearly made him cry, he was so happy to see a friendly face.
He changed clothes in the tiny bathroom of the cafe. He bought her a coffee to go. He wanted to put as much distance between him and the hospital as possible. He felt he’d nearly gone insane waiting for her.
The first thing he thought when he saw her apartment was blink and wonder where she actually lived, because there was hardly space for her in the rooms. When they’d dated months ago, she’d never let him come to her place. She was in Amsterdam, he lived in Delft and she came to see him, not the other way around. The apartment was small. One entire wall was full of bookshelves, each holding at least two dozen DVD burners. On the opposite side of the wall he saw neatly packaged DVDs, mostly of films currently playing in theaters. Hundreds of them. He started doing the math in his head.
‘It’s probably about fifty thousand dollars’ worth,’ she said.
‘Wow. And you sell these on the street?’ She had not really talked much about her ‘work’.
‘I used to. That’s how I came here from Senegal. The counterfeiters start you off selling on the streets. I sold DVDs better than anyone. I got promoted. Now I have a street team.’
‘Don’t you get caught?’
‘Not me,’ she laughed.
The machines whirred, all creating illicit product. Machines began to beep, completing their copying, and she started to pull the finished discs from the machines.
She tossed him a T-shirt from a freshly opened box, for a new vampire film that wasn’t out for another three months, with a still shot of the main characters at a critical moment silk-screened on its chest.
‘So. You got shot and had a vacation courtesy of the police,’ she said. She glanced at the raw scar on his neck. He would, Jack thought, need a scarf. The thought of wearing the vampire shirt while having a healing neck wound nearly made him laugh.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re a dangerous boy now, Jack.’ She touched the skin below his scar. ‘Who shot you?’ Excitement brightened her dark eyes.
‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, excuse the cliche, in my case it’s apt.’
‘Nic was shot to death,’ she said. ‘It was in the news.’
‘Yes.’
‘When you were shot?’
‘No. Before. He was dead before I got there.’
‘Well, that wasn’t in the papers.’ Her voice rose. ‘Why not?’
‘Because it wasn’t.’
‘Why?’ Her voice sounded accusatory.
‘Because I suppose the police were protecting me.’
‘And, what, now they’re not.’
‘Now they’re not.’ He weighed his choices. He had few. ‘I killed a man there tonight, Ricki.’