“Still too much adrenaline,” Tank said. He pulled out his ever-present inhaler, took a puff, held his breath, and then let it out slowly.
“You doing okay?” Moses asked.
Tank shrugged. “Better than some days, anyway.”
“You should rest.”
Tank nodded in agreement but still didn’t move. He eyed the high-def video streaming in.
“Is that her?”
Moses glanced over at the video streams. Tiled views of a hypermodern house. Curved rooflines and iron struts and high balconies.
Alix Banks and her friends were lying out beside a pool in the backyard.
“I wanted to see how she reacted,” Moses said.
“And?”
“They bitched a lot about their cars being searched.”
Tank shook his head mournfully. “Nothing shakes these people, does it?”
Moses grinned. “We’re just getting started.”
“The prank went good, though, right? It did what you wanted?”
“Yeah, it was tight. You did good.” Moses patted Tank’s shoulder. “You wired that up. You’re like Michelangelo, except with squirt guns and electric pumps.”
A smile ghosted across Tank’s features at the compliment. “So now what?”
“I don’t already got you doing enough?” Moses laughed.
“Metalwork,” Tank shrugged. “It’s not complicated.”
Moses leaned back and stretched. “Well, right now I’m going to watch and see how they all adjust. See how our old friend Simon Banks reacts. Maybe poke at our girl Alix a little more and see if she does something interesting. I kind of want to see how that father-daughter relationship holds up now that our girl’s got some questions in her head. Once we see how everyone reacts, then we’ll pick our next play.”
Moses went back to watching the feed. Tank didn’t move.
Moses looked up. “What?”
Tank shrugged. “You watch her a lot.”
“That’s the job,” Moses said.
“Long as you’re watching her for biz, and not ’cause you’re getting all wrapped up in the target.”
Moses made a face of irritation. “I’m the one who picked the target.”
“I’m just sayin’ you’re spending a lot of time looking at a girl.”
Moses glanced back to the video feeds and the girls beside the pool. The one called Sophie had left, but Alix and Cynthia were still there. “I’m detail-oriented.”
“Detail-oriented on tight blouses,” Tank said.
Moses glared. Tank was smart enough to back off. “Sorry,” he muttered, and dropped his welding mask over his face.
Instant defense. The kid clamming up, putting up his walls. Moses almost felt bad that he’d made Tank close up like that.
You’re better than what he had before, Moses reminded himself.
Tank said something else, muffled by the mask. Moses assumed it was another apology.
Kook wandered into the computer lab. She was drinking something the color of luminescent slime and loaded with stimulants as she got ready for another coding session. Her electric-blue hair stuck out in wild directions, tousled from sleep. As she passed, a wave of sweet herb wafted over Moses and Tank, seemingly embedded in her skin.
“Morning,” she mumbled as she stepped over power cables and plug splitters.
“It’s afternoon.”
“It’s morning in the Philippines,” Kook said. “That’s all I care about.” She plopped down in front of the computer gear they’d set up for her work.
Tank said something else from behind his mask.
“What’s that?” Moses asked.
Tank pushed up his defenses. “I said I’m going to need more money.” He gestured vaguely toward where they’d set up his workshop, waving his wire and torch. “I’m almost out of iron.”
Moses nodded sourly. They were starting to burn through money now, all of it going faster as pieces fell into place. He needed to plan another cash run soon. Someplace nice and far away that wouldn’t cause any disruptions in the surveillance that they knew was always there, circling overhead, gazing down from cameras in streets, peering over the shoulders of convenience store clerks, and watching from traffic cams, evaluating them all as they moved under suspicious eyes.
First Rule: You’re always watched.
Second Rule: See rule one.
“How’s the coding going?” he called to Kook.
“Fuckers think they’re smarter than me,” she answered. She was bringing flatscreens to life, twenty-nine-inch monsters casting an ethereal glow across her features, glitter of blue and green and red on her eyebrow and nose piercings. A solid wall of monitors ringed her, four huge workstations, filled with tiny windows, strings of code, rotating street views from security cams, the pulsing equalizer beat of her music. Below her desk, open motherboards and fans hummed and glowed, a spiderweb of chips and backup hard drives.
Kook stuffed in her earbuds and started typing. More task windows opened. Dozens of windows now, long cascades of computer code flowing past under Kook’s command. Her pausing and reading and then going on, comparing chunks, some of it regular computer code, C++, Java, and ancient COBOL, other parts in compiled binary. Kook read it all, immersed in the language of machines. With all four monitors blazing around her, it was like the flare of a nuclear explosion on her features. She sucked on the green slime drink through a straw and rubbed her eyes and stared into the rivers of code. “Fuckers think they know shit,” she muttered.
“You think you can be ready in time?” Moses pressed.
“What?” She pulled her earbuds out.
“Are you going to be ready?”
“Just got to surf the wave.” She grinned and toasted Moses with her toxic drink. “It’ll take me right to shore.”
Tank snorted. “Yeah, Kook, you keep on surfing, girl. Let us know when you ride that wave in from crazy.”
“Beat it, Tank. I’m not stoned enough to ignore you, and that’s all that’s keeping me from feeding you to Adam’s rats.”
Unlike with Moses, Tank didn’t seem to be bothered at all by Kook’s threats. With Moses, a wrong word turned Tank cautious. With Kook, he never flinched.
“That reminds me,” Tank said. “We’re going to need more rat food. Adam’s complaining about it.”
“So Adam can put it on the list,” Moses said absently. “He can get it when he’s getting the party supplies.”
Tank shook his head vigorously. “If you let Adam do it, he’ll buy them gourmet cheese. I thought you said we were supposed to be watching money. Adam will buy them some big wheel of English aged cheddar, and he’ll have us all eating dog food.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll talk to him.” He tried to turn back to the streaming video, but Tank still wasn’t leaving.
“Is there something else?”
“I just think you should stop looking at her all the time,” Tank said.
“I think you should mind your own business,” Moses said, but to his surprise, Tank didn’t back down. The boy’s brow furrowed, and he seemed to hunch in on himself, but he pressed on anyway.
“You almost screwed up when you cloned the key card.”
“How was I supposed to know the headmaster was just going to come after me like that?”
“How were you supposed to know?” Kook glanced over. “Your uncle would have called that sloppy.”
“You didn’t hear what that man said to me,” Moses protested.
“Still put the wrong kind of heat on us,” Kook said.
“I got the man’s keys cloned, didn’t I?”
Kook was looking at him now, more seriously. “Sure you did. In the most public and obvious way. It made you stand out. It probably put your face on some camera. And it made you look like a thug. You’re not a thug, and you made yourself look like one.”