“All you need to do is put this in his work computer,” Moses said. “Just get this into his laptop, and you’re done.”
“Nothing else?” She looked doubtful.
“That’s all. It’s a lot, actually. The software on the stick will do the rest. Kook modified it. As long as it gets plugged in while he’s already logged in, it should be able to do the rest. All you need to do his get him away from his computer for two seconds. Spill some soda on him, get him to change his shirt. That’s it. Simple. It just takes a couple seconds for the software to run.”
“And it won’t… you won’t point all this at him?”
Moses looked at her sadly. “If we find what we think we’re going to find, people are going to be so busy suing Fortune 100 companies that no one’s going to be worrying about you or your family. People will go after the money; all the money is in the companies. Banks Strategy Partners is tiny in comparison to the whales they’ll be hunting.”
He placed the USB stick in her hand.
She looked crushed and overwhelmed. But then, everyone did, when they first got the download. He remembered how he’d felt when he and Cynthia had started piecing it together years ago. Then Kook and Adam and Tank. Each one of them with his or her own story of loss, and all of them connected. All of them with their memories of sitting in courtrooms, too late to do anything except sue. No eye for an eye. No pound of flesh. Nothing except a check from some class action, with the lawyers walking away rich and everyone else putting a dollar amount on the bodies that they’d put in the ground.
Each time Moses had laid out the reality of their situation, they’d been shell-shocked at first, but they’d understood. But then, they’d all been predisposed to believe. They’d all felt the pain that Banks Strategy Partners dealt out on the world. It made them more than willing to step up.
Alix, though?
All she’d ever felt were the benefits of her father’s work. While other people were watching their moms die of cancer or their dads on a dialysis machines, Alix was flying down to Saint Barts. How much harder would it be for a girl like that to take in this kind of information?
What must it be like to find out that your father was involved in the dark business of zero-sum, balancing shareholder profits and executive bonuses against the ruin that they visited upon the people of the world?
Moses had watched Simon Banks long enough to think the man looked like a pretty decent dad. Distracted, sure, but he might actually be a better parent than either of Moses’s own had been. For sure he was better than Tank’s. The man was good people—to the people who were his.
But now Alix knew that her father was something more. The smiling facade hid dark bargains of power and influence and money.
A part of Moses longed to comfort her.
It’s not your fault you got born into the wrong family, he thought. She wasn’t responsible; her father was. She’d been born into the wrong place at the right time, and so now she was in her father’s evil up to her neck.
Moses was surprised at how much empathy he felt for her, seeing her looking so wrecked.
But he sure as hell wasn’t going to comfort her. That wasn’t his role. Cynthia was the one who was there to give Alix comfort. His job was to push the puzzle piece into place, just as he’d pushed every other puzzle piece into place, building a picture of the world that would finally make sense, that would finally let all his losses make sense.
Cynthia rattled the doors suggestively. “We doing this?”
Moses took out a strip of cloth. “Sorry,” he said. “We’ve got to do this.”
Alix looked surprised.
“Blindfold,” Moses said apologetically. “We don’t really want you leading people back here.”
“You don’t trust me,” she accused.
“We’re careful,” Moses said. “Stakes are high.”
“But I already saw the warehouse when we drove here,” she protested.
“That was night, this is day.” He shrugged. “Humor us. Cyn took you the long way last time. You’re going direct now. We need to get you back to your old man before he calls in the feds. It’s better if you don’t know exactly how to get back.”
Alix looked like she was about to protest again, but Cyn said, “It’s safer for everyone like this.”
Hesitantly, she nodded.
Moses took the cloth and wrapped it around her head, aware of the wisps of her brown hair, seeing her breathing tighten as she lost her sight. He stepped closer, smelling Cyn’s shampoo in Alix’s hair, so different from when he had stood behind her at Seitz when they’d started the cascade of events that had led to this moment.
Standing this close to her was surprisingly electric. He felt his own breathing quicken. Even disheveled and dressed in Cyn’s clothes, Alix did something for him. Even with her veneer of upper-crust Connecticut stripped away, she made his pulse pound.
Or maybe it was because all that garbage had been stripped away.
In this moment, Alix seemed so much more real and normal, separated from the posturing of her wealthy suburbs. He remembered her in the cage. The way she’d seized on his wrist and yanked him into the bars. Surprisingly strong. So determined that he’d barely gotten away. As hard core as Kook, as smart as Cynthia, as smooth as Adam. Moses liked her. Despite himself, he liked her.
It worried him.
“You keeping your eye on the target?” Kook had asked a few nights before. “You getting distracted?”
“Hell if I know,” Moses muttered.
“What’s that?” Alix asked, turning blindly toward him, reaching out.
“Nothing,” Moses covered. “I wasn’t saying anything.”
“You going to take all day?” Cyn asked, pointedly. Her gaze was knowing. Moses glared at her and finished the knots, making them tighter than necessary, showing that he didn’t care. Proving to Cyn that Alix Banks wasn’t anything other than a puzzle piece for him.
“All done,” he said. He stepped back and was instantly sorry for the distance.
Cynthia took Alix’s hand. She pulled aside the sliding warehouse door and led her out into bright sunshine. Moses and Kook followed, watching as Cyn guided her into the back of the car. Cyn climbed in with her, keeping her company, making her feel safe, and also making sure she didn’t take off the blindfold.
They slammed the door. The little orange car pulled out.
“Here we go,” Kook said.
“Yeah,” Moses muttered. “Here we go.”
“Think she’ll do the right thing?”
Moses gazed up at the sun. There wasn’t much to say. They’d made their choices. Moses was surprised to find the sun had moved so far across the sky. They’d been talking all day.
“We’re betting a lot on this girl,” Kook pressed.
“You’re telling me.”
“If this goes sidewise, we’re all screwed,” Kook said. “High stakes now.”
“It was always high stakes. We’re just finally seeing it.”
“I’m just saying.”
“She’s the one,” Moses said, finally. “The plan’s good. And she’s the right one.”
Tank came up behind them, rolling fast across the smooth concrete. He came to a halt, popped his skateboard. “She’s the only one,” he said.
“Well, then it’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?” Moses said.
Kook gave a snort of disgust. “You better be sure you know what you’re doing.”
Am I?
How could he be sure? It suddenly felt as if his careful puzzle had become jigsaw pieces flung into the air, with his counting on them all falling into place perfectly.