It wasn’t the first time he’d said something with overt innuendo. This time felt different. It was almost like he wasn’t trying to flirt; he did so withoutthinking.
Jo gave him a small smile and turned to the menu, and another thought crossed her mind. “Wayne.” He looked up from his careful consideration the moment she said his name. “Why does everyone eat, if they no longer haveto?”
“Ah. . .” He leaned in his chair, head tilted to the sky, and then turned back to face her. “I can’t speak for the others, but I eat in part out of habit, and in part to remind me of my humanity.” Her lips parted at the sentiment. As if sensing the weight he’d imparted on the mood, Wayne quickly added. “Plus, food is adelight.”
“That’s true.” Jo was eager to change the topic, regretted asking. She made sure that when the waitress returned she had her order ready. Any awkwardness left with their menus, and Jo returned their focus to the task athand.
“So, we should have time enough. . . I’ll need a day, maybe two, inadvance.”
“Advance of what?” Wayne leaned forward, putting his elbows on thetable.
How would she explain it to someone who described technology as “phonus balonus”? Jo took a deep breath,high level only. “In World War Three and its aftermath, a group known as Incognito became the mostprominent—”
“—cyberterrorists, if you ask any government. Ask Incognito and you’ll get a vastly different answer, Iimagine.”
Jo straightened in surprise. “You know ofthem?”
“Know of them? Doll, I watched them rise from thesidelines.”
“That’s right, you’re really old.” Even though he looked very muchtwenty.
“Not too old,” Wayne’s wounded pride (no doubt)said.
“In any case. . .” She wasn’t about to debate with him on how old he was or wasn’t. “Yuusuke and I were trying to crack into the Black Bank. It’s where all credits are stored and, if it was recognized as a legitimate entity, would count for almost a sixth of globalcommerce.”
“So, you were bankthieves?”
Jo shook herhead.
“What,then?”
“Data thieves,” she corrected. “The Yakuza wanted the data on every account opened with Incognito. . . every transaction that went through the bank. Who was paying who, who really had their hands in what—you nameit.”
“They wanted to know theircompetition.”
“That. Or they were working with the Japanesegovernment.”
“The Japanese government?” Wayne arched his eyebrows. “Perhaps I misheard you, dollface, but why would the Japanese mob work with theirfeds?”
Jo shrugged. It was a good question, one she’d never really quite understood herself. “There’s a long history of it, Yuu said once. Sometimes they’re at odds, sometimes they work together. . . if the terms are right. My guess is that the government wanted to see where money was going in case of an American reunification,and—”
“And the mob would skim a little off the top for doing the dirty work so it wasn’t on the government’s payroll.” Wayne finished softly, looking out over the railing to the city beyond. Before Jo could ask, food arrived and he shifted gears right after the waitress left. “You still haven’t told me why we need to be inParis.”
“Oh, right.” Jo traced the tangents back to the main point of the conversation. “The servers that house the Black Bank have long been rumored to be in the catacombs of Paris, hidden in a fortified area amid the labyrinth. You asked me not to change much? Well, it’s a good thing that was already myplan.”
“Howso?”
“I’m not going to take down the bank. I’m just going to weaken it in the right places so it’ll buckle when Yuu hitsit.”
“And to do that, you need to be in this fortifiedarea?”
“What else?” Jogrinned.
It looked as if Wayne was trying to fight his own grin, but he failed. “We should get to work,then.”
They promptly finished lunch—and it was one of the best lunches she’d had in a long time (ever, really, if she didn’t count her mother’s cooking). It was almost too good to skip out on the check. Almost. But she didn’t have any means to pay even if she wanted to—which was frustrating, because this was a rare case where she did want to. Jo didn’t make herself out to be some Robin Hood. But she knew when having three digits in a bank account felt like a triumph, and she didn’t like screwing over the workingman.
“I need a place we can set up for my prep,” Jo flipped her USB in her pocket over and over, reassuring herself that it was stillthere.
