Wayne shook his head. “He can’t. He lost thebet.”
“So that’s your magicthen?”
“Superficially, yes,” Wayne replied, but he still wasn’t looking at her. “I have to say something that I’m betting on and money has to beinvolved.”
“Yournickel?”
“Anymoney.”
Jo thought about this for a second. “So that’s what you used onme.”
At that, Wayne finally glanced in her direction. He arched his eyebrows, noting her calm tone and demeanor. “I thought you’d be moreupset.”
Jo just shrugged. “What would that get menow?”
The odd thoughtfulness finally seemed to bleed out of Wayne’s features, his shoulders shaking with a quiet laugh. “You’ve really got your head on straight, doll.” He paused, mulling something over, and then added, “Is it really worth that muchcabbage?”
Jo frowned, caught off guard by the question. “What?”
“Mynickel.”
“I don’t know of any currency calledcabbage.”
“Cash, dame,” Wayne sighed, but he wassmiling.
“It is a few hundred years old.” Jo shrugged. She leaned back on her hands. “My mother was obsessed with old America, the way it was before the war. She kept an old coin collection, so when you said nickel, it jarred mymemory.”
“I see.” Wayne didn’t press further, and Jo found herself relieved he didn’t. She wasn’t sure why she’d offered the personal anecdote, but it hurt a lot more thanexpected.
And that hurt was exactly what she needed to get back on track; no better distraction than a good codingsession.
“I’ve done everything I can here,” she said, getting to her feet with astretch.
Wayne looked down at the computer set up and raised an eyebrow. “So, whatnext?
“Now we actually break into abank.”
Chapter 18
Catacomb Heist
THE LOCATIONOF the Black Bank was one of the best and worst kept secrets in the hacking community. It was common knowledge that the Black Bank’s servers were somewhere in the catacombs. But where, exactly? That was a lot more difficult to drudge up information on. By the time Jo had managed to pin down the most likely location (leveraging her past research with Yuusuke), she was down to only three hours of actual timeleft.
Which was fine. If everything went smoothly, then she would be in and out within the hour. Yuu would have all the routes laid out for him like a lit-up aerospace runway, and Jo would head back to the Society with two whole hours to spare. Simple,right?
Now, it was just a matter of gettinginside.
The most likely location was, unsurprisingly, hidden deep underneath Paris. It was the perfect cover—the ideal location, large enough to house any necessary tech, cold enough for high-speed processing (though they’d no doubt invested a lot of money in some sort of system that could handle the moisture), and buried away where only the reckless urban explorer could find it. As she scanned digital mapping and shared posts on the back pages of cataphiles (self-professed catacomb explorers), leading them to what was most likely the closest entrance, Jo couldn’t help herexcitement.
This was the goal that she had lost her life for. It had been a task she couldn’t accomplish as a mortal, but was now attainable in her new “not quite dead” state. Jo swallowed, balling her fists and stepping off the main street her and Wayne had been walking down. Even if she couldn’t do this herself, she’d see Yuusuke accomplishit.
She glanced at Wayne, making sure he was still in tow. He gave her a short nod of determination. Jo responded in kind with a single thought:goodman.
They walked down off the side street, through a narrow passage between two buildings, down an alley, and into a small side courtyard that looked all but forgotten bytime.
Jo made a noise of disgust at a narrow iron door, diagonally set into the stone between the ground and the wall of a building before them. It had wept rusty tears that now ran like rivulets of dried blood in the stone around it. But it wasn’t the condition of the portal that had her frustrated; it was a hefty padlock securing the doors closed. Electronic locks she could do, but old school was a bit out of herwheelhouse.
“Let’s break in,” Wayne said nonchalantly, as if talking about theweather.
