“Always trust your gut,” Michael said, still typing. Then, he abruptly stopped. “Huh.”
“What is it?” Rhys asked, not able to figure out anything from looking at the impenetrable lines of code swirling around on the computer screen.
“Well, usually hacking into government servers is a piece of piss,” Michael said, sitting back in his expansive computer chair. “CIA, ASIO, MI6, the tax office – it’s not that hard. But I’ve hit a wall when I try to get into this particular batch of files you want.”
Rhys leaned forward. “Can you get around it?”
“Hmmm.” Michael tapped his fingers on his keyboard. “Yeah, I reckon. But it’ll take me some time. Can’t say how much.”
“A day? More than a day?” Rhys prompted him, impatience roiling through him.
“Like I said, I can’t say,” Michael told him, and Rhys could hear the frustration in his voice – he probably didn’t often find something he had to think about how to hack. But then, a smile quirked over his mouth. “Great – a challenge. Finally.”
He looked positively demonic in the light of the computer screen as he leaned forward again, and started typing manically.
“So… youcando it, then,” Rhys asked, glancing at him.
“Yeah, I can.” Michael nodded. “Give me a bit. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m done. But like I said – time.”
“Um, if you’re having so much trouble accessing those files, doesn’t that mean someone isdefinitelytrying to hide something?”
Rhys’s head jerked up. He hadn’t even noticed Maisie coming to stand on the other side of Michael’s computer chair.
He hadn’t thought of that yet. But Maisie definitely had a point.
“Maybe,” Michael said. “Or it might just be that there’s extra layers of security because the Agency knows whoever sent people after you has pretty good hackers, and they don’t want them finding out what’s happened to their guys.”
Maisie glanced at him. “Really? Are they dangerous?”
“Nasty fuckers,” Michael muttered as he typed. “Mercenaries – butshiftermercenaries. And they have pretty deep pockets.You’re lucky I have things like morals and ethics – you should have seen the amount of money they offered me to join their cyber espionage team. I could have been living in luxury by now, lounging around by my own private pool, getting brought champagne by beautiful women –”
“Hey,” Shaz interjected. “Whatbeautiful women would these be, exactly?”
“Beautifulwoman,” Michael quickly amended. “The only beautiful woman in the world, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Nice save,” Rhys muttered, even though it absolutely wasn’t. “But like you need any money. You’ve been making a pretty good living for yourself since the Agency training academy kicked you out.”
“Oh… you used to work for this… this Agency too?” Maisie asked, blinking. “What went wrong?”
“He didn’t – he only went to the academy,” Rhys said. “And he got expelled after six months for hacking into the vending machines and stealing Cheezels.”
“That seems pretty harsh for Cheezels,” Maisie said.
“Forty-eight thousand dollars’ worth of Cheezels,” Rhys told her. “And then he tried to say he didn’t, with a stack of Cheezels boxes as high as the ceiling in his dorm room.”
“Water under the bridge,” Michael said hastily. “Anyway, do you want me to look into this thing for you or not?”
“You’d do it anyway, just for the challenge,” Rhys snorted.
“Well, youdohave me there,” Michael said. “But I’ll tell you now, this isn’t going to happen tonight. This iswhack.I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Rhys didn’t like the sound of that at all. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but the more he found out, the more suspicious he became.
“I got told to take some leave and get out of town for a bit,” he said. “But now I’m thinking I should hang around here.”
“Who told you to go out of town?” Shaz asked, from where she was still sitting on the couch.
“Robb, my boss,” Rhys told her. “Especially after the close call this afternoon. He said I needed rest, even though Idon’t.”
