Abby took a deep breath, rubbed her hands through her hair, and huffed out an exhausted sigh. “First poor Harry, and now this. Did I break a mirror?”
She hurried out, and Rob retraced his steps to check on Jacob. “Is there any tea you’d like? We have green tea, honey and lavender, ginger….”
“Ginger. Sounds good,” Jacob said. He took a deep breath and pulled a tightly pained face as his ribs protested the movement. “Can I use the bathroom?”
Put on the spot, Rob spluttered for a second and then gave in. “Yes. Hold on. I’ll show you where it is. Can you…?” He made an “up” gesture with both hands.
Jacob made a slightly laborious exit from the couch—he needed to look injured, not on the point of death—and nodded.
“Lead on.”
Rob looked relieved he wasn’t going to have to help carry “Jim” to the toilet. He gestured for Jacob to follow him down the hall.
“We were going to redesign all this,” he said conversationally as he waved his hand at the bare walls. “It was going to be all open plan. Don’t know what we’ll do now, though. I mean, did you see the news about our boss?”
“I don’t know.” Jacob said uncertainly and lagged a few steps behind so he could check the offices as they passed. He stuck his hand in his pocket and tapped the IM idling on the screen. “Are you moving out of the city? I didn’t watch the news this morning.”
Rob twisted around and walked backward. “God, no, he was killed. It was… pretty bad.”
“Damn. I’m sorry.”
“Remember the guy in the river?” Rob asked. He nodded when Jacob made himself look startled. “That was him. Harry Clayton. It’s a real shame. He was a bit distant but a nice guy. He—” The phone rang, and he hesitated as habit shifted his weight back to head for his desk.
“Do you need to get that?” Jacob asked. “I can wait…?”
Rob dithered for a second and then pointed. “Just to the bottom of the hall and turn right. It’s through the doors at the end. Just head back to the desk when you’re done? I’ll get someone looking for your dog.”
“Thanks,” Jacob said. “Poor guy will be freaked out.”
Rob waved a hand in busy acknowledgment, ran back to his desk, and grabbed the phone with a breathless “Hello. PeaPod connects.”
Jacob got to the end of the hall and glanced back to make sure Rob was distracted by the call. He was. The phone was tucked into his shoulder as he scribbled in a notebook. Good. Jacob had paid one of his old colleagues enough to call in and pretend to be the press. Besides, there wasn’t much time. Jacob turned away from the door and loped down to Abby’s office—he’d identified it earlier from an interview she gave when the company moved into the building.
The door wasn’t locked—that sense of community and all. He bumped it open with his hip and stepped inside. It was a mess. Folders and sheets of paper were piled up on the desk and stacked on the floor behind it. Pens chewed down to shrapnel were stuffed into an old cracked mug with aBuffylogo on it.
Jacob sighed. If he had moretime, this would be a goldmine. Since he had minutes, he’d have preferred a neat freak. But he’d see what he could get. He pulled a battered memory stick out of his pocket. Without a good computer and an excellent VPN, he couldn’t access most of his usual toys. However, the stick had been part of his industrial-espionage starter kit, thanks to a computer forensics professor who liked to demonstrate a bit too much. It would do.
He plugged it in to the computer and tapped the space bar with his knuckle. The screen woke up—a tasteful beach scene nearly obscured by a maze of files, jpgs, and icons. It was enough to make his eyes hurt. Jacob shook his head, pulled his sleeves down over his hands, and set the program to cloning the computer. It wasn’t as sophisticated as some of his other toys, but it would get something. Besides, sometimes the most useful information was still hard copy. He grabbed the notepad sitting next to the phone. Usually he’d stick to scanning the relevant pages, but he didn’t have the time, and it didn’t really matter if PeaPod knew they’d been cleaned out—as long as they didn’t know it was him.
He stuffed the notebook down the back of his jeans and tugged his shirt over it. Let Abby think she’d mislaid it. By the time she realized it was gone, he would be too.
A quick flick through the papers on the desk turned up nothing obviously interesting. Jacob quickly pulled out the drawers and found half a bar of dark chili chocolate, sachets of Swiss Miss hot cocoa, and an envelope with “Receipts” scrawled on it. The envelope went into his pocket, pressed awkwardly against his hip bone. He snapped off a square of chocolate and stuck it under his tongue.
The stopwatch he’d set in his head was ticking down. He dropped to his knee, hunted through the bin, and dug out scraps of paper from under the banana peel and leaking pens. His fingers ended up smudged with ink and sticky from the dregs of fruit smoothies. The bits of paper went into his pockets or down the side of his shoes, spread out so they wouldn’t call attention.
From over his head, the computer binged an acknowledgment that the cloning program was finished.
Jacob sat back on his heels and glanced over the stack of folders behind the desk. His fingers itched to have a good look through them, but he had to prioritize. After the last few weeks, he thought he’d used up all the luck he could push. If he hadn’t gotten anything useful, they’d just have to make do.
He hooked an elbow over the edge of the desk and hauled himself to his feet. The light on the side of the memory stick flickered green. He unplugged it with a tug and tucked it into his pocket as he headed for the door. The plastic was uncomfortably warm against his fingers. It might be time to put that particular device out to pasture.
The hall was still empty when he stepped out of the office. He wiped his sticky hands on his shirt and headed for the toilets, where he was meant to be. The doors opened into a white unisex room with scrubbed white tiles and a pervasive smell of bleach. There were Gameboys in a tray by the door. To use instead of magazines, Jacob supposed, although he didn’t fancy grabbing one.
He washed his hands with scalding hot water and a bar of heavy creamy soap and splashed his face with a palmful of honey-scented water. He was about to run his fingers through his hair when he glanced into the mirror and the vaguely unfamiliar reflection pulled him up short. The lank brown hair changed his appearance enough that he didn’t think anyone who’d seen the security footage would immediately recognize him, but he doubted the mousse was waterproof. Dye running down his neck would probably make someone suspicious.
It was sloppy. He shook his hands, shedding lather and drops of water over the pristine white bowls, and frowned at his reflection. The dark-haired bruised man in the mirror frowned back. It didn’t look quite how he expected—less stern and more sullen. The mess had gotten him into bad habits.
Fuck.
