YOU WOULDthink that after what happened with Clayton, Jacob would have learned his lesson about meeting in coffee shops. Apparently not. He was sitting outside a Starbucks, drinking coffee and frowning at his backup phone. A scruffy blond mop lay at his feet, licking crumbs out of its beard.
Simon pulled to the side of the road, ignored the aggravated blaring from cars behind him, and leaned over the passenger seat to pop the door open.
“Since when do you have a dog?” he asked when Jacob looked up.
Jacob shrugged, drained the dregs of whatever sugar-bastardized coffee he’d been drinking, grabbed the folder, and stood up. He tugged on the dog’s lead. It grunted, flattened itself resentfully against the pavement, and sighed so hard it looked like it was trying to melt.
“I borrowed him for the afternoon,” Jacob said as he pinned the folder under his elbow and bent down to pick the animal up.
He shoved the dog into the footwell, climbed in, and slammed the door behind him. The dog grumbled under its breath and sniffed the carpet and the seat under Jacob’s knee. As Jacob yanked on the seat belt, it propped its chin on the stained knee of his jeans and squinted suspiciously at Simon.
Simon reached down to let the dog sniff his hand. Its nose was cold and wet against his palm. “I never imagined you were a dog person,” he said.
“I know,” Jacob said. “I’m a cat guy. Right?”
Simon gave the dog a scratch under the chin and threw Jacob a dry look. “I was thinking more lizard.”
“Too much work,” Jacob said and buckled himself in. “The dog was a prop—short notice means shortcuts, and a cute dog is the oldest distraction in the book—but his owner had ended her shift when I went back. Now I’m stuck with Fozzy here until tomorrow.”
Apparently Simon’s fingers passed whatever test scruffy terriers were interested in, because Fozzy gave his thumb a judicious lick for approval and flopped down on the car mat. The smell of hot, tired dog already filled the car.
“Did it work, at least?” Simon asked as he watched the traffic in the mirror for a chance to pull out.
Jacob considered the question and wobbled his hand. “I got in. Whether I got anythingusefulis another matter.” He tapped his fingers against the folder he’d been juggling. It was stuffed with bits of paper. “I need to sort through all of this first. Separate the useful information from the noise.”
An asshole in a pickup cut off a redhead in a Subaru. The exchange of abuse slowed traffic enough for Simon to pull out from the curb.
He paused, sniffed the air, and wrinkled his nose. “Why does it smell like old milk?”
Jacob sniffed the folder and shrugged, apparently not able to smell it anymore.
“I got most of it from the trash. They really like that yogurt bar at PeaPod.”
Simon snorted. “When you hacked our system, I was impressed. I’m starting to wonder if I should have just been embarrassed.”
“It’s industrial espionage, not James Bond,” Jacob said. “For every hour I spend infiltrating corporate environments like a pilfering chameleon in a good suit, I spend five going through their coffee grounds. You’d be surprised what people throw out without shredding. Well, most places. But if it makes you feel better….” He pulled a cracked plastic oval out of his pocket and waved it in Simon’s peripheral vision. “I got a few bits and pieces off the office manager’s computer, but I need to buy a new computer before I can tell if it’s anything interesting.”
“You could use mine.”
Jacob flashed a thin smile. “No offense? I prefer to keep my contacts and their anonymous Dark Net chat spaces anonymous.”
“Your life is in danger.” It would have been a decisive argument for most, but Jacob just shrugged. For a professed coward, he was surprisingly blasé about threats to his life more than five minutes in the future.
“So is my ability to fly without a fat customs officer sticking his sausage fingers up my ass, because your cyber team got close enough to piss my people off,” Jacob said. He opened the folder and peeled bits of paper off plastic sheets. “I think I’ll grab a new computer. I don’t need anything custom made, an off-the-rack gaming rig should do the job.”
“Do you trust anyone?” Simon asked.
Jacob glanced up from a receipt. “No,” he said. “You?”
The question plucked one of the crossed wires in Simon’s mind. It wasn’t a hot day, but a memory of ripples of distortion rising from the sticky tarmac overlaid the reality. He knew it wasn’t real, that it was the past, but part of his brain wassurehe was still in the desert, with the heat and the itch of sweat under his uniform.
He’d known Medo, the man who flagged them down. He was an easygoing slacker with a taste for American beer and folding American money. He was supposed to have good info for them.
Then the world broke apart. Simon remembered the wave of tanned hands, the white sleeves flapping, and the weight of metal under him as he hit the brakes, and it didn’t matter whether Medo had been a victim or the perpetrator. He’d still fucked them over.
Simon swallowed the dry stone in his throat and forced it back down his gullet. He could see why his mind was making the connection—friends and liars—but it wasn’t the same. Nobody had gotten killed.
Except Clayton, he supposed.
