Page 78 of Twisted Enemy
KATE
Iwake in the middle of the night, dressed only in my bra and knickers. The dim nightstand lamp casts an oily yellow pall over everything.
Lying in the center of the lumpy mattress, I try to figure out what woke me. The trucks are still loud on the highway. A television squawks from the room above mine. Water is running somewhere; one of my neighbors must have flushed a toilet.
It’s a minor miracle I was able to sleep at all.
I stretch for my mobile. By reflex, my finger falls on the SparkChat app. For so many years, I dropped into the Raiders’ chatroom when I couldn’t get to sleep. At least one of the guys was always online, lying about women he’d rogered, dreaming about what he’d do when he truly made it big.
Red Cap is dead to me. But I send a quick email to Carlotta Mirabelli.
From: [email protected]
Re: Important Communications Platform
I’d like to set up an online chat room for all members, sooner rather than later. SparkChat works for me, unless you prefer an alternative.
I hope sending the message will ease my mind and let me fall back to sleep. But the urge to check for a reply in less than a minute is overpowering. When I find my mailbox empty, my fingers skate back to SparkChat by habit. I clench my fists to keep from tapping.
I’m going to be awake for a while.
Pushing myself to a sitting position on the thin mattress, I shove a pillow behind my back and lean against the grimy headboard. Staring at the blank screen of my mobile, I try to take stock of where things stand with Tarasov.
He knows by now that the paintings his men purchased were forged. Someone must have told him that Cole left the freeport in disgrace. He might even know I was abandoned here in Dover.
I imagine how the bratva will laugh about that. Kate Lynch left to fend for herself. The Canton Crew’s wild daughter deserted miles from home. My cheeks flush with a familiar mix of anger and shame.
Cole’s the one who should be ashamed. All his hard work on Viktor, all his careful coding… There’s not a chance Pyotr will take the program now. He’ll assume any code Cole offers is as tainted as the fake paintings.
But what if Cole isn’t the one offering Viktor?
I have a complete copy of the program on my private network, one I can transfer with just a few keystrokes. Of course, Tarasov is too smart to open a random computer file received by mail. He has no reason to trust anything I send him. I’m as much a threat as Cole is.
Unless…
I’ve texted Tarasov—MaskedMarauder—for years. We’ve communicated outside of the group SparkChat and beyond the confines of Winter Reckoning. The vast majority of those messages were one or two words, instructions to log onto platforms that were safe from government interference.
But there’s no reason on earth we can’t have a more substantive conversation tonight.
I start to type before I can think of all the reasons this is terrible idea.
CyberGhost
Mask? You there?
I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until he finally types back.
MaskedMarauder
Why if it isn’t the Lone Cunt herself
I didn’t know the paintings were fake
What’s one more lie between enemies?
Excuse me if I do not believe a word you type
