Page 35

He grinned. “Occupational secret.” He twisted his wrist, admiring the stupid thing before flipping it onto his bed. “We were scheduled to meet tomorrow.”

“You really think I was going to show up at POM Headquarters of my own free will? There’s no reason you can’t give me the data here and now.”

The grin fell off his face, and he stood. My gaze snagged on the hard line of muscle over his hip before I managed to look away.

“Don’t act coy. All things you’ve seen before.” He didn’t pick up the towel as he walked over to the terminal in the corner of his room. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

I glared at him.

“What, you don’t trust me?” He turned back, his smile all teeth.

“Not even a nanopulse.”

“Probably smart.” He ran his fingers over the virtual keyboard, and I saw the POM network pop up on the screen behind him. He stepped to the side, offering the terminal to me while putting himself on full display.

It was an almost irresistible temptation.

The terminal, of course.

It called to me with alpha-level clearance to POM’s internal network. I kept my eyes on the screen.

“There you go, full access. Maybe you can use that cunt to knock me out and steal my credentials too?”

I ignored him and walked up to the desk. Multiple screens floated in front of me, each displaying different sets of data.

“What exactly am I looking at here?” I asked.

“You’ve heard the news of our dearly departed CTO, I’m sure.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke.

I crossed my arms. “Yeah, should I shed a tear for the loss of one of our beloved trillionaires?”

He chuckled at that. “I wouldn’t waste the water, personally. But it might interest you to know that he was brutally murdered.”

He was right—that was interesting. I shouldn’t have been surprised that POM managed to keep that out of the press. I had to wonder why.

“How was he murdered?”

Cy’s face split into another wicked grin. “Want the details, huh? I do love my women bloodthirsty.” He pulled up a picture on his terminal screen. “Poor yatsu was blown to bits.”

I leaned across the desk and looked at the images. The whole apartment was covered in blood, which I assumed belonged to Renard, but nothing else seemed damaged. I swiped across the screen and zoomed in on the images. That couldn’t be right.

“This doing it for you, doll? Gory enough? Should’ve known you’d be into some freaky shit.” He got his body right up next to mine— much too close. He placed his arm over me, his hand resting beside mine on the desk, and I felt him lean in toward my neck. I hip-checked him.

Before he could protest, I asked, “Why did you bring me in on this? I’m not a detective—I’m a whore, remember?”

At that, I saw anger cross his face. “And I’m a gangbanger, but here we fucking are. You’re not asking the right questions.”

I didn’t dare look away from him, back at the screen—every one of my survival instincts flaring. “How the hell did he explode? There were no residuals.”

“Ah, now that’s the right question.” He pushed passed me—rougher than necessary—and swiped the screen. “Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely nothing in the apartment. And yet this guy was as splattered as a strip club VIP floor. Now how do you think that happened?”

He swiped again, and a new set of data appeared.

I leaned in closer. “That’s EM field data, from the city’s monitoring system.” I swiped through the layers, watching the data spike and then die out completely—just as the timestamp read 2:34:58. “This is the data from the Green explosion.”

“Ding ding ding. But it also happens to be exactly when our beloved CTO departed this world.” As he said it, his eyes hardened.

“You don’t think I had something to do with this murder?”

“Do you?” He was crowding my space again, pinning me against the desk. I shoved at his bare chest.

“I told you before, I wasn’t in on the explosion, I don’t know—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He backed off. “But you’re going to help me figure out what the connection is.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Oh, I know there is. But I need someone with data reconstruction expertise to figure out what it is.”

“Not much to go off here,” I muttered, turning back to the screens.

“I thought you said you were good.”

“I am.”

“Then prove it.” He walked away from me then, rooting around in a drawer and finally putting on some pants.

I swiped at my temple, and DITA started pulling all the data for me. As the download completed, I scanned through what was on the screen. Data from three different beacons around the Green data center, marked out on a map. Another point lay within the triangle.

“What’s that?”

“Renard’s apartment.” Cy stood beside me again, mercifully dressed.

I bit my lip. “DITA, run a frequency analysis on the signal just before the explosion.”

“Got an idea already?” he asked.

“I told you—I’m good.”

“Perfect. You’ll have something to show the big boss tomorrow, then.”

My stomach dropped. “What? Tomorrow ? And—no. There’s no fucking way I’m meeting with any of your bosses.”

He shrugged. “Sorry, doll. POM is an office-first company. You’re still expected to show up to our meeting tomorrow—and now with results, since you have the data.”

I didn’t respond, and I saw his body tighten.

“Unless, of course, you want me to tell them exactly who leaked their shield tech.”

“I can do this without going in. There’s no reason—”

He cut me off again. “Look, I don’t love having to babysit your ass at the tower either, but what the big boss wants, the big boss get— and it seems like that’s your perfect ass in a chair.”

“Maybe we can stop at HR on the way, and I can file a sexual harassment complaint.”

“Doll, if I were harassing you, you’d know. Besides, HR doesn’t cover anyone below floor twelve.”

DITA chimed—download complete. Two more keystrokes and I was moving through the directory, downloading everything I could grab as I went.

“Hey! I wasn’t born yesterday.” Cy slapped the side of his terminal, and the whole thing shut down. I gave him an innocent smile.

“How’d you really find me, anyway?” he asked.

“You’re human. You leave a data trail, just like anybody else.”

At that, he gave me a strange look but didn’t press it. He turned and walked out.

“See you in the morning then, corpo.”

The data for a mystery that POM’s internal team—one of the best reconstruction units in the world—couldn’t solve was now in my grasp. It was the key to my salvation. But more than that, it was a puzzle that only I could unlock.

My pinky twitched, and I balled my fist. I would show them what I was worth.

I would show them all.