Page 59 of Tangled

“But we only have one computer,” she said.

He stretched his face into a grin that he didn’t feel. “Two-hour delivery saves the day. I’m going to get my usual shampoo, too. This hotel stuff is acid-stripping my hair.”

Colleen’s phone shivered on the bed and beeped, as it had been doing several times a minute for the past hour.

Tristan asked, “Is someone trying to get ahold of you?”

“Oh, no. That’s the Sherwood Forest forum. I put up a post telling them that I wasn’t dead or kidnapped by aliens because the rumors were flying. I mean, jeez, I hadn’t logged on for a few days. The conspiracy theories had gotten out of control.”

The phone buzzed again. “So they’re still direct-messaging you?”

“Oh, no. It’s just people commenting on my post. There are a lot of replies.”

A few hours later, a text pinged Tristan’s phone that read, You will receive a phone call from Rogue Security within the next fifteen minutes.

He had to get Colleen out of the room.

Or,hecould leave.

She would want to come with him, or she would rightfully get upset that he wasn’t working as hard as he could on finishing the Anonymity program and thus freeing Jian and Anjali.

So Tristan stretched and scratched his stomach. “Do you know what I could go for, for lunch?”

Colleen gestured to the still heavily laden breakfast tray by the front door. “Sausage and eggs? Pastries and hash browns?”

“A burrito,” Tristan said. “Where’s the best place around here to get a burrito?”

“Los Dos Molinos, but they don’t do LunchRun. They don’t have any delivery.”

Perfect.“It seems like a crime to come to Phoenix and not have a really good burrito. I am craving a really good burrito.”

“Craving?You pregnant?” she snarked.

“I know you’re ahead with the debugging. It’s easy to make these burner credit cards. Would you be so good as to run and pick up some burritos whilst I bash out this code?”

Colleen glanced at the hotel room window that overlooked a golf course, lush green fairway islands in riverbeds of rocky desert clay. “I’ve been cooped up lately, first in my apartment and now here. Just driving around when we broke into GameShack made me unreasonably happy.”

“I’m always glad to make you unreasonably happy, and I would be unreasonably happy with a burrito. I’m placing the order right now online.” He’d already found the website and filled in their orders. “What kind do you want?”

Colleen chuckled and told him red sauce and chicken, which was the first time he’d seen her smile even a little bit since Anjali had been taken.

“I’ll get beef with the green sauce.”

“Oh, dude.Green?You might want to check that.”

“I like green sauce. I know what I’m doing.”

She smiled at him again. “Yeah, you’re probably right. If it’ll make you type faster, I will get you a burrito. And it’s been right about twelve hours since we uploaded Anonymity Plus into the GameShack servers. It should have propagated through the internet by now, right?”

“Yep, it should be operational by now,” he confirmed.

“So I’m just a ghost now, flitting in and out, and no surveillance cameras can see me.”

That made Tristan smile. “Yes, even if those Butorin assholes or anybody else breaks into a surveillance system and tries to use facial recognition software to find you,youshould be safe.”

Colleen took her phone and purse and walked out the door, leaving Tristan alone in the hotel room.

Just as the door clicked, Tristan’s phone rang.