But knowing players’ names won’t help me now. I need their email addresses.
With my new game status, it’s simple enough to download the information. It’s only a little more difficult to search for academic addresses—students or alumni or professors using an address that ends inedu. That list is much shorter—barely a dozen names.
Only one meets my requirements: [email protected].
I pull up Professor Mirabelli’s profile at her university website. She looks young, maybe five or six years older than I am. She specializes in algorithmic game theory. And she’sfaculty liaison with her campus’s chapter of the Delta Alpha Lambda honor society for women engineers.
Going back to Winter Reckoning, I trace Dr. Mirabelli’s play within the game. She’s mostly a loner, striking out on solitary missions. But at least half a dozen times in the last year, she’s reached out to players in desperate need of assistance. She hasn’t solved their problems, but she’s explained what they need to do to succeed.
Maybe this won’t work. She might be too busy with her academic obligations. She might be one of those gombeens who simply breathes wrong. She might think my entire idea is shite.
But I send her an email outside of the game, faking an address I hope will catch her attention.
From: [email protected]
Re: New Opportunity for Women Coders
Professor Mirabelli —
Imagine an online space built entirely by women, for women, and about women, designed to advance the professional and personal lives of coders like you and me…
16
COLE
Another item to record on the ledger I’m building against Pyotr Tarasov: Kate rejects my invitations to the dungeon for an entire week.
She says she’s tired. She says she has cramps—which shouldn’t be an issue with the hormonal birth control I arranged through Dr. Patel. She says she’s scheduled an online meeting with a candidate for her new raiding team and she’s coding a challenging new twist to Winter Reckoning and her grandmother is still shaky days after the trip to Baltimore so Kate can’t be away from her phone.
Fionnula Lynch’s health is the only legitimate excuse in the bunch.
But the truth is Kate hasn’t forgiven me for giving Tarasov access to Lynch’s crypto files. The fact that Barry Lynch hasn’t even noticed the betrayal doesn’t matter. Kate can’t get past thefact that I’m working with her enemy—even if I’m doing it to save her.
Tarasov made himself clear last week. He won’t be content with minimal results going forward. I steal time from my usual client chaos to structure a second delivery.
I won’t give him anything with names—Canton Crew made men or runners, anyone associated with the mob. I won’t be responsible for the bratva’s hit men going after members of Kate’s clan.
I won’t give him business contacts either. The construction contracts Lynch runs for the city are a matter of public record, but plenty of private parties hire the mob. Lives could well be lost if I disrupt the Crew’s longstanding protection racket.
Tarasov must already know about the whorehouse Lynch runs, and the clan’s after-hours bars are barely kept secret. Lynch can’t afford to lose even one shipment at the docks, not with his gambling income down to nearly zero.
In the end, the only bait I can safely hand over is banking information. I actually hack into First Maryland, adding security so Tarasov can’t drain Lynch’s accounts dry. But at five minutes to midnight, I send my bratva handler a link to Lynch’s transaction logs—a record of all deposits and withdrawals for the last three years.
With Kate’s identity once again secured from the feds, I climb the stairs to find her waiting in our bed. She hasn’t tried to sleep in one of the guest rooms since I hauled her out last week. But she’s lying beneath the sheets in a ragged T-shirt I should tell Nilsson to burn in the morning. She’s punched her pillow into a shapeless wad and her eyes are closed, but every muscle in her body screams that she’s wide awake.
Pretending I’m civilized, I brush my teeth and wash my face. When I take off my clothes, I fold them over a chair. I ease backthe sheets like I don’t want to disturb my sleeping wife, and I turn off my nightstand lamp with the softest of clicks.
“What did you give him?” Kate asks, before I can pretend to fall asleep.
“As little as possible.”
“What?”
“Your father’s account at First Maryland. No access to funds, just a listing of deposits and withdrawals.”
She huffs and pushes herself into a seated position. “What did you really give him?”
