This was why I was sitting in an ISD surveillance van. The exterior was meant to look like a plumber’s van. The interior was all screens, camera equipment, and some high-powered microphones.
For this assignment, there were two wraith handlers: Prefect and a woman called Warden. Warden was in her midthirties. She came with two wraiths whose names I immediately forgot. The men looked like rich, middle-aged accountants and regarded me with undisguised skepticism. Maybe they’d been arrested for tax fraud and decided that being temporarily killed was better than mingling with a lower class of criminal in prison. I mentally referred to them as Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
“How did we end up on a mission with a kid?” muttered Tweedledum to Tweedledee.
Tweedledee sighed. “She’s supposed to be somekind of prodigy. I heard Warden talking about her a while back.”
Prefect ignored them both. As always, he had brought me to the job without a word of explanation. That was his way—he liked to send me into situations without briefing me first. He said it made me more observant. I thought it just made me paranoid. Which was probably the real point.
We were watching a tech company in San Francisco. The building used to be a bank and it still had the old-money, impenetrable appearance. There were tattoo scanners at the front doors and anyone venturing inside had to be inspected and ID’d by security guards. The doors looked capable of withstanding a bomb blast. There was a back entrance into the basement, but there was no exterior doorknob. None of the windows on the first three floors opened. And there were cameras tucked into the building’s every hallway. I knew because we had tapped into them.
“I have an informant,” said Warden, a touch smugly.
“So now what?” I asked.
“We observe,” said Warden. “And we look for a way in.”
Which was how I ended up sitting in that van, watching the inner workings of corporate tech culture for the better part of three days. People dressed in designer office wear typed into computers, chatted with one another, cried in supplyclosets, clogged a toilet on the second floor, and generally seemed to live perfectly ordinary and boring lives.
It almost made me wish I’d gone to prison.
Until the eighth-wealthiest man in the world strolled into the building.
“Keith Stenc,” I breathed. “Okay. So this is one of his companies?”
“You didn’t know that?” asked Tweedledee.
I perked up. Surely an investigation into a wily tech billionaire would prove interesting. Maybe he’d bought an entire country’s stolen IDs or was secretly an international spy. I’d always wanted to take down a spy. “Okay, what’s so illegal that it requires two wraith teams?”
“Corporate espionage,” said Warden.
I wilted. “Well, that’s boring.”
“Patience,” said Prefect. “He stole something. Something valuable. We need to retrieve it.”
“I’m not a legal expert,” I said. “But I think there are these things called ‘warrants’ that let people like you search places.”
Prefect gave me a flat stare.
“Oh, his legal team beat your legal team,” I said, grinning.
“No,” said Prefect.
That’s when I finally got it. “Oh, he stole somethingvaluable.”
“Are you sure she’s a prodigy?” asked Tweedledum.
I resisted the urge to throw a stale doughnut at him. “I mean, he stole something the governmentwants.And instead of keeping things all nice and aboveboard, they sent us in sowecan steal it fromhim.”
“Crudely put but not wholly inaccurate,” said Prefect.
I grinned. “What are we stealing?”
“We do not steal,” said Warden.
“We acquire,” said Prefect dryly.
“Well, what are we acquiring?” I asked.
