Page 65 of Hellbent

“Yeah,” she said. “I got it.”

He drove for a while as she clicked around. The late-morning sun beat down on the windshield, cooking the cracked dashboard. A pine-tree air freshener long past expiration spun in circles from the rearview. Above the speedometer a hula girl bobbed epileptically on a bent spring.

“Finding anything?”

Joey held up a wait-a-sec finger. “This is some heavy-ass encryption.”

“Can you break it?”

“I don’t know.”

“‘I don’t know’ isn’t an answer.”

“Thanks, Jack.” Her fingers skittered across the keyboard. It was like watching someone play an instrument. “I’ll tell you this, you certainly couldn’t.”

“Yes or no, Joey.”

“There are maybe a handful of people in the world who could hack this,” she finally said, “’n’ I’m one of them. But it’ll take some time. And a fast Internet connection.”

“Van Sciver knows you’re with me. So we have to assume he knows you can get to whatever information’s guarded in there. He trained you.”

“Please. I was better than him to begin with. It’s the only thing I had, growing up. We’re talking sixteen, eighteen hours a day online, checking out 2600, using the darknet and stuff. I put in lots of private IRC hacker chat-room time, too, like, browsing the chans, vulns, and sploit databases, fooling around with Scapy, Metasploit, all that. It was one of my selling points. Back when I was, you know, a wanted commodity. Before I was useless.” She grinned and closed the lid. “He knows I’m good but has no idea how good.”

“Once we hit L.A., I’ll set you up in a safe house. I want what’s in that laptop as quickly as possible.”

“I’m gonna require a crate of Red Bull and a Costco tub of Twizzlers.”

“You’ll have what you need.”

“And Zac Efron. I want Zac Efron.”

“Who’s Zac Efron?”

“God, you’re old.” She smiled, and it was like turning on a light, her face luminous. She observed him observing her. “What?”

“I haven’t seen you smile.”

She looked back at the road. “Don’t get used to it.”

* * *

As the Civic filled with gas, Evan scanned the parking lot and the freeway. Joey climbed out and stretched like a cat, slow and luxurious.

“Want any road food?” she asked.

“Road food?”

“Corn nuts, Slim Jims, Mountain Dew?”

“I’m good.”

She brushed past him, heading inside. “Don’t leave me here.”

He looked at her. “Why would I leave you here?”

She shrugged, not breaking stride.

They were heading south on the I-15, Idaho ten exits away. Borders were always tricky—choke points, easy to surveil. So far it had been smooth sailing, but so far hadn’t been long.