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“You’ll always be crackers to me, Conor,” I teased when it registered that he was pouting.
“Har-har-har,” he groused.
Amused, I just said, “You know that IDs are handles and not faces in our world.”
“It was a long shot.”
“I’m assuming you think she had something to do with all this?”
He hummed. “Would make sense.”
“If they found that, what else could they have uncovered?”
“Nothing major. I always keep that computer clean just in case they haul my ass in. It had the worm on there because I thought I might need to use it, but I had that better secured than Nimue.”
“How am I just learning this program’s name now?”
“Because I named her today.”
“Years later?”
“Better now than never,” was his pious retort.
“Why was Nimue on there?”
“Because I always run it when I’m with the NSA. Just in case shit is being said around me that I want to—” His eyes lit up. “I’m a moron, Star. You officially made me a moron.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“It’s to counteract the heartburn I give you,” he retorted, hurling his wheeled desk chair over to another desk where he started pounding on the keyboard like he was playing it with the intent to make music.
Unable to stop myself, I smiled. Then, when I realized I was smiling, I stopped. Then, when I realized I was allowed to smile around him because he wouldn’t view it as a weakness, I went back to it.
Wandering over to him, I watched the streams of code on his monitor but found myself unable to read it because it was in goddamn Velato. Still, he was at ease with it, and then, out of nowhere, a recording played:
“Fuck, what kind of language even is this?”
Conor looked at me over his shoulder.
“Can you open the program or not?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re running out of time. Do something!”
“I am doing something.” A couple moments later, the first woman rasped, “I’ll have to wade through this and see if I can make anything work.”
“Just find something usable on there. I doubt he’ll live past tonight so whatever you can find on there is the last of what he’ll be able to come up with.”
“Bitch,” Conor snarled under his breath.
“You recognize the voices?”
“Not the first one, but the second is my handler—Riggs. She knew I was in danger.”
I squeezed his shoulder in commiseration but admitted, “She was just doing her job, Conor. I’ve been in her shoes. It sucks but we don’t get a say in any of that.”
He didn’t answer, but those fingers of his got to working again.
