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I didn’t know if I was as special as they thought I was. Hackers had egos and, sure, I had one too, but from how the US government treated me, I had to be the second coming.
Knowing that I’d be busy for the next few hours at least, I set some programs running and shut others off. I grabbed my main rig, which housed original copies of the worm Star had gifted me—“Best goddamn gift ever,” I muttered under my breath—and I set it up in its case.
With that done, I collected my phone and checked my messages.
My brothers were shooting the shit about a hockey match our newly-discovered cousin, Liam Donnghal, was playing in—apparently, he was doing a good imitation of a toddler on the ice.
Then, I saw one from Aaron Goldstein.
Goldstein: McClure took me to a cigar club tonight.
Me: Hope you enjoyed your first date.
My lips twitched as I strode from my office and headed for the bedroom.
Goldstein: How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t swing that way.
That wasn’t what I remembered from my short stint in college, but if he had memory issues, then that was his problem and not mine.
Me: Does he?
Goldstein: Not sure. Maybe? He’s creepy, and not only because he’s a zealot and a Sparrow.
Me: You’ve got your in though? He wouldn’t have invited you to the cigar club otherwise, I assume?
Goldstein: You assume right. Gaining his confidence to the point he encourages me to become a Sparrow won’t be easy, but I’m in this for the long haul.
Me: Good. Keep me updated.
Goldstein: Will do.
Having known Goldstein since college, I’d gotten friendly with him while he was an annoying jock who drank too much but who always got his assignments in on time and managed to pass his finals even with a hangover.
As a ‘grown-up,’ he was a dedicated police officer, one who had a skewed sense of justice—my favorite kind—as well as a man who had big enough balls to go deep undercover while taking a sabbatical from Interpol because he saw the potential here…
A potential not just for promotion but to make the world a better place too.
I had to figure that he knew he could ruin his career by doing this unsanctioned, but I also realized that he was as concerned as I was—who in Interpol was a Sparrow?
Who wasn’t one of those dirty bastards?
The New World Sparrows were everywhere and had infiltrated every organization. Nowhere was safe. Not the mafia, the government, the media, or the fucking church.
For all those reasons, that was why he was one of the first people I’d gotten in touch with when Aidan, my oldest brother, had come up with the notion we needed to start bringing officials into the Sparrows—infiltrating to tear the fuckers down from the inside out.
He was the perfect candidate—US-born and patriot-bred—buthe’d left the US after college thanks to a British grandmother from whom he’d inherited a home in the UK’s version of the Hamptons—Sandbanks.
He’d moved to Europe shortly after, gained a job in Interpol, and hadn’t returned stateside since.
I forged him a new identity, one based on his old credentials, and he was a shoo-in for a senator’s aide with majors in American history and psychology and minors in marketing and politics.
The only reason I knew he wasn’t a Sparrow? That skewed sense of justice he had…
Attending college with him had beeninteresting.
A thought occurred to me as I picked out a button-down shirt.
Me: May go quiet.
