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“No, no, no, Kate.Ichallenged him at the wedding. He knew I was looking into his company. I should never have exposed myself like that, but he and Javier were such assholes, I couldn’t resist. I dug my own grave here.” I blow out a long breath.
None of it adds up, though. Why would her father do that? “It’s all odd to be honest. I don’t think these guys at the squat knew who I was to start off with. The guy who stabbed me said, ‘You’re Fabian, aren’t you?’ I mean I’m sure he was checking he had the right guy, but your dad knows who I am; he could have tracked me down at any time I’m with you. Why would your father have me stabbed in some squat on an industrial park? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
But her face is devastated. “Kate.” I reach up to squeeze her fingers. “Your dad might be an asshole, but do you really think he’d employ some young street kid with a knife?”
She chews her lip.
“The old-timer at the squat knew Zach,” I say. “I think Zach told him I’d worked in a circus, the lunatic. We talked about parkour. There was nothing to link me to South Africa … Oh God, someone asked Darren about me at parkour, that guy followed me from parkour. Maybe word was out on the street that they were looking for someone called Fabian who did parkour. Maybe I gave myself away.”
“People really inform on other people like that?”
“If there’s money involved, yeah. I need to report into Jeff what’s happened. It’s a significant escalation, and they’ll want to know. I don’t think I’ve got the whole picture here.”
“Jeff? Who’s they?”
“The FBI.”
“You were employed by the FBI?”
I laugh. “Not directly.”
Three Months Later
Epilogue
Fabian
For the first time in my life, I am settled. I don’t know why I did all the crazy shit I did, what was missing from my life before, but Kate has filled that hole. With her clothes in my wardrobe and her bottles in my shower, the apartment feels like a home, safe and warm. I am cared for. And I’m doing a lot more of the boring stuff, and, somehow, it’s okay. I have found the one person who will forgive all my missteps, who will sustain this despite everything. I am good enough for her.
Jeff fed back what happened to the FBI, and of course they wanted to talk to me. It meant me getting on their radar as a hacker, but once you’ve been knifed like that, things take on a new slant, and talking to them seemed like the least of my worries.
Apparently, Xeracorp have been trying to back out of this South Africa thing and cover their tracks ever since I warned Kate’s dad, but it turns out there’s all sorts of other parties involved. There’s a bunch of thugs who don’t want the gravy train to disappear, and the FBI suspect it was these guys who were following me, drugged and eventually stabbed me. They think these goons thought I was a Xeracorp guy because of the connection to Kate and her dad, and decided it was time to deliver a warning. If the assholes hadn’t tried to kill me, I guess I would have found that funny.
My woman is a tiger too. She went to see her father, confronted him with what had happened to me, and although he didn’t pull the trigger, he’s the one who created the whole mess in the first place by doing these dodgy deals and paying a shit-ton of bribes to all these people, so in my mind he’s fucking responsible. Of course, he just blustered, but the wheels of justice are grinding slowly, and the investigation is closing in, and her whole family is in uproar. I can’t say I’m not hoping he sees a little jail time. There’s no trace of the young guy who stabbed me, though, and the old-timer at the squat has disappeared too. I have a feeling they might find him at the bottom of the East River.
The front door shuts with a soft click, a scuffling noise of boots being toed off in the hall, and I stretch my arms over my head and check the time on my screen. 18.30. I’ve more work than I can deal with at the moment, turns out when you approach people and talk about what you can do, they bite your hand off.
This one I’m working on is a doozy, though. They’re going to be delighted with the holes I’ve found in their system, or not, as the case may be. The chief executive was an asshole, and so convinced that his security was watertight, he let me build all sorts of performance bonuses into the contract. I’ll make a ton of money on this; their systems are as leaky as shit. I’ve been tempted to take it all down for a laugh, so maybe the self-destruct button hasn’t quite left me yet. They’d probably fire me. I guess I like things that make other people pay attention. Maybe I’ll always like those things. And maybe I can sock this money away in case something else happens. That fear still niggles at the back of my mind.
All the shame I’ve been carrying around, my father telling me I’m a useless little shit, feeling the back of his hand whenever I messed up, has lessened its grip. Kate and I went to a dinner hosted by one of the doctors from the hospital a few weeks ago and when I came back from the john, I paused outside the kitchen hearing Kate’s voice and my name.
“He’s kind of a genius—all these other hackers look up to him. He’s massively respected in his field.”
I laughed quietly, but it still caught me in the back of my throat. Myfield? Hacking is aprofession? What a doctor’s way of describing things. But hearing it made me feel ten feet tall and flooded with a love so powerful it almost knocked me over. Several of the nurses at the dinner also came up and talked to me about all the romantic gifts I’d sent to Kate, and while I’ve not quite managed to throw off all the fuckups with her, I’ve grasped a branch and pulled myself out of the river.
Kate appears in the doorway, still in her scrubs. Her hair is clipped back, her face bare of makeup, even though I saw her apply it this morning as I sat on the toilet seat and she chatted about her patients. She crosses the floor and bends to press a kiss against my lips.
“Ugh, I need a shower,” she says, but I slide a hand around her thigh before she can escape and she straightens, so I stick my face in her stomach and inhale, rubbing my nose from side to side across the blue fabric. “Mmm, antiseptic and handwash.”
She laughs, pushing at me to move away, but I don’t let go of my grip and smile up at her. “My favorite smell in the world, on my favorite girl.”
She relaxes into my hold, smiling, and peers at my screen.
“How was your day?”
“Excellent. I did an insanely early parkour run. Came back and had amazing shower sex with this incredible woman I live with, then spent the day getting into various parts of Quixcomm’s systems and was very tempted to take the whole thing down because their network is as leaky as shit and it wouldn’t be hard to do it.”
Kate runs her fingers through my hair. “I wanted to talk to you … They’ve said they want me to take a permanent role in the emergency room when I finish my residency.”
