Run With the Hunted by Jennifer R. Donohue

Author:Jennifer R. Donohue
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cyberpunk, diamonds, heist, scifi
Publisher: Jennifer R. Donohue
Published: 2018-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“Break it down, Bits,” Dolly says. “Who’re the players? Who’re the good guys?”

“Dolly, there are never clear-cut good guys,” Bits says. The headset has left lines on her face, and her eyes are droopy, out of focus.

“You’ve done an unbelievable amount of work for us, Bits,” I say. “Don’t you want to lie down first, have a nap, and then we can form a game plan?”

Bits takes one of the snack bags and shakes some chips into her hand. “Maybe. I’ll tell you some stuff first. I did some digging online, deep web stuff, and I think whoever smuggled the diamonds might have been working both sides all along—a Russian operative feeding intel to other countries. Our original smuggler might have been in an artsy or performance crowd, and had access to high level bad guys, for lack of a better term, who might have been loose with their secrets and their phones and passwords and stuff.”

“That’s a substantial bit of information,” I say.

Bits nods for a little too long, chewing more chips. I’m coming to the unfortunate conclusion that they are cricket chips, not corn chips. “So what we have are a lot of secrets that would have once been called Soviet, in the Cold War. Which is supposed to have ended, but I’m not sure it ever did, based on everything ever. I mean, it never got hot. But it never actually went away either. Maybe it’s a shadow war?”

“That’s a good thing to call it,” I consider taking one of Dolly’s e cigarettes, for something to do, or to soothe my nerves. That’s what they’re for, isn’t it?

“And so the U.S. might have been the intended buyer for them. But after the original smuggler lost possession of them, it was to somebody who was more interested in selling them to the highest bidder.”

“So here’s a thing, did we hear about this job because diamonds are flashy and expensive, or because somebody was actually peddling the information?” Dolly asks. Bits shrugs with open arms, offers the chips around. I shake my head, Dolly takes a handful.

“I looked into Will a little bit. He’s American. Born in Virginia, went to work in Washington after college.”

“He was very nice when we were robbed by a ruffian,” I say with a smile. “Comforting.”

“He’s easy on the eyes, I’ll tell you that,” Dolly says.

“He was very eager to meet when we spoke last night. I could definitely get him someplace public and see what we can get out of him. Discuss this deal of his.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to, but...” Bits trails off.

“You do computers, Dolly does guns, and I manage people. I’ll call him once we’re done with our discussion.”

“Bitsy, where’d you find this job again?”

“The tip was on a deep web message board, same as I’ve found a lot of our other stuff.” Bits shrugs. “No way to know who posted it. Though even if I didn’t hear about it online, Bristol would’ve heard about it through Marquis.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.