Three-Edged Sword: a Novel by Jeff Lindsay

Author:Jeff Lindsay [Lindsay, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

31

Frank Delgado was a busy man, now more so than usual. As SAC at the Moscow embassy, he had more to do every day than could be done in twenty hours, let alone the ten or twelve he routinely spent on the job. So it was several days before he went back to the IT section to see if Miranda Shaleki had made any progress on designing a search program he could use to track Riley Wolfe’s mother. He knew she would be busy, too, and didn’t want to pressure her. She was, after all, doing him a big favor.

When he dropped in on Miranda, he expected it to be just a quick visit for a progress report. That was not what he got.

He found Miranda Shaleki, as expected, at her computer, earbuds in, pounding the keyboard rapidly in time to some music only she could hear. This time, he didn’t bother clearing his throat to get her attention. He simply leaned in and tapped her on the shoulder.

Miranda instantly spun around with a hostile glare on her face. A second later, when she recognized Delgado, it softened. “Oh,” she said. “I wondered when you were going to come for this.” She held up a small black thumb drive.

“I’m impressed,” Delgado said. “You finished writing the program.”

“What? Oh. Hell, yes, I did that in about three hours. Then I wanted to see how well it worked, so I went ahead and ran it. And—” She wiggled the thumb drive at him. “Here you go.”

Somewhat stunned, Delgado took the thumb drive. “So wait—what, you ran the program? And so this is . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.

Miranda snorted. “That’s the results, dude. Shit, it wasn’t hard. Get that weird look off your face.”

“I just— I’m having trouble believing it’s done so quickly,” Delgado said.

“Yeah, well, believe it,” she said, looking just a little smug.

“I don’t, uh— I mean, this is it? The whole thing? The program, the search, the results, and—” He broke off, shaking his head again.

“Bro, what did I say? Is there a better language I can use? I’m not real strong on Spanish,” she said, clearly only a little exasperated, but mostly very pleased at his reaction.

Delgado took a breath, then nodded. “Well, okay,” he said. “Now I’m really impressed.” He pulled over a chair from the adjoining cubicle and sat beside Miranda. “Tell me about it.”

“Sure, so . . .” Miranda frowned and chewed on her bottom lip. “Okay, so like I said, the program was easy. And how I set it up, all I had to do was enter the variables—which was the list of meds?—and then turn it loose.” She shrugged. “Okay, so I did one dumbass thing.”

“Hard to believe,” Delgado said.

Miranda ignored him. “I forgot age and gender. Stupid. And I got like, four thousand hits? Way too many.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So I fixed that, and tweaked a couple of minor bugs, and yeah.” She shrugged. “I got three hits that matched what you said.

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