I don’t respond, but give a hesitant shake of my head. She gives me a soft smile in understanding. Her words are carefully chosen. “He had a pretty lengthy talk with his fiancée, Sin. They’re both pretty confident Mercier’s not going to do anything to jeopardize his own freedom, so it’s doubtful he’d come after them. Still, they’re going to be extra cautious for a while. I’ll just keep an eye…”
Her words trail off as she realizes she’s starting to say too much. The mere fact she’s keeping an eye on a fugitive implies she has some serious hacking going on that’s probably not legal, and I choose to ignore what she might have revealed had she kept going on.
“It’s funny,” she says, dropping her gaze down to the table. “We’re both doing work for the good guys. On essentially the same side, and yet… we’re still miles apart in how we ethically carry out our jobs.”
“Which is why your shit should stay mostly top-secret,” I remind her.
“It sucks,” she says plainly. “I don’t like keeping things from you.”
Maybe months or years later, I’ll look back on this conversation and won’t give it much credence, but for right now, her words are pretty impactful. It makes it clear just how close the two of us have grown in just a few weeks’ time.
Moreover, for the first time since I became a Fed, I sort of wish I wasn’t. My job is negatively impacting a positive relationship I have going on, and I don’t like it. I expect as we continue to progress, we’re going to have to set up some stringent boundaries that will keep parts of our lives removed from the other.
Bebe and I slide out of the booth, then head out into the crisp fall air of western Pennsylvania. Within the next week or so, the leaves are going to be at their peak color change. I’m thinking a drive back through this area with Bebe would be a nice way to spend the day.
Except, fuck if I know where we’ll be then.
We make our way over to the rental car, which I’d parked several blocks down. After I unlock the doors, I slip into the driver’s seat. Bebe gets in the passenger seat, pulling out her laptop and booting it back up.
Surfing my phone, I wait patiently while she does her thing. I scroll through my texts, particularly to the one I received from Bogachev yesterday asking for an update. I’d responded fairly quickly with another benign statement saying I was still searching for Bebe’s son and mother. His response came back just as quickly, but it had me slightly puzzled.
Bogachev is a paranoid control freak. Any job not getting done as quickly as possible always drives him crazy. He’ll rant and threaten, constantly trying to drive a mission’s conclusion through sheer will when he really can’t do a damn thing to make it go faster. It’s irritating, to say the least.
However, when he replied, it was merely to say, Just keep me updated.
Now, that could mean several things. It could simply be he’s busy with something else, and he didn’t have time to rant. It could be that with the elimination of Bebe—his main threat—he’s not overly worried about her family members.
Or, worst case, it could mean he’s on to me and knows I’m not working for him at all. I can never discount that as a potential option, so I must always proceed forward with the thought Bogachev is as much a danger to me as he is to Bebe.
Regardless, nothing to be done about it now. We are moving forward with our plan to let Bebe hack his network and get the mirror-image data we need so we can effectuate arrest warrants.
Bebe starts clacking away on her keyboard. She pauses, then reaches into her bag on the floorboard and pulls out a device about the size of a USB drive. It, in fact, has a USB plug and a stubby little antenna on the end. After plugging it into the side of her laptop, she starts typing again.
“Can you get Kynan on the phone?” she asks without missing a beat on her keyboard. “I’m about ready to deploy.”
I dial Kynan, getting him on speakerphone. “I’m in their IT room with their head guy,” he explains. “The device is in one of the hotel rooms. We’re ready on our end.”
“Just doing one more thing,” Bebe mutters, more to herself than for Kynan’s benefit. She spends a few more minutes with her fingers flying over the keyboard before she stops, her eyes locking onto me. “Okay… it’s ready.”
I smile, and her return one is a little hesitant but not without hope. Reaching out, I glide my knuckles over her cheekbone, my silent moment of solidarity with her.