Sabrina's Clan (18 page)

Sabrina came up to him where Jake was sitting at the table, sifting through texts and email messages and feeling guilty about his uncle and the work he wasn’t doing. “Can I talk to you?” she asked softly, for the room had become very mellow and quiet.

“Sure.” He pushed the chair across from him out from under the table with his boot. “Have a seat.”

Instead, she pulled out the chair around the corner from him. The top chair. Of course. She settled in it and crossed her legs. Even in casual at-home wear, she looked polished and groomed and elegant.

Sabrina’s appearance made Jake realize how far he had moved away from Wall Street in just a few days. He had spent a weekend traipsing about woodlands or trolling towns for news of strange beasts or missing people and working with a team that just didn’t know the meaning of the word “quit”. It had been energizing to be among people who had the same goals as he did.

With a jolt, he realized that this was the first time in his life it had happened. He wasn’t an outsider here. No wonder he didn’t want to go home.

Sabrina glanced over her shoulder. She wasn’t looking for eavesdroppers, he realized. Her expression seemed to be saying, “look at them.”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“You’ve got access to a lot of cutting edge technology.”

“One of the few genuine advantages to being a member of my family,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“One of my clients—I can’t say who, of course—I set up a deal for them to acquire a tracking device with over-the-horizon potential.”

“A drone does that,” Jake pointed out.

“Private citizens can’t acquire tracking drones,” she said dismissively. “The tech my client wanted to buy used old satellites. There’s thousands of them up there, no longer used because the corporations who own them have moved on, folded and more. We’ve been putting satellites into space for decades. Anyway, the tech uses old satellite capacity to bounce microwaves from the hand-held device to the surface. The range is fantastic and the tracker can be keyed to look for heat signatures, movement, up to twelve different criteria, including sound.”

“Sounds intriguing.”

“I thought you might know what I’m talking about,” she said softly, “because my client’s bid failed. Summerfield bought the tech.”

Jake shook his head. “So? I work in the corporate offices, not the labs.”

“So, couldn’t that tech be used to find the gargoyles? They’re solitary, they move at night, they stay away from humans unless they’re hungry. They should stand out on that sort of tracker like neon in the dark.”

He stared at her, his heart suddenly racing. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He had seen the bid go through. At the time it had been just another file his uncle had wanted him to read and appreciate. He had appreciated the hell out of the seven figure price paid for the tech. It had helped open his eyes to the sheer volume of money the corporation moved around on a daily basis.

“Do you have access to it?” Sabrina asked.

“I have access to anything I want,” Jake said truthfully. “It doesn’t mean I can walk in and take it. It’s a prototype. They’re going to notice if the only working device they have goes missing.”

“That’s just the one they show you,” she said calmly. “There will be others in development. Scientists don’t like basing their conclusions on the trials of just one device. They’d want to test lots of them to make sure it works across every device and style. They’ll only show you the prettiest and most impressive one to keep their funding flowing.”

He stared at her.

“You don’t believe me,” she said. “It’s okay. Check it out tomorrow at the office. See if I’m right.”

“You want me to steal one?” he breathed, his brain only starting to work sluggishly.

“It’s your company. You’re not stealing when you’re taking something you already own. Taking the schematics would be more useful, though. Then we can replicate it here.”

“On the kitchen table?”

“Damian has a workshop in the basement, I’m told.”

“He does?” Jake was starting to feel stupid.

Sabrina smiled, as if she had noticed his confusion. “He does.”

Jake shook his head. “Even if I
did
steal the thing, or the plans—and I’m not agreeing to it, not yet—but if I did, then there’s all the satellite relay programming and….”

Sabrina moved her head to look at Nyanther, where he was hunched over the chessboard, his fingers curled into a tight fist. Clearly, Nick was winning.

Then Jake realized. Nyanther had a software company full of developmental coders and an aptitude for mischief.

Jake shook his head. “Even if we can replicate it, what are you doing to do with it?” he demanded in a heavy whisper. “You can’t put it on the open market. All you can do is give them away to hunters. You can’t even sell them. Hunters don’t have two cents to rub together.”

“Oh, I don’t intend to give them away at all.” She got to her feet. “You steal the plans. I’ll monetize them.”

She left him sitting at the table, feeling winded and ignorant…and determined to prove she was wrong.

Finding proof that Sabrina was wrong was harder than Jake expected it to be.

He returned to work the next day, almost eager to get into the office and get to it. He even breezed past his uncle’s dour comments about sick days and responsibilities. For the first time since he had reluctantly dragged his ass into the office to start learning the ropes, Jake had something he wanted Barbara to help him with. He sent her off to find who was running the development project for the tracker and where they were located.

It ended up being a small subsidiary in California, so Jake told his uncle he was heading out on a get-to-know junket and flew to L.A. the next morning. He left Barbara with instructions to set up a meeting for him.

It was almost unnerving when he took his cell phone off flight mode to find an email from her with details of the appointment and a map on how to get there.

The meeting with Caspar Marik, the CEO of the little company, was a disaster. He spouted company policy for the entire thirty minutes, even when Jake tried to herd him toward project specifics.

Jake stayed in the family’s beach house in Malibu that night and stared moodily at the waves, not even tempted to go swimming.

He missed Nyanther, he realized with a shock of recognition. How…novel.

How scary.

Thinking of Nyanther reminded him of the weekend he had spent with some of the toughest-minded people he’d ever met. Their bodies could be dropping with exhaustion, yet they kept going, determined to see it through. Survival demanded no less, but their relentlessness was still awe-inspiring.

And here he was, whimpering about a simple set back.

He picked up his cell phone and called up Sabrina’s contact information. He’d plugged it in there only a few hours after she had left his apartment, using the business card she had slipped him and his uncle at the dinner table the night before.

Then he swiped out a text.

JAKE:
Road block. R&D ceo too political.

He tossed the phone back on the table. It was past midnight in New York. If he got an answer at all, it would be tomorrow.

Fifteen seconds later, the phone chirped at him.

SABRINA:
Find ambitious subordinate. Start with head of research.

Of course. The top dogs wanted to keep their positions and were risk averse. The research people, though, weren’t interested in politics at all. They just wanted their project-babies to thrive.

It took another day and a half to dine and sweet-talk the head of research, Tommy Ross, a hard sciences professor with a practical turn of mind, into giving him a tour of the facilities.

Jake had wooed the R&D director at the New York facilities years ago, when he had acquired both the sticky net and a cooperative bio-technician to develop the anti-toxin, so he knew the way such people’s minds worked and it helped him deal with Tommy Ross.

The tour of Ross’s facilities included the labs where the tracking device was being refined for final approval and marketing. Jake looked at the shoe-box sized thing, with its buttons and dials and his spirits fell. “It looks like two people would need to carry it and more to operate it,” he said.

“At that size, sure,” Ross said expansively. He was enjoying the attention immensely. “That one has the greatest range.”

“How big a range?”

“From here, we could find someone in the Ukraine if we had the right criteria plugged in.”

“You mean, the keys for finding them?”

“Sure. A city of people gives off very similar traces. You need something that will identify an individual uniquely. We’ve been working on gait, head size, heat signatures and more. That’s part of the final development, of course and only if our funding goes through for the next three years.”

Jake almost laughed at the man’s feeble attempt to campaign for money. Instead, he went back to something he’d said earlier. “If this is the biggest one you have, do you have one that is, say, hand-held size?”

Ross shrugged. “We haven’t made one that size. The software is the same for any of them, though. It’s the juice that drives them that determines the range. A handheld could probably only track someone up to a hundred miles away.”

Jake hid his excitement. “I’d be interested in looking at the schematics and programming.”

“The programming is proprietary,” Ross said instantly. “It’s not even ours. We’re working with a boutique software company in the valley to build it. The schematics for the hardware, sure. I can have them emailed to you.”

Jake almost shook his head. Sabrina had even anticipated this snag—that the software wouldn’t be hackable, not if they were going to stay on the right side of the law.

The schematics, though, would tell Nyanther’s people what processes they needed to build to make the hardware work.

Damn it, the woman had been right, all along.

“Just the schematics would be great,” Jake told Ross honestly.

* * * * *

Sabrina was almost startled when she found Nyanther sitting in front of a laptop, typing at great speed. Even more bizarrely, he was wearing reading glasses, which he took off with a self-conscious air.

She sat at the table next to him. “You really need them, then? They’re not just for show?”

He grimaced.

“I thought you all had perfect vision, better than human?”

Nyanther looked at the folded up glasses in his hands. “I do, except for close distances.” He shrugged. “Comes from sleeping for two thousand years, I suppose. I can’t go to an ophthalmologist to find out.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Besides, it’s only sometimes. Sometimes I can see as well as I ought.” He pushed the glasses into his shirt pocket and looked at her expectantly.

“How good are your coders, Nyanther?”

“The best in Europe,” he said instantly.

“No, really.”

“Really,” he said flatly. “I pay for the best.”

“Then they’re probably all hackers at heart, if they’re that good. Do you figure one of them could adapt a dark net browser to work on a cell phone?”

“They’re probably the ones who developed the original dark net browsers,” Nyanther said, with a small smile. “Why do you want it?”

“You get me the browser, I’ll show you why I want it.” She nodded toward his laptop. “It’s ten in the morning in Scotland. Your favorite coder is probably on his second cup of tea by now.”

“He drinks cocoa,” Nyanther said and pulled the laptop toward him.

“I’ll buy him a crateful of Criolla beans straight out of Venezuela if he does this in the next twenty-four hours,” Sabrina said.

“Yes, madam,” Nyanther said. He paused. “Criolla beans?”

“Look it up while you’re surfing,” she said and left him.

* * * * *

Sabrina found Riley sitting in the pool of early morning light puddling on the floor in front of the old windows, her feet up on the window sill and her cell phone in her hands.

“Perfect,” Sabrina declared, leaning against the windowsill next to Riley’s bare feet. She crossed her arms. “You said once your mother left behind a big list of hunters and their addresses and phone numbers if they had them. She used the list to keep in touch, to hear about any possible gargoyle movement, the last time they were here.”

Riley hefted the cell phone. “That’s exactly what I’m doing right now, only twenty-first century style. I can’t believe everyone put up with snail mail back then.”

“Wasn’t it horse-back couriers in Nick’s day?”

Riley grinned. “Sometimes not even horseback. It took nearly a week for England to find out King Richard had died in France.”

Sabrina pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and opened up a fresh text to Riley. “I’m sending you something. A new sort of web browser. For the dark net.”

“I’ve heard of that. It’s where all the drug dealers hang out, isn’t it?”

“It’s where anyone hangs out who doesn’t want anyone to know they’re there. Quite legitimate businesses, revolutions, political parties and yeah, probably a lot of criminals…anyone who doesn’t want to leave traces or reveal their true identities. That sounds a lot like hunters, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Riley said slowly.

“This browser will let all your hunter friends get onto the dark net. Once they’re there, they can talk freely and exchange information and…well, one step at a time.” She sent the message.

“You want me to send this out to everyone?” Riley asked, looking down at the text message and attachment on her phone. “And tell them to use it?”

“They just have to double click the file. It will install itself.”

“Most of these people are so poor, they don’t
have
computers,” Riley said patiently, like she was explaining a fact to a small child.

Sabrina leaned forward and tapped Riley’s phone. “They all have cell phones, don’t they? That’s where we can start. Thanks, Riley!”

“Start what?” Riley called after her.

“Thanks!”

* * * * *

When Sabrina got home after a grueling Friday in the office, when everyone had seemed to want a piece of her attention and nothing had gone well, she had no plans for the evening beyond opening the bottle of tequila sitting in her pantry and finding a glass…and she wasn’t too fussed about the state of the glass, either, although Jake was pretty good about cleaning up after himself. She suspected Nyanther was the real influence there, even though he didn’t drink or eat, because she remembered the state of Jake’s bedroom.