The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(121)

Dash nodded. “I said, ‘I told you I wasn’t scared of you.’”

Dox laughed and ruffled Dash’s hair. “You’re going to be fine, son. You’re strong, and your folks are, too.”

Dash put his arm around Manus’s waist and beamed. “They’re all right,” he said, and Dox laughed again.

Evie moved from behind the laptop to the other side of Dash and put her arm around him. “If there’s ever anything you need,” she said to Dox, “Anything we can do. Anything. You tell us.” She looked at Rain and said, “That means you, too.”

Rain nodded an acknowledgment. He understood Evie’s sentiment. But he didn’t want or expect anything. He was relieved it had all worked out. And that it was over.

Dox, unsurprisingly, was less reticent. “You don’t owe me a thing,” he said. “And even if you did, old Marvin here already paid me.” He looked at Marvin and smiled. “I might have to acquire one of those Cold Steel Espadas. Though I doubt anybody could deploy it as effectively as you.”

Manus held out a hand. They shook.

Diaz was stroking Margarita, who seemed a little nervous at all these people who had invaded her trailer. Or maybe it was the gunshots she had heard earlier.

“Hey,” Diaz said to Larison. “When you asked Grimble before about whether he had copies of the passcode he had stenciled in that mask. Were you thinking . . . what I think you were thinking?”

Rain knew for a fact that Larison had been thinking exactly that. Because Rain had been, too. But it was Larison’s question to answer.

Larison gave her one of his trademark chilling smiles. “What do you think I was thinking?”

Diaz hesitated, then said, “About whether . . . it would have made sense to kill him.”

Larison shrugged. “I like to consider all the possibilities.”

“But in the time we’ve been gone,” Diaz said, looking at Larison and then to Rain, “couldn’t he log back in? And lock us out?”

Larison nodded. “I considered that, too. But I think he wants Schrader’s ‘doomsday device’ destroyed as much as any of us. It’s created too much danger for his samurai toys. Besides. Like I said. He has an honest face.”

Maya looked up and said, “Okay, we’re good.”

Everyone gathered around the laptop.

Evie said, “Here we go.” She typed a string of code into a box and hit the Enter key. Immediately a message appeared: New log-in credentials.

“The system itself chose the new credentials,” Maya said. “Minimum of sixty characters, lower case, upper case, numerals, symbols. Uncrackable.”

“Watch,” Evie said. She entered Grimble’s username and passcode. The screen flashed: Invalid credentials.

“So that’s it,” Maya said. “The only remaining instance of Grimble’s decoder is this laptop. Destroy the laptop, and the ring is thrown back into the fires of Mordor.”

Manus opened his Espada. Dox saw it and flinched. Rain gave him a small caught you smile, and Dox said, “Yeah, yeah, let’s see how you deal with the psychological aftermath of a ferocious attack by Zatōichi the not-so-blind swordsman.”

“A tale that will live in legends,” Larison said.

“I’m sure it was very ferocious,” Rain added.

Dox scowled. “Excuse me, but some of us are interested in the matter at hand.”

Manus glanced at Maya. “What parts of the laptop need to be destroyed?”

Maya shrugged. “If you really want to be thorough, hard drive, memory cards, and CPU.”

“Where are they?” Manus said.

“Let me,” Kanezaki said. He placed the laptop on the floor, then pointed. “Hard drive,” he said.

Manus nodded, flipped the Espada around so he was holding it like an ice pick, and slammed the point through the area Kanezaki had indicated, several times in a widening pattern. The blade punched through the metal easily. Margarita whinnied and Diaz stroked her, saying, “Easy, girl. Easy.”

“Memory cards?” Manus asked. Kanezaki pointed and Manus repeated the process. Then again for the CPU. By the time Manus was done, the laptop had so many holes in it that it looked vaguely like a cheese grater.

They were all quiet then, the moment somehow anticlimactic. They had protected the girls in the videos, and themselves, too. Rispel and Devereaux were dead. And yet. Maybe it was Livia’s influence, and now possibly also Diaz’s, but Rain had the sense that everyone was afflicted by a gnawing feeling of justice left undone, of having been coerced by circumstances into protecting unknown people who were deserving only of punishment.

Kanezaki looked particularly glum. Rain understood. Though he was new to it himself, he’d discovered that doing the right thing could be like that. He patted Kanezaki on the back. “Did you know Tatsu believed in an afterlife?”

Kanezaki looked at him. “He did?”

Rain nodded. “At the end, he told me he’d always thought the son he’d lost as an infant was waiting for him. And that he was glad they were going to be together again.”

They were quiet for a moment, and Rain went on. “I don’t believe in that kind of thing myself. But if I did . . . I’d say you made Tatsu proud today.”

Kanezaki put his hand on Rain’s shoulder and looked away. After a moment, he said, “Thanks.”