Into the Fire(53)

“I take care of someone else already.” She was wearing the Hello Kitty–with-an-AK T-shirt again, the sleeves hiked up, showing off her well-defined arms. “You. I have to, like, spoon-feed tutor you when it comes to hacking.”

“I assume you’re unfamiliar with the Dunning-Kruger effect,” Evan said.

“Dunkirk-who?”

“Never mind.” Evan rose and walked to the circular desk, Dog following closely, pressing into the side of his leg. “What did you find?”

“Your boy Petro’s got all the angles.” Dog the dog was whimpering, and Joey paused, annoyed. “Can you get it to be quiet?”

“When’s the last time you took him out?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want him to pee on your floor?”

“Yeah. I’d totally love that.”

“Let’s go.”

She grimaced and then dug beneath her desk and came up with a leash and a black fabric collar with a cutesy skull-and-crossbones motif.

Evan said, “You bought him a collar?”

“Just so it’s easier to take him out. Everything doesn’t have to mean some big thing.”

Evan noted her first use of the masculine pronoun but kept his mouth shut.

When Joey crouched to pull on the collar, Dog licked her cheek. She didn’t smile. But she didn’t protest either.

They rode the elevator down and stood outside, Joey holding the leash while Dog the dog sniffed the grass, moved a few feet, sniffed it again. Lifting his leg, he unleashed a fire-hose stream onto an elm sapling.

“Are you feeding him Big Gulps?” Evan said.

“He’s a big animal—a lion hunter, like you said. That’s just how they pee.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to defend him.”

“I’m not defending him. But while I’m stuck babysitting him, I’ve learned how he rolls. That’s all.”

Despite wanting to needle Joey more, Evan changed course. “So what’d you get on Petro? From Grant’s files?”

“Well, you’re right—he’s definitely upper management. Oversaw the washing process with the cash that Terzian and his crew brought in. The books are light on proper nouns, but I pieced together some of the EINs. They were laundering money through—wait for it—kebab vans and plumbing companies. I know, right? These guys didn’t take the sensitivity workshop on ethnic stereotyping. But it’s a lotta money. Like, a lotta lotta money. After a while kebab vans and plumbing trucks just wouldn’t do. So Petro got himself a bank.”

Dog the dog was still going. The elm sapling looked woeful. At last he lowered his leg and shook his head, his ears giving off leathery snaps against the sides of his skull.

“A bank,” Evan repeated.

“Yeah,” Joey said. “I broke the code on the routing numbers in, like, ten seconds. It was simple-stupid—middle-aged men playing at a girl’s game. Oh, yeah!” She did some sort of dance move with her hands shoving the air upward. Evan and Dog the dog stared at her. “So I followed the trail. Know what ‘bank capture’ is?”

“It’s where you buy a controlling interest in a bank in some nonreporting jurisdiction or a tax haven with shitty records. Then you channel your money through it, and no one’s the wiser.”

“Impressive. How’d you know that?”

“Because I’ve done it,” Evan said.

“What? What? When did you own a bank?”

“It was a onetime thing,” Evan said. “Long story.”

“O-kay. Anyways. You said Hollywood PD’s trying to build a case. But I don’t get why the feds aren’t involved, since we’re dealing with banks in Singapore and whatnot.”

“Because,” Evan said, “they don’t know it’s that big yet. They don’t have the thumb drive. We do.”

Dog the dog stretched languidly and yawned, curling his tongue and emitting a tired whine that bordered on adorable. A crew of guys made their way up the sidewalk toward Evan and Joey, roughhousing and joking. With their gym muscles and notched-in side parts, they looked sparkly clean and uniform, rolled off an assembly belt. But Joey wasn’t looking at them with annoyance. Not in the least.

She snapped out of her daze, noticed Evan watching her. Blushing, she tugged on the dog’s leash to move him back toward the lobby. “Can we please get inside already? Us being seen together is social suicide, okay?”

Evan said, “For me or for you?”

“With all that training you got, it woulda been helpful if they’d included a crash course in, like, actual humor.”

In the lobby a few workers had appeared, measuring the flimsy single-panes and jotting notes on clipboards.

“New owners,” Joey said. “They’re fixing the place up, taking care of all those oh-so-scary security holes you’re so fussy about. Happy?”

Evan looked back at the loose guard plate on the front door. “Partly.”

“Are you ever happy?”

He thumbed the elevator button. “When I’m ballroom dancing.”

Joey’s emerald eyes widened. “Really?”

“No.”

Back upstairs, Evan crowded into the cockpit with her and studied the screens.