“Right.” She thought about it a minute. “I don’t think so,” she said honestly. “From what Nico said about how he trashed Sotiris’s workroom, he’s got to be pretty pissed.” Everyone muttered agreement, most along the lines of no shit. “Wait, I have a point. From Nico’s description, Sotiris lost a lot in that workroom. But he has even more in the lake house. Rooms full of weird stuff. Maybe some of it, or even most, isn’t magical, I don’t know. But would he risk losing all of that on top of what he lost last night?”
“I know magic,” Dragan said, from beside her, and I can tell you with certainty that what you call the lake house is full to brim with magical artifacts. I could feel them around me the whole time I was there. It might even be what kept me from running completely dry of magic while I was imprisoned in that place.”
Nico nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, so we’ll have to do something about that. But first . . . we know he has the device, and we know it’s charged. He’s going to use it somewhere. How do we figure out where?”
Maeve sat back and listened after that. This was well above her pay grade. Need someone to break into a computer? Give her enough time and she was your girl. But figure out where a pissed off psychotic sorcerer was going to go next? Nope.
Ideas were bounced back and forth, harsh words were exchanged, and apologies were offered, along with an endless supply of coffee and soft drinks. But nothing was agreed on, until Nico finally said, “You copied his computer, right, Maeve?”
“I’ve got a copy of his files,” she clarified.
“Great. You and Lili can get started on that, while the rest of us take a break. Maybe if we stop thinking about it, something will bubble up. He turned to Casey without waiting for Maeve to agree. “You and Damian still have that thing with your dad this afternoon?”
“I’m going to cancel that,” she said, shaking her head. “This is way more—”
“Nope. You’re going. The stadium’s twenty minutes from here, less the way you drive. If something comes up, you can get wherever it is as fast as we can.”
“What if it’s here we need to be?” she insisted.
“Then it’ll be good to have someone on the outside.”
“Damian?” she demanded, turning to face him.
“A man behind the enemy is a very good thing. You know that.”
“Fine. We’ll go. Happy?” She gave Nico an evil look.
“Nope. And I won’t be until this over. That’s it for now. I need to get out of this fucking chair.”
SHORTLY AFTER THAT, with just enough time to fill her water bottle, since she was sick of soda, Maeve kissed Dragan for good luck and watched as he and most of the others disappeared down the long hall to the gun range. Damian had already left with a subdued Casey, and Grace was lying on the couch, half-reading and half-dozing, which left Maeve and Lili to pursue their next line of attack. Which was apparently the computer files she’d stolen the previous night.
When she walked in, Lili was tapping her keyboard with a speed that Maeve wasn’t sure she could match. The other woman didn’t look up but she nodded and said, “Give me just a minute,” dragging out the last few words until she struck the final key with a flourish, and said, “Hah! That’ll teach you to try hiding money transfers from me.” She looked up with a grin. “I love this shit.”
Maeve laughed, feeling as if she’d met her missing twin. Technologically speaking, anyway. Her own looks, with her wild red hair and brown eyes, couldn’t be more different than the ethereal Lili’s.
“And now for tonight’s challenge,” Lili said, rubbing her hands together. “You copied the drive?”
“Just the files. There wasn’t enough time to do anything else. As it was, we ran out of time before I could finish the last little bit, but there should be enough to tell us something, I hope. Are these two networked?” she asked, indicating the duplicate computers.
Lili tapped a few keys. “They are now.”
Maeve nodded and inserted the first flash drive. “I have to warn you that there might not be much. I may have snooped on his computer at the other house, the one where Dragan and I met, so to speak. And there was nothing there but financial reports.” She inserted the next drive, as she raised a stalling hand. “I know, financials can tell you a lot. And it did direct us to the penthouse we visited last night, but that might be the end of it, if he doesn’t keep anything more on this one than he did on that.”
The third drive went into the slot.
“Unfortunately,” Lili agreed, “evil rarely equals stupid. I keep hoping someday an enemy will maintain a diary on his computer, with pictures and everything, and not a single digit of security.”
“That would be nice,” Maeve agreed, slotting the final flash drive. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask,” Lili said with a knowing grin.
Maeve grinned back, then said, “In the last meeting—Nico said you were too busy?”
“Oh, I never go to those things. Way too much talking before anything gets done. Your question?”
“Right, Casey’s thing with her dad. She clearly didn’t want to go, but Nico and Damian pushed her to do it. What’s up with that, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“Parents and children,” Lili said, somewhat sadly. “It’s not really my story to tell, but Casey and her father haven’t seen eye-to-eye lately, and her father reached out. Probably the first time the stubborn old man has ever done that. So I guess in the scheme of such family affairs, it’s an important occasion.” She sighed, then studied her screen and asked, “Okay, what do we have here?”
“I’ve put each drive into a separate folder. We might change that . . .” She spoke thoughtfully as she began to the study the files, her heart sinking with every line. “Well, damn,” she muttered. “This was a fucking waste of time.”
Lily looked up from her side of the desk. “Why?” she asked, more puzzled than demanding. Probably because they’d barely gotten started.
“These are the same damn files as on the other computer, and I’ve been through those. Damn it,” she added in a whisper, but continued to the bottom of the list, just in case. “Nope. Nothing new here.”
“We should open every file, to be sure that the contents match the description,” the other woman reminded her gently.