Boston—the next day
Borya threw herself back on the bed, rolling against the twenty-dollar bills she’d sorted into neat piles perpendicular to her pillows. Her home “stash” amounted to just over a thousand dollars, including money from her birthday, her godmother’s semi-monthly presents, and her dad’s allowance. It was literally more cash than she knew what to do with; it didn’t count her “secret” money, or even the bills hidden in an envelope taped to the back of the dresser: two hundred and fifty-seven dollars she had saved from her last enterprise, helping Gordon Heller dispose of two stolen TVs last year.
She shouldn’t have done that. Three years older than her, Gordon had practically hypnotized her at the time, though now she couldn’t begin to imagine why. He was smelly and not very bright, though obviously smart enough to find someone else to deflect blame when doing something illegal. Two days after she told him she wasn’t going to give him a bj—as he called it—he started going out with Cynthia Greiss, and that was that.
Jerk.
But what was she going to do with all this money?
A new computer. Her MSI was starting to seem a little slow, even though it was only six months old. TromboneHackerD had been bragging on Asus lately; maybe she’d check it out.
She didn’t have enough for that. She wasn’t going to touch the money she’d already hidden in the Austrian bank—the vast bulk of her gleanings from the ATMs. There was a reason to do one more round, then close down.
OK. A goal.
Borya rolled back off the bed, gathered the money back into four separate piles, and hid it away in various places in her room. Then she grabbed a sweatshirt, checked her hair, and went down to get her bike.
When she’d started, the ATM enterprise had been a challenge and a lark, a goof, a little bit of fun and excitement. It didn’t hurt anyone, not like Gordon’s thefts; the banks made good, from what she heard. She had started by looking into skimmers, then realized that the card machine her father had locked in his office safe gave her possibilities far beyond what a skimmer gang might have. Figuring out how to get the safe open was harder than the coding.
Not really. But the coding wasn’t all that hard to do, with the help of a little research on the Internet.
But the excitement had worn off. It was time to try something else.
What exactly?
Borya pondered the possibilities as she unchained her bike from beneath the back porch.
Tolevi leaned forward in the backseat as the sedan pulled up the street near his house. As always, he felt a slight touch of nostalgia, remembering how his wife would always be waiting when he returned. That was more than a decade ago, several lifetimes, and a different continent.
As he reached for the door, a figure darted from the driveway of the neighbor’s house, one door down. It mounted a bicycle, smoothly gliding down the street.
Was that his daughter, Borya?
It certainly looked like her: slim build, pressing down toward the handlebars exactly the way she rode. The rider passed under a lamppost near the corner; he or she was wearing a gray hoodie.
None of this was exactly verification, but he was sure it was Borya. And he was also sure it was past 8:00 p.m., which was her absolute curfew when he was out of town.
What the hell was she up to?
“Indulge me,” Tolevi told the driver. “See if you can follow that girl on the bike. The one who just turned. I want to see where she’s going.”
“But—”
“It’s my daughter,” said Tolevi sharply. “I want to see where she’s going. She’s breaking curfew.”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Tolevi leaned forward and dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the front seat of the limo.
“I have boys myself,” said the driver, putting the car in gear. “Much safer.”