Page 63 of The Show

Cody took it, opening it up and inhaled deeply. “Fuck, yes.”

Before coming here, I’d swung past my place to pick up one of Billy’s signature sandwiches: New York sirloin on homemade rye. The reason was two-fold. First, Cody could do with a solid meal instead of living off protein shakes; and second, bribery.

When I hadn’t been able to find Marnie, I knew there was only one person who could do the job; enter Cody, the big dog. His existence, and work for Rafe, sat under the need-to-know classification. Even I wasn’t entirely sure how they’d forged their partnership, but suffice it to say, Cody was one reason Rafe was so successful. This was down to his ability to hack sites he certainly should not be hacking - namely law enforcement agencies.

The problem was, however, it was a skill not many others had. It had gotten him into a lot of trouble - like twenty-five to life type trouble - but he’d somehow managed to talk his way out of it and now moonlighted for many of the said enforcement agencies, as an unofficial hacking expert to make the sites less hackable.

Rafe had somehow found him along the way and managed to persuade the powers that be to loan Cody out.

“Where’s Rafe?” I asked, waiting patiently until Cody had swallowed the giant mouthful he’d taken as though he’d never eaten a sandwich before.

He took a large glug of water. “He’s on his way down.”

“Good, I need a favor. Are you busy?”

“Nah, I have some time. What do you need?” His next bite was so big he almost finished the entire thing in one.

“Can you hack N.A.S.A.?”

It was at that moment the door opened, but not before consummate delight crossed Cody’s face; like Christmas had come early and I’d bought him a present he’d been asking for his entire life.

I hoped it was from N.A.S.A. and not the sandwich, but one couldn’t be sure.

“Hey, man, what’re you doing here?”

“Can I borrow Cody? He says he’s not busy.”

Rafe raised an eyebrow in Cody’s direction making it clear that wasn’t the case. “What do you need?”

I picked up a copy of G.Q. from the desk and began flipping through it.

“I need him to hack N.A.S.A.,” I replied, with the same level of nonchalance I’d use if I was asking him to pick up a quart of milk on his next grocery shop.

Rafe crossed his arms over his chest and pinned me with a look that was uncannily like the one Jupiter had tried on me too. “Say again?”

“I need Cody to hack N.A.S.A.”

“N.A.S.A.?”

“Yes,” I nodded, wondering why it always needed repeating so many times. It wasn’t like it could be mistaken for anything else. “N.A.S.A.”

Rafe picked up a pile of papers from his in-tray and began sorting through them.

“No, Pennington, he can’t hack N.A.S.A., and you need to stop fucking about. You’re supposed to be pulling the team together. You’ve got Reeves, now you need to work on everyone else.”

“That’s what I am trying to do!” I shut G.Q. and threw it back on the desk in frustration.

“By hacking N.A.S.A.?”

“Yes! Exactly!”

He gave me another one of his cross-witness stares and perched his ass on the desk next to Cody’s but said nothing.

I rolled my eyes. “Jupiter said he’d only come to The Lions if I found a girl for him, and he told me to start at N.A.S.A., which I assumed meant she worked there. So I need to get her to quit N.A.S.A. and come work for me at The Lions.”

“How do you get yourself into these situations?”

“I dunno.” I huffed at the ridiculousness of the question. “It’s not like I said ‘hey Jupe, give me an impossible stipulation to add to your contract’. It’s not like I’m trying to make my life more difficult than it already is. I doactuallyhave a lot on my plate right now, Raferty!”

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