Page 12 of Amethyst Flame
I shrugged. “I know that I ashed them all.”
“Ms. Taylor, he’ll obviously be able to make more. We need to know how far along his development is. Perhaps you should’ve considered capturing a few for examination.”
“The nanobots weren’t synergized, not like Mo’s hive,” Jacob added.
Dane lifted an eyebrow in Jacob’s direction. “What do you know about how Ms. Taylor’s hive is synergized, Mr. Aaron?”
Dangerous tone from Dane there. I willed Jacob to keep his gob shut about the White Wafer of Doom. It was our only ace in the hole.
But Jacob didn’t even twitch. “Obviously,Mo’s hive works synergistically. Whereas St. Croix’s bugs were free-floating only, remote-controlled by his laptop. But as a proof-of-concept goes, it was enough to show the tech is functional.”
From my vantage, both Dane and Jacob knew way more than they were letting on and were sizing each other up. Well, shit, I couldn’t blame Jacob since I’d basically taught him to lie to Dane. And he was good at it.
Maybe that should bother me.
But Jacob was still talking. “You were right about one thing… BantaMatrix isn’t the only group working with nanotech. They might’ve been the furthest along, that we know of, but even Alling was surprised that a hive merged symbiotically with Mo. There doesn’t seem to be a clear explanation why MoTHs finally made the jump—singularity style—with her.”
He’d put a lot of thought into this. What else had he gotten from the white chip? I gave him a look—kinda like the look Dane was giving him.
“You know a lot about this,” Dane drawled. “Want a job?”
I bolted upright. “What? No!”
“Yes,” Jacob said.
My moths, revived by the food and my fury, sizzled under my skin. “Why didn’t you givemea job instead of kidnapping me?”
“Because you were more a perp than a partner.”
The answer came from Jacob, not Dane.
I glared at him. “Oh, nice.” Traitor. “Listen, neither of you would’ve gotten anywhere without me.”
I turned my glare back to Dane. “Why were you following me anyway?” Even Jacob wasn’t rash enough to hack TSA to fake my flight ID, but I’d laid enough counterfeit clues about a wild-girl weekend in Vegas via my Dane-jacked devices that he should’ve been lulled into false complacency.
But apparently not my Super Secret Agent Man.
He gave me a dark look. “Wherever you go, chaos follows.” While I sputtered and Jacob snickered, Dane continued, “That teen girl you work with complained in front of the suddenly working security cam that her phone always died when you were around, and I decided I needed eyes-on again. Since you were posting everywhere about ‘getting bombed’ and ‘going wild’”—his gaze flicked to Jacob—“imagine my surprise to find you dancing and dating—”
“Not so wild,” I protested.
“And deactivating dangerous devices.”
“Note: not an actual bomb.” I pursed my lips. “Those other bugs were pretty once they went pastel. I almost felt bad taking them out.” Bad, but powerful. Although overwhelming, that number of black bugshadleft me a little low now that the excitement—professionalandsexual—had been nixed.
Dane turned to Jacob. “Who else has the tech?”
Please. Secret Agent Man had to already have files on exactly who was developing what and how far along in their process they were. He had to be testing his new employee’s knowledge.
Jacob smiled, baiting him. “We should compare notes.”
Listening to them, my stomach churned. Because Dane was right. The tech was out there, and it wouldn’t stop with one girl or one wild night.
Also, now that my moth-mayhem-induced euphoria was fading into something like common sense, I had to admit it was irresponsible of Jacob to be sharing the white chip data with anyone. Besides me, of course, the person who’d stolen it in the first place. He hadn’t even asked me before doing it.
Jacob had openly admitted to me that he wanted in on this next wave of technology. And now he was getting friendly with Dane, too.
Jacob was an opportunist. He’dusedme.
