“It’s going to be dangerous.” He shook his head. “Dangerous. That’s got to be a major understatement. I don’t even know how we are going to pull it off. “
Sandy held the rosemary up for Jacob to smell. He did.
“I figure we’ll come up with something. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And all of those other clichés that work in this case.”
“Always the optimist.”
“To counteract your pessimist routine.”
“I’m not a pessimist,” Jacob said with a smile.
“I wish we had someone on the inside. Gomez said he knows a security guy, but we need someone else. You used to work there, do you know of anyone who might want to go to the dark side?”
“I was a bit of an overachieving loner.”
“What? You?”
Jacob wanted to avoid this, but said, “I guess there is one person I could get in touch with. She’s an old friend.”
“She? Do tell.”
Was that jealousy Jacob detected in her voice?
“Her name is Xia. We were friends in college. ”
“Friends with benefits?” Sandy asked with a sideways glance.
It was jealousy.
“After college, we served on the peace mission together,” Jacob said, avoiding a direct answer. “We did code sometimes in college, and when we were in Botswana we started writing and running opioid and dopamine code. We got away with it there, so we kept doing it when we became full corporate. She was with me the night I got burned. I haven’t talked to her since.”
“I thought you got burned alone.”
“I did. It happened after she left. I didn’t want to screw up her life too, so I never told anyone she was with me that night. Actually, she helped me write the code we were running.”
Sandy found a bench next to some Swiss chard plants and had a seat. Jacob sat beside her.
“Do you think she could be convinced to help?” Sandy asked.
Jacob looked at the contrast of the bright red stems and rich dark green leaves of the chard.
“I don’t know. She was all about living the corporate life. It was her family’s dream for her.”
“And yet, she was writing and running illegal code with you,” Sandy said, raising her eyebrows.
“She was an amazing code writer, so I’m sure she’s running a team by now. And if Your Better Life is working on this chip, she is more than likely on the team in some capacity. That’s a lot to risk throwing away.”
“Sounds like a perfect candidate to help us out,” Sandy said.
She was right. And Xia did break the rules with him. More than once, in fact. She even instigated the first time they did code in Botswana. He had to remind her of that and convince her to do it when the time came, but it was her idea.
“True,” he said, “but I’m sure she doesn’t want me near her now. If I know Xia, when I was burned she got scared straight. She was a rule-breaker, but she was cautious. Maybe a little paranoid at times.”
“Well, you could always guilt-trip her into helping.”
“Guilt-trip her?”
“Sure. You didn’t rat her out when you got burned. You could have and it would have reduced your sentence, but you didn’t. Why?”
Jacob shrugged and looked at the garden. “I don’t know. It would have been a shitty thing to do.” He watched the girl who had traded for the shoes as she picked yellow squash, placing each in her basket with care and precision. “Loyalty, I guess,” he said finally.
“Right. Loyalty. Use that to guilt-trip her.”
“I’m not sure I know how to guilt-trip someone. You think it will work?”
Sandy laughed and stood. “It worked on Gomez and me,” she said and walked off.
Chapter 11
When Xia got the message from an unknown number, she nearly dropped her phone.
Remember Maun? Meet me at Commie Cup 6 PM so we can talk about old times.
It took her almost an hour to respond with a simple, OK.
That hour, and every one since, her mind wrestled with one question, “Why is Jacob contacting me?” Of course, that question gave birth to a cascade of more questions. Many she thought she had answered long before. No, not answered, but she had decided to stop asking herself. It took her a year after that decision for her to stop asking if Jacob’s arrest was her fault. Maybe she had knocked over one of the scramblers and he hadn’t noticed. Maybe she was not cautious enough and left a trail when they were writing the code. Maybe...Maybe...Her mind swirled with maybe and if only and should have and could have. Thankfully, she had been free of that mental state for a little over two years. But as disturbing as those questions were, they paled next to the questions that paralyzed her with fear for the first few weeks after Jacob was arrested. When are they going to break my door down and haul me away? Are they going to stop me when I sign in at work? But they never did. Jacob took all the blame, and corporate never even asked her about their relationship. When she finally realized she would not be arrested, she felt relief wash over her. And guilt. She had no idea both could have such a physical effect, like a bucket of water being dumped over her. And like the questions, the relief finally went away. But the guilt stayed much longer.
She arrived at Commie Cup twenty minutes early. She wanted to give herself time to chicken out and leave before he got there because she knew once Jacob showed up, there was no leaving until she heard him out.
She debated whether to have a second cup of coffee when he walked in. His hair was longer, over his ears, almost to his shoulders, shaggy, and he wore sunglasses and a surgical mask, so she did not realize it was him until the man behind the counter said, “Comrade Jacob, a nice surprise.”
Jacob pulled the mask down and went to the counter. He and the man behind
