Don’t Love, Don’t Lose

“He wants Sanders’ territory. That’s good.”

“What?”

“It’s good. I want Sanders to have less power. I don’t want him to get richer. He has cops and politicians in his pocket now. Back then, it was just him taking over his father’s business and getting a little more aggressive about collections. Now it’s something worse. Now he has real influence.”

“You’re going to go on a crusade and risk hurting yourself about all of this?”

“He hurt me a long time ago, Rita. The plans that Aunt Della talked to me about – didn’t you talk to her? What Malone wants to do?”

Rita nodded reluctantly.

“It doesn’t sound so bad, what he’s trying to do.”

“It doesn’t. Because it’s not. I think we should do what we can to help, really. If it’s a choice between him and Sanders, I know which I would choose.”

“So you trust this guy, then? You looked into him?”

“I tried. He’s either squeaky clean or he’s had somebody go in and change a lot of things. I can’t find much from before he was eighteen. Most of the stuff I found is after that. He has a college education – I think he went on a scholarship – and he didn’t start big. He started pretty small and built it up.”

“You like him.”

“I think he can be admired to a point, but he’s also ruthless. He has no qualms about putting surveillance on all his employees because one might be spying on him! There might be no spy, too. Maybe he’s just losing his touch and getting old.”

“You don’t believe that. Mama wouldn’t have asked you to help if it had been like that.”

Jasmine had circled around to that conclusion, too, but it hadn’t made her happy.

“I can’t just give up all my principles and give him all that information, Rita.”

“But you’ve already agreed.”

Rita said that quietly. Jasmine frowned.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t, but I know you, so I know you did. You’ve already made up your mind. Now you might as well stop beating yourself up about it and get to work, right?”

“This is not what I had in mind for a sister talk when you came over.”

“I know, but this is what you need, Jas. Sometimes you get what you need, not what you want.”

Jasmine gestured at the indulgent meal they were still making their way through.

“That’s not how things look right now.”

“And sometimes we just take what we want. Trust your gut, Jas. I trust it.”

Jasmine hesitated.

“There’s more. What haven’t you told me?”

“Nothing,” muttered Jasmine.

“Jas…”

“Nothing. There’s nothing.”

“I… Oh my goodness, you don’t say. It can’t be true.”

“It can’t be true,” agreed Jasmine.

“You like this man?”

“What? No! That is complete and utter nonsense. Of course I don’t like him. That’s ludicrous. This has absolutely nothing to do with me liking him or not liking him, which I do not, so there’s nothing to do with anything.”

Drat. She’d completely blown that.

“Well, well, I wonder if Mama had this in mind, too. I wouldn’t be surprised, you know. She wants me to date less and she wants you to date more. Of course she’d think of you. And this little problem, it fell into her lap, didn’t it? Now I wonder if you’re right to ask if there is a spy at all. It all sounds pretty farfetched, doesn’t it?”

“There is a spy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Anthony Malone is not a paranoid man. If he thinks that something’s going down that means that he needs to take precautions, then something is definitely going down. I think.”

“You do like him!”

“I don’t like him or anything. Don’t be silly, Rita. This is not high school.”

“It’s not. Maybe it’s not that you like him. Maybe he’s just so hot that you can’t resist him. I looked him up. He’s good-looking. Well, not a pretty boy, of course, but he’s a good-looking man.”

“No, he’s definitely not a pretty boy.”

“I met a pretty boy the other day. I was considering introducing him to you. But if you’ve already got your sights on this one, I don’t think the pretty boy can compare. I mean…”

“I don’t want to know what you mean, Rita,” said Jasmine severely, but the damage was done. There was no way to stop it.

And there was no way she could hide it from Rita, either.

“At least it’s a nice distraction from worrying about Sanders. You know, you can bond over plotting his destruction. Wouldn’t that be a nice date?”

“You’re completely mad, Rita.”

“Absolutely, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, I’m taking the chowder home with me tomorrow.”

“What? No! I like chowder!”

“Either I take the chowder or I tell Mama.”

Jasmine knew when she was beaten. But she sat back and felt lighter than she had in a while. Sisters might be big headaches and more trouble than they’re worth, but there was nothing like them anyway.

Jasmine took a deep breath and walked to the offices. She was ostensibly there to meet Aunt Della. Three people knew the truth. One of those who didn’t would be caught in her trap soon.

Then she would have to turn that person over to Anthony Malone, trusting his sense of fairness and justice. She wasn’t sure she could do that.

She didn’t see what options she had, though.

“They’re all in a meeting,” hissed Aunt Della when she got out of the elevator.

“Then why are you whispering?”

“Oh… Well, I don’t know.”

Jasmine smiled, but she really didn’t feel much like smiling. She was beginning to wonder if the end did justify the means. If she started down this road, where would she end?

“Well, come on in. You will need my system, Mr. Malone said.”

“Did he, now,” murmured Jasmine as she sat down in her aunt’s chair.

He was right, though. She sat down, and took a deep breath.

This was it. There was no turning back now.

But doubts left her as she started working. It was like music to Jasmine, the way she could snake through cracks, the way she could find traces where they’d been erased almost completely, the way she could slither along the network and find all its secrets.

Terminal One had been spending too much time on Tumblr, and that too on the unsavory parts of it. She wouldn’t bring it up with Malone, but she wondered what he would do about it when he found out. They’d scrubbed most of the data, and cleared cookies and cache, but she could still see it.

Terminal Two was very naïve. They saved their passwords on their browser – Internet Explorer, of all things – and seemed to never empty their recycle bin. She was tempted to give the entire system a good scrub.

Terminal Three was interesting. Whoever it was had installed an alternate Operating System. They were working on Ubuntu. Jasmine approved. It was far more secure than working on Windows. It took her a little longer, but she got past that and the firewall, and got the data she needed. She would scrape it now and go through it later.

Terminal Four made her grin. She had a feeling she’d like whoever sat there, because it was full of memes – the good-natured kind. She dutifully got the data from there, as well, and sat back.

There was one that would take her some more time, and it would make Anthony Malone unhappy. But his computer was also hooked up to the network, and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t have some fun. She went right ahead and did to him what he had asked her to do to his employees. Sure, they’d signed away their rights to privacy for what they did on their work terminals, but she didn’t see why he should have exemption from that. Besides, it was possible that whoever was leaking information was using Malone’s computer to do it. It would be a neat little way of covering their tracks.

Jas did a quick check of her aunt’s system and saw nothing amiss. Still, she did a quick run through and made sure she got what she needed. Then she amped up the protection on that computer, because it was pitiful. Finally, she uploaded her software, and made sure that it was installed on all the terminals – including Malone’s own. She was looking forward to how that would annoy him. If everybody was going to surrender their privacy to him, then he should know how it feels because he would surrender his to her.