Don’t Love, Don’t Lose

“No. It’s… It’s invasive.”

“I know. I’m sorry. None of the data will be kept after we resolve this.”

“But it will be in your head. You will know. That’s invasive.”

“This really matters to you.”

She nodded, and turned to him with an idea that she had a feeling he might not go for. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to, either, but it was a lot more straightforward.

“We should think outside just your current office. You’re going to rent more space in the building, I assume?”

“Maybe buy it. I’ve made an offer. But yes. I’ve hired staff from an agency – a temp agency. I’ll monitor them and hire the ones I like. We’ll expand the office, too. Right now, I’ve just started. It’s only been a couple of months.”

It had taken a long time before he’d been ready to come back to Baltimore. But he was glad that he was back, and he was glad to know that he was ready, as he’d hoped he would be.

“I think I should hack into it from all sides. I should hack into the agency’s records and see if anybody has ties to Sanders. And I think I should hack into Sanders.”

He went completely still.

“You can do that?”

“I did some rudimentary work on you. I didn’t go deep enough to send up any flags, but even a rudimentary look gave me a good idea of who you talk to, who you trust, and what your life is like. If I can get into Sanders’ phone somehow, maybe I’d be able to clone it. If I can actually get his phone, I could definitely clone it and get this over with quickly. We have one person to focus on there. Here, we have too many players. Monitoring all of them is not something a couple of people can do, and I don’t want to involve Aunt Della in this. I don’t want this mess to get any messier than it already has.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“He’s dangerous.”

Jasmine laughed bleakly.

“Oh, I know he’s dangerous. I know how dangerous he is. I have a history with him. But if this is my chance to take him down, then I will take it.”

Jasmine looked up to see that he was hesitating. Had she actually had three pints of beer? That was two more than she usually had.

Well, she hadn’t said anything much. And he didn’t look too shocked, she realized.

“You’re not surprised. You already knew.”

“I did.”

“You looked into me.”

“Roger does that for me when I need it. He’s very good at digging into people. He’s not a hacker, he does it the old-fashioned way, but he’s very good.”

Jasmine nodded slowly. A part of her wanted to slap him and kick him out, but the rest of her was fair enough to point out that this wasn’t so different from what she had done to him. She couldn’t really get mad at it, could she?

“Fine, so you know that back when Sanders had been just a loan shark, my parents owed him money. I had nothing left after the will was probated. I would’ve had no one if Aunt Della hadn’t taken me in. I paid every penny back in the end, but it took a while, and there were times when…”

“When what?”

“Didn’t your Roger find out?”

“He said that there were hospital records. You went to A&E twice.”

“I did. I fell down the stairs.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Fifteen years ago, loan collecting was a difficult business. It’s not one where ethics are involved. When the collector looks at you and decides he likes what he sees, you have to give him what he wants or fight. Fighting involves getting hurt, sometimes. But I fought, and if I was hurt, so was he.”

“I’m sorry, Jasmine. I’m sorry you had to go through that. And I’m sorry I brought it up now.”

Jasmine shrugged jerkily. She remembered that time. She remembered how she’d tried to keep it all a secret from Aunt Della instead of turning to her and getting the authorities involved. But she had paid it all back in the end, and she had left her past behind. At least, she’d believed that she’d left her past behind.

“It’s fine. It’s all over and done with. It won’t influence me now.”

She wasn’t too sure of that, but she was determined not to let it.

“Wow, we ate everything. And what is in that treat? Lucy didn’t beg for anything at all!”

“Your cat begs?”

“Well, more like imperiously demands, but she does make attempts to get food from me. She likes seafood, too.”

“I bet she does. Your Aunt said you rescued her.”

“Well, not really. She just turned up. She was a little sick but strong enough to go through the building and get everybody to give her food. When she came to me, I… I couldn’t kick her back out. I did what I could.”

“You’re a good person. You have a kind heart. You’re not just a beautiful woman.”

Jasmine looked at him in surprise. She’d been so comfortable with him as they worked together that she’d almost forgotten about that part. The awareness of his closeness had just faded into the background. But now it was back, with a vengeance. There was no ignoring it now.

“I…”

“Go on a date with me.”

“I… I can’t…”

“You have your reasons for not trusting. So do I. And yet I want to go on a date with you. It’s just a date. What do you say?”

Jasmine took a deep breath, and shook her head. It took a lot of effort to do that, far more than she might have expected. But she was very pleased with herself after she managed to shake her head.

“Why not?”

“Things are complicated now. We’re working together.”

“All right, then. I will ask you again when we’re not working together, and then you won’t have that excuse anymore.”

Jasmine opened her mouth to protest, but she clamped it shut again. She didn’t know what she was protesting. She wasn’t sure what she wanted. That was more than unusual for her. She usually knew herself very well.

“Fine. Now I think we’ve done all the work we could do. I’ll have more by tomorrow. I’ll keep up the monitoring, but it’s a lot. I still think I should get hacking. It would make a lot more sense than this. This is too wide a net. We won’t catch anything. We won’t even know if we catch anything. I can do a run with keywords, but even so… I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”

“You’re giving up before we begin.”

“I’m not giving up. I’m trying to be practical, devise a strategy that has the best chance of working. This works for a more general kind of surveillance and monitoring. But for something more specific, we’ll get too much data.”