Don’t Love, Don’t Lose

Anthony smiled, the smile of a predator who knew he would wait, with endless patience, until just the right moment. He would find out exactly who the mole was, and he would have the great pleasure of letting Richard Sanders know that he knew. He would make that man regret ever thinking that he could go toe to toe with Anthony Malone and come out unscathed.

Because he couldn’t.

He would find out, because Anthony would show him. Thoroughly.

Jasmine had a smile on her face as she drove back home, the backseat of her sensible Volvo loaded with food. She had enough food to feed an army.

And in a way, she would do just that.

Jas appreciated what Della did. Heck, she appreciated every single thing about Della, from how she had taken an orphan in twenty-five or so years ago when she could’ve just washed her hands of all such annoying responsibilities, to every single thing she had done since that day.

Jas would never hear a word against Della from anybody.

But Lord, the woman cooked too much. When did Della think she could possibly eat all of that? There were fourteen containers rattling around in the backseat. They were six lunches, six dinners, and two big boxes of waffles and muffins that could be defrosted for breakfast for at least two portions each.

The remaining meals – there were barely any – were good enough for cereal, and things like toast and fruits.

Della had been on a quarter-century mission to put some meat on Jasmine’s bones, and it didn’t look like she would ever give up.

The grin on Jasmine’s face got wider when she thought of the much smaller containers that were going home with Rita.

Jasmine was tall and slim. She’d never done anything to become taller or to stay slim. It was just how she was. Jasmine was a tall, dark-skinned woman with short hair, big brown eyes, and a quiet elegance that made most people automatically doff their caps and be polite to her, sometimes despite themselves.

She looked like she should be chairing lunch meetings for charity auctions, and things of that sort.

But Jasmine would never be able to have patience for things like that. She was a coder.

Jasmine looked around and saw the world in flashing series of ones and zeroes. She had an intuitive understanding of algorithms that were just begging to be written, alive in her head, and she had a way of grasping the ways to turn those algorithms into those patterns that a computer could recognize. About twenty years ago, as a girl who wanted to be a coder, she had been something of an oddity.

The passage of time hadn’t really changed that. She was still a bit of an oddity.

She was paid like most people in management, but she wasn’t in management. She was still a coder. She was a coder who led a team, but she knew who she was. She was the first among equals, and that was because any responsibility for mistakes would be on her shoulders. Any credit, though, would go to her team.

That was just how Jasmine worked. That was part of the reason why Jasmine was so loved.

As she pulled into her parking spot, Jasmine was aware of a sense of regret. It surprised her. She didn’t usually feel regret. She believed in living each moment as if it was her last, with good reason. At eleven, she’d found out that any moment really could be your last. She’d found that out when the two people most children think would live forever – her parents – had passed away in a horrific car crash.

She’d only understood how horrific it had been years later, when she’d hacked into police records and read them.

Maybe she’d had ulterior motives for becoming a coder. Maybe she was also a hacker.

Those were all maybes. She really couldn’t confirm or deny that, and she would wish anybody who tried to prove it all kinds of luck.

All the luck in the world wouldn’t help them, anyway, because they’d be up against the very best. There was no point in relying on luck then.

But now Della, the woman who had raised her, was going back to work.

It wasn’t like Della had ever really stopped working. She’d been an excellent secretary and she’d always worked. But she’d always worked locally – for local businesses. She’d never worked for a giant multi-million dollar corporation like Maloney Enterprises.

It didn’t sit right with Jasmine, in all honesty.

It wasn’t like Della needed to work. Jasmine made enough money to make sure that Della would never need to work.

Henrietta might not have been rolling in it, thanks to her rather unconventional choice of profession, but it wasn’t like she was broke, either.

They were both solvent. There was no reason, there was no need…

Jasmine sighed.

There was also no point. Della’s life was her own, and Della was an independent woman. For whatever reason, she’d made her choice. She’d stick with it.

But that didn’t mean that Jasmine couldn’t do some checking on her own, anyway. Della didn’t need to know that.