Hide Me

He picked up the folder and browsed through it. It looked like another set of photographs. He slotted one out for a closer look, and kept talking.

‘McArdle had quite the hacker’s pedigree. Credit-card company penetration, ATM heists, cyber protection rackets.’ He peered at her over the glossy eight-by-ten, his look predatory. ‘But then, you know more about this kind of thing than me.’

Harry narrowed her eyes. ‘Look, I don’t appreciate—’

Vasco smacked the photo onto the desk. ‘This man, who is he?’

Harry blinked. She recognized the florid face of the American from the casino.

‘He’s the one who collected the winnings. I don’t know his name.’

‘And this one?’

He tossed down another photo, a headshot of a woman. She looked thirty-something, a brunette with good bones, though the layers of make-up masked her features like a veil. Harry shook her head.

‘I’ve never seen her before.’

‘And him?’

Another headshot: a man in his late forties, pale crew cut, eyebrows bleached by the sun. His complexion looked mud-stained with freckles.

Harry shook her head again. ‘No. Is that Franco Chavez?’

Vasco broke eye contact. Over by the wall, his shaggy-haired colleague stirred in his chair. Eventually, Vasco said,

‘We don’t have an ID on Franco Chavez.’

‘I see.’ Harry looked from one to the other, trying to read their discomfort. ‘But these others, they’re all part of the casino-cheating crew?’

‘We believe so.’

‘Why do they need a hacker? Are they really using computers to cheat?’

‘Maybe.’ Vasco tilted his head, as though assessing her. ‘Or maybe they need a hacker for something else.’

Harry squinted. What was he getting at? He leaned forward, his eyes probing hers.

‘We know a lot about you, Miss Martinez.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Such as?’

‘We’ve been in touch with your police force in Dublin. They were very helpful.’ Vasco peered at her like a raptor bird, and Harry tried not to squirm. ‘You started young. I understand you hacked into the Stock Exchange when you were just thirteen.’

Harry’s eyes widened. How the hell did he know about that? No charges were ever filed. A childish misdemeanour, nothing more. Vasco was still talking.

‘Then more recently, there was the question of several million euros that went missing in the Bahamas. And later, some diamonds in Cape Town. Also missing.’

Harry’s brain raced. She’d sailed close to the winds of larceny more than once, but she’d had her reasons, all of them good ones. Trouble was, she couldn’t prove it. Then again, neither could they. She clenched her fists.

‘I’ve never been arrested for anything.’

‘Your father has. He served six years in prison for insider trading, didn’t he?’

Harry gaped. What was he doing, trying to build some kind of case against her? And for what?

‘Geldi!’

Harry snapped her gaze to the stranger by the wall. He’d shot to his feet, his expression stony, and was firing out what sounded like orders in rapid Basque. Vasco made a chopping motion with his hand, cutting him off. Then he turned back to Harry.

‘Have you talked to Riva Mills since McArdle was killed?’

Harry glared at him. ‘No, I haven’t had the chance.’

‘Well, don’t.’

‘What?’

He advanced around the desk towards her. Her heartbeat tripped. Behind him, his colleague was shaking his head.

‘You have an unusual mixture of skills, Miss Martinez.’ Vasco’s eyes bored into hers. ‘Think about it. You’re a professional hacker who knows her way around a casino. You’re part-Irish, part-Spanish. You have a reputation for bluffing and telling lies, not to mention out-manoeuvring the police. You even have a jailbird for a father. This really is a rare opportunity.’

Harry threw him a cagey look and slowly shook her head. Not in denial of his allegations, since most of them were true, but in an effort to ward off what she knew was coming next.

‘I have a proposition for you.’ Vasco loomed over her like an elegant bird of prey. ‘I want you to go undercover, Miss Martinez. I want you to take McArdle’s place.’

Chapter 5

‘That’s crazy.’ Harry stared at Vasco. ‘I don’t know anything about going undercover.’

But even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. If she was honest, a part of her had always been drawn to the notion of becoming someone else. Her whole childhood, after all, had been a kind of double life.

Vasco’s phone rang. He held up a hand, as though halting a line of traffic, then moved behind the desk to take the call. Harry sat back to wait, flicking a glance at his colleague, who’d resumed his seat by the wall. He was scowling across at her, his tangled eyebrows jutting out like twin wire brushes. She shifted her gaze. Vasco was treating the guy as though he was invisible, but there was something about him that Harry found impossible to ignore.

She picked at a fingernail and thought about double lives, flashing on an image of her childhood self: wild hair, fists clenched as if braced for unexpected combat. Outwardly, she’d been the girl she called Harry the Drudge, whose mother made her sit alone in her room after school so they wouldn’t have to talk. The rest of the time, Harry had lived as Pirata, an insomniac who sat at her computer in the dark and prowled the electronic underground. For hours, she’d dialled out over slow modems, sharing ideas and downloading hacker tools. As Pirata, she’d been all-powerful, well respected by her crackerjack comrades. As Harry, she’d led a far more hemmed-in existence.

Vasco wrapped up the call, then looked at his watch, a calculated reminder that he was a busy man. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk.

‘This is an important case, Miss Martinez. We’ve been watching these people for months. I intend to find out what they’re up to, and you can help.’

‘You’ve got the wrong person.’

‘It’s a global investigation.’ He straightened his shoulders. If he’d been a bird, his chest would have swelled. ‘We’re talking about intergovernmental cooperation, very high profile. The United States is involved, Hong Kong, most of Europe, even your own Irish authorities.’

Harry squinted at him. ‘For a crew of casino cheaters?’

He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Cheating the casinos is just a sideline. These people are involved in something else, something bigger. And I want to know what it is.’

‘I’m not trained for this kind of thing. It won’t work.’