Calculated Risk

“Just one more thing,” Sabrina said, catching his arm before he could leave. “This agent that you’re sending. The one I need to convince…make sure he or she is damn good.”

“Only the best.”

Chapter 2

“H ey, Bubba. What’s shaking?”

The hardened old bartender with a missing front tooth looked up from his beer taps to smile at his latest customer. “What’s a girlie like you doing in a place like this?” he asked, performing their common ritual.

“Just staying out of trouble,” Sabrina replied with a smile.

“The usual?”

She considered that for a moment, then ordered. “Make it a double.”

She shrugged out of her winter paraphernalia, a task that took almost more effort than she had, and waited for Bubba to finish pouring another customer’s beer. She sat down on the high stool with the ripped leather seat and sighed at the familiar comfort.

Peace and a little distraction. It’s what she’d been looking for when she decided to go out tonight and she always seemed to find it at Bubba’s. Maybe it was his smile. Or maybe it was his whiskey. It didn’t matter.

It was Monday. Three days had passed since her conversation with Krueger. Three days since she’d followed orders and done what she needed to do, but still no contact from any agent. She’d been edgy, irritable and impatient. To top it all off, a major chunk of crown molding had fallen from her living-room ceiling.

That’s when she’d decided she needed a break.

The crowd was light tonight. A few diners sat at the tables along the wall eating burgers and fries. There was a group of men at a five top in the back. And she sat alone at the bar except for an older gentleman with a semifamiliar face who sat two stools down. She nodded toward the older man and he replied with a similar nod. Then they both went back to staring straight ahead into the rows of bottles that lined what Bubba liked to call his top shelf but what was in reality his only shelf.

It was protocol among the regulars to respect the nod and the straight-ahead stare. Most people came to this place looking to unwind. Sometimes that called for small talk. Sometimes it didn’t. Tonight she didn’t want to hear about the weather, or the score of the basketball game, or why the economy sucked. She just wanted a little time to not think about what was going to happen. And perversely when it was going to happen.

Krueger had told her they needed to move quickly. Leave it to the government to interpret three days as quick.

Reaching for the bowl of peanuts that sat on the bar, Sabrina studied them for a moment. Finally, she decided, based primarily on her current level of hunger that not too many grubby hands had already foraged through the bowl, therefore they were safe to eat.

As a bonus they were salted.

After all, Bubba’s did have a reputation to maintain as the respectable bar in town. The competition with Nick’s down the block was often fierce. A little thing like dirt-free, salt-covered nuts could make all the difference.

“Eighty-two,” Sabrina counted before she popped a handful into her mouth. A faint sound from the TV that sat on a high ledge in the corner of the bar caught her attention. Sabrina turned and saw the logo of a familiar show appear on the screen. “Hey, Bubba, you’ve got to turn this up. Entrée Hollywood is going to have some hot scoop tonight.”

With a gleam in his eye, Bubba found the remote and increased the volume to the furthest dash on the right.

“…And in other news, it was discovered that Marsha Lowery, the second finalist in American Star Maker, had previously worked as a prostitute known to her customers as Sweet Sugar in the high class LasVegas brothel called Mother’s Milk. Several men came forward today after the story broke to share their memories and experiences with the then twenty-eight, now thirty-four-year-old hooker.

“…Sweetie and me…we were more than just friends if you get my drift.”

Sabrina chuckled to herself as Bubba put the double shot of Jack Daniel’s in a reasonably clean glass in front of her. Yeah, Bubba’s would, in her mind, always be head and shoulders over Nick’s.

“How did you find that out?” Bubba questioned with a sly smile.

“I’ve got my ways.” Sabrina wiggled her eyebrows in another old dance she and Bubba had often performed. She reached for her drink and continued to watch as the broadcast cut to one man after another, each john more pathetic than the one before, until finally a sobbing Marsha filled the screen and confessed her misspent past. She also asked the American public to forgive her for lying about her age.

It was a hell of a moment for TV.

“Shoot, girl, you can find out anything. You should be out there working for the CIA,” Bubba said.

“That’s the idea,” she muttered under her breath.

Three days. Three days and nothing. She didn’t like the smell of it. What if this was some kind of setup? What if Krueger wasn’t who he said he was? She’d done a preliminary check after she’d received Arnold’s e-mail, so she knew he wasn’t lying about his position in the organization, but what did that mean? Doubt crept in from every corner of her mind. To push it back she took another sip of her drink and let the burn of the whiskey coat her throat.

“Hey, you know who you need to get next? That really bad dude.”

“There are a lot of really bad dudes, Bubba.”

“No, you know who I mean, the baddest.”

Kahsan, Sabrina thought. He was the baddest.

“That one who keeps breaking all the computers. That Ploxm guy.”

Sabrina smoothed out her expression at the mention of her competition’s name. Had they decided to go with him after all? Had the play already been called out to the field while she’d been left to sit on the bench? Man, she was going to be annoyed if that was the case.

She shook her head and smiled at Bubba’s irritation. The bartender still hadn’t gotten over the fact that he’d been the victim of a cyber virus. “Are you still mad about that? I fixed your computer for you, didn’t I?”

“But I lost some important e-mails,” he wailed.

“You’ll find another girlfriend on the Internet, Bubba. And she’ll replace all those love e-mails you lost, I promise.” Sabrina tipped the glass back and finished her shot. “Another.”

Smoothly, the bartender pulled the empty glass away and quietly replaced it with another. There was no judgment. She and Bubba understood each other.

Sabrina felt the customer next to her turn and stare. She stared back. “Problem?”

He nodded to the TV with his chin. “You found that stuff out about the girl?”

“The information was there to be found.”

The old man looked skeptical. “The producers of that show couldn’t find it. Heck, they thought she was only twenty-four.”

“Yeah, well, I aim to serve the public by providing the truth.”

She’d used the line before, but tonight it tasted particularly sour in her mouth. What she did was hack allegedly unhackable systems to find information on celebrities that she could then sell to the tabloids. Certainly, not a noble profession. But at least she didn’t contaminate that system with a virus that would shut down the entire network. She was head and shoulders more honorable than Ploxm in that regard. After all, trashy newspaper stories would come and go, but hard drives and data…those were lost forever.

Still Bubba praised her contributions to society much like a father would, if only her father knew where she was or what she did for a living. “Oh, that’s our Sabrina all right. A smart one, I tell you. She was the first to find out about that one Academy Award-winning actor who was gay. And the first to figure out that the big-time cable newscaster was a drug addict. There’s no secret she can’t find. I keep telling her she should go to work for the government, but she doesn’t listen to me.”

“They couldn’t afford me.” Sabrina said. Another old line. She wondered when she had gotten so tired of it. “Speaking of affording me…how bad is the tab for this month?”

Bubba checked the book he kept under the counter and winced a little.

That bad. Sabrina thought about the state of her checking account and winced herself. She’d sold a few stories to the Star Watcher last month, but was still waiting on her check. She hadn’t been completely joking to Krueger when she said finding a job, the right job for her anyway, was tough. A steady income would be nice for a change.

Sabrina shook her head. Yeah right, that’s why you got back in the game, so you could pay off your bar tab.