Miguel looked down at the knife, his eyes widening almost comically. “This would make me money?” he said, sounding awed.
“Not that one,” Jake said. “You’d have to develop a knife or some other weapon and it would have to be unique enough it could be trademarked and copyrighted. Then you could sell the design.”
“You mean, people make money from thinking up these things?”
“They make millions, amigo,” Jake assured him.
Nick shook his head. “It takes more money than most hunters see in a lifetime to develop just one product. You’re feeding them pipe dreams, both of you.”
Jake sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just used to thinking that way.”
Miguel put the knife back on the table with slow, sad reluctance.
Sabrina’s gut tightened. Thinking in terms of revenue streams and investments was what she did all day, too. None of these people, these hunters, had ever had time to lift their heads and look toward a future with a positive bank balance, let alone their next meal. Even Nick and Damian and Nyanther, the vampires, didn’t naturally think that way. Their vast fortunes came about as a result of time and compound interest. There was nothing remotely entrepreneurial in it.
Of course they weren’t used to thinking about such things. Survival was a higher priority. No wonder Talia wore second-hand boots and 1960s relics and Miguel’s car belched blue smoke. From their perspective, it was an impossible dilemma to solve.
Only, Sabrina spent all her time resolving problems far more challenging this this.
She sat back in the corner of her chair, letting the conversation wash around her. She absorbed the laughter and chat at the table and the little macho challenges and bravado as they flourished the weapons. She thought about everything she had learned about the hunting world and the hunters themselves and applied it to business models.
There had to be a way….
* * * * *
Jake could almost see the wheels start to turn in Sabrina’s head as she sat back in her chair and stared into middle-distance. Something had tripped her off.
His uncle Graham had looked into Sabrina Castillo’s background after Cory Morse had brought her to dinner to meet them. It was standard practice whenever one of the family met someone in a business setting to check the new person out, build a profile and learn what they could about the new contact’s strengths and weaknesses.
“There’s a reason she’s the youngest director Wentworth Kumatsu has ever had,” Graham had told Jake. “She’s driven, she’s smart and she’s creative. Some of the financing she has arranged for projects has been so out there no one believed the deals would hold together. If we can keep her on the team, it will be to our benefit. Maybe you should date her again, just to cement it.”
That had made Jake’s mouth curl down.
Only, the next day Cory Morse had let them know Sabrina had moved onto a bigger project. It was a code even Jake understood without his uncle’s translation.
“They slapped her down for a transgression,” Graham said and shrugged. “Possibly even for fucking you, Jakey. Men can get caught with their dicks in the wrong slot and shrug it off. Women get a completely different set of rules.” He had dismissed the matter and moved on.
Jake found himself wondering if he had somehow screwed up her professional reputation. He’d never considered just sleeping with a woman would impact negatively on her life, before. Although Sabrina was the first high-powered suit he’d ever taken to bed.
As he watched Sabrina go into thinking mode, Nyanther nudged him. “Did you hear Connor’s question?” he asked, his voice low.
Jake shook off his inattention. “No, sorry.” He looked at Connor. “What was the question?”
Connor was hefting the knife that folded up to look like a harmless power bar. “Can you get these anywhere? How much are they?”
“They’re not on the market,” Jake told him. “That’s a prototype and upper management decided it was too much of a novelty to sell well.”
“Which means they were pressured by a government somewhere that didn’t like the idea of covert weaponry,” Nyanther said.
Jake grinned. “That’s almost exactly what happened.”
“Does a lot of weapons development get suppressed?” Damian asked curiously.
“Suppressed or bought outright, so no one else can get hold of it,” Nyanther said. “It’s happened to me twice.”
“You sell computers,” Damian pointed out.
“I develop software,” Nyanther said. “Cyberwarfare is the new frontier.”
Damian snorted. “Humans…. We haven’t finished with the old battles yet.”
Jake glanced at Sabrina once more. She was listening to the chatter with a smooth, absorbed expression, as if she was sifting through every word said.
An hour later, he found out that was exactly what she had been doing. By then, the remains of lunch had been cleared away and the weapons all returned to the duffel bags.
Chloe was settled for a nap and the adults broke up into smaller groups—Nick and Nyanther sat across the chessboard from each other, while Riley laid against Damian’s chest and drifted in and out of sleep, completely relaxed despite the room full of people. Jake had seen Miguel and his kids do the same thing over the weekend. Grabbing sleep no matter where they found themselves was apparently part of the lifestyle.
Connor had his nose buried in one of Nick’s precious books and Talia was breaking down and cleaning a pistol that lived on her hip when she was hunting. Jake hadn’t seen her use it. She was handling it like someone who knew what they were doing.
Jake wondered if he should go home. It was possible he had outstayed even a hunter’s extended welcome. Besides, his other life was waiting for him. Like Sabrina, he had taken a dive for the day. Tomorrow he would have to report in and work like a good little human, although after this weekend of hunting with real hunters, the human world held less than zero appeal to him.
Sabrina came up to him where Jake was sitting at the table, sifting through texts and email messages and feeling guilty about his uncle and the work he wasn’t doing. “Can I talk to you?” she asked softly, for the room had become very mellow and quiet.
“Sure.” He pushed the chair across from him out from under the table with his boot. “Have a seat.”
Instead, she pulled out the chair around the corner from him. The top chair. Of course. She settled in it and crossed her legs. Even in casual at-home wear, she looked polished and groomed and elegant.
Sabrina’s appearance made Jake realize how far he had moved away from Wall Street in just a few days. He had spent a weekend traipsing about woodlands or trolling towns for news of strange beasts or missing people and working with a team that just didn’t know the meaning of the word “quit”. It had been energizing to be among people who had the same goals as he did.
With a jolt, he realized that this was the first time in his life it had happened. He wasn’t an outsider here. No wonder he didn’t want to go home.
Sabrina glanced over her shoulder. She wasn’t looking for eavesdroppers, he realized. Her expression seemed to be saying, “look at them.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“I noticed.”
“You’ve got access to a lot of cutting edge technology.”
“One of the few genuine advantages to being a member of my family,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“One of my clients—I can’t say who, of course—I set up a deal for them to acquire a tracking device with over-the-horizon potential.”
“A drone does that,” Jake pointed out.
“Private citizens can’t acquire tracking drones,” she said dismissively. “The tech my client wanted to buy used old satellites. There’s thousands of them up there, no longer used because the corporations who own them have moved on, folded and more. We’ve been putting satellites into space for decades. Anyway, the tech uses old satellite capacity to bounce microw
aves from the hand-held device to the surface. The range is fantastic and the tracker can be keyed to look for heat signatures, movement, up to twelve different criteria, including sound.”
“Sounds intriguing.”
“I thought you might know what I’m talking about,” she said softly, “because my client’s bid failed. Summerfield bought the tech.”
Jake shook his head. “So? I work in the corporate offices, not the labs.”
“So, couldn’t that tech be used to find the gargoyles? They’re solitary, they move at night, they stay away from humans unless they’re hungry. They should stand out on that sort of tracker like neon in the dark.”
He stared at her, his heart suddenly racing. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He had seen the bid go through. At the time it had been just another file his uncle had wanted him to read and appreciate. He had appreciated the hell out of the seven figure price paid for the tech. It had helped open his eyes to the sheer volume of money the corporation moved around on a daily basis.
“Do you have access to it?” Sabrina asked.
“I have access to anything I want,” Jake said truthfully. “It doesn’t mean I can walk in and take it. It’s a prototype. They’re going to notice if the only working device they have goes missing.”
“That’s just the one they show you,” she said calmly. “There will be others in development. Scientists don’t like basing their conclusions on the trials of just one device. They’d want to test lots of them to make sure it works across every device and style. They’ll only show you the prettiest and most impressive one to keep their funding flowing.”
He stared at her.
“You don’t believe me,” she said. “It’s okay. Check it out tomorrow at the office. See if I’m right.”
“You want me to steal one?” he breathed, his brain only starting to work sluggishly.
“It’s your company. You’re not stealing when you’re taking something you already own. Taking the schematics would be more useful, though. Then we can replicate it here.”
“On the kitchen table?”
“Damian has a workshop in the basement, I’m told.”
“He does?” Jake was starting to feel stupid.
Sabrina smiled, as if she had noticed his confusion. “He does.”
Jake shook his head. “Even if I did steal the thing, or the plans—and I’m not agreeing to it, not yet—but if I did, then there’s all the satellite relay programming and….”
Sabrina moved her head to look at Nyanther, where he was hunched over the chessboard, his fingers curled into a tight fist. Clearly, Nick was winning.
Then Jake realized. Nyanther had a software company full of developmental coders and an aptitude for mischief.
Jake shook his head. “Even if we can replicate it, what are you doing to do with it?” he demanded in a heavy whisper. “You can’t put it on the open market. All you can do is give them away to hunters. You can’t even sell them. Hunters don’t have two cents to rub together.”
“Oh, I don’t intend to give them away at all.” She got to her feet. “You steal the plans. I’ll monetize them.”
She left him sitting at the table, feeling winded and ignorant…and determined to prove she was wrong.
Chapter Fourteen
Finding proof that Sabrina was wrong was harder than Jake expected it to be.
He returned to work the next day, almost eager to get into the office and get to it. He even breezed past his uncle’s dour comments about sick days and responsibilities. For the first time since he had reluctantly dragged his ass into the office to start learning the ropes, Jake had something he wanted Barbara to help him with. He sent her off to find who was running the development project for the tracker and where they were located.
It ended up being a small subsidiary in California, so Jake told his uncle he was heading out on a get-to-know junket and flew to L.A. the next morning. He left Barbara with instructions to set up a meeting for him.
It was almost unnerving when he took his cell phone off flight mode to find an email from her with details of the appointment and a map on how to get there.
The meeting with Caspar Marik, the CEO of the little company, was a disaster. He spouted company policy for the entire thirty minutes, even when Jake tried to herd him toward project specifics.
Jake stayed in the family’s beach house in Malibu that night and stared moodily at the waves, not even tempted to go swimming.
He missed Nyanther, he realized with a shock of recognition. How…novel.
How scary.
Thinking of Nyanther reminded him of the weekend he had spent with some of the toughest-minded people he’d ever met. Their bodies could be dropping with exhaustion, yet they kept going, determined to see it through. Survival demanded no less, but their relentlessness was still awe-inspiring.
And here he was, whimpering about a simple set back.
He picked up his cell phone and called up Sabrina’s contact information. He’d plugged it in there only a few hours after she had left his apartment, using the business card she had slipped him and his uncle at the dinner table the night before.
Then he swiped out a text.
JAKE: Road block. R&D ceo too political.
He tossed the phone back on the table. It was past midnight in New York. If he got an answer at all, it would be tomorrow.
Fifteen seconds later, the phone chirped at him.
SABRINA: Find ambitious subordinate. Start with head of research.
Of course. The top dogs wanted to keep their positions and were risk averse. The research people, though, weren’t interested in politics at all. They just wanted their project-babies to thrive.
It took another day and a half to dine and sweet-talk the head of research, Tommy Ross, a hard sciences professor with a practical turn of mind, into giving him a tour of the facilities.
Jake had wooed the R&D director at the New York facilities years ago, when he had acquired both the sticky net and a cooperative bio-technician to develop the anti-toxin, so he knew the way such people’s minds worked and it helped him deal with Tommy Ross.
The tour of Ross’s facilities included the labs where the tracking device was being refined for final approval and marketing. Jake looked at the shoe-box sized thing, with its buttons and dials and his spirits fell. “It looks like two people would need to carry it and more to operate it,” he said.
“At that size, sure,” Ross said expansively. He was enjoying the attention immensely. “That one has the greatest range.”
“How big a range?”
“From here, we could find someone in the Ukraine if we had the right criteria plugged in.”
“You mean, the keys for finding them?”
“Sure. A city of people gives off very similar traces. You need something that will identify an individual uniquely. We’ve been working on gait, head size, heat signatures and more. That’s part of the final development, of course and only if our funding goes through for the next three years.”
Jake almost laughed at the man’s feeble attempt to campaign for money. Instead, he went back to something he’d said earlier. “If this is the biggest one you have, do you have one that is, say, hand-held size?”
Ross shrugged. “We haven’t made one that size. The software is the same for any of them, though. It’s the juice that drives them that determines the range. A handheld could probably only track someone up to a hundred miles away.”
Jake hid his excitement. “I’d be interested in looking at the schematics and programming.”
“The programming is proprietary,” Ross said instantly. “It’s not even ours. We’re working with a boutique software company in the valley to build it. The schematics for the hardware, sure. I can have them emailed to you.”
Jake almost shook his head. Sabrina had even anticipated this snag—that the software wouldn’t be hackable, not if they were going to stay on the right side of the law.
The schematics, though,
would tell Nyanther’s people what processes they needed to build to make the hardware work.
Damn it, the woman had been right, all along.
“Just the schematics would be great,” Jake told Ross honestly.
* * * * *
Sabrina was almost startled when she found Nyanther sitting in front of a laptop, typing at great speed. Even more bizarrely, he was wearing reading glasses, which he took off with a self-conscious air.
She sat at the table next to him. “You really need them, then? They’re not just for show?”
He grimaced.
“I thought you all had perfect vision, better than human?”
Nyanther looked at the folded up glasses in his hands. “I do, except for close distances.” He shrugged. “Comes from sleeping for two thousand years, I suppose. I can’t go to an ophthalmologist to find out.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Besides, it’s only sometimes. Sometimes I can see as well as I ought.” He pushed the glasses into his shirt pocket and looked at her expectantly.
“How good are your coders, Nyanther?”
“The best in Europe,” he said instantly.
“No, really.”
“Really,” he said flatly. “I pay for the best.”
“Then they’re probably all hackers at heart, if they’re that good. Do you figure one of them could adapt a dark net browser to work on a cell phone?”
“They’re probably the ones who developed the original dark net browsers,” Nyanther said, with a small smile. “Why do you want it?”
“You get me the browser, I’ll show you why I want it.” She nodded toward his laptop. “It’s ten in the morning in Scotland. Your favorite coder is probably on his second cup of tea by now.”
“He drinks cocoa,” Nyanther said and pulled the laptop toward him.
“I’ll buy him a crateful of Criolla beans straight out of Venezuela if he does this in the next twenty-four hours,” Sabrina said.
“Yes, madam,” Nyanther said. He paused. “Criolla beans?”
“Look it up while you’re surfing,” she said and left him.
Sabrina's Clan Page 14
