Root of Unity
face and didn’t answer.
    Something ugly in me pressed me to keep talking. “Checker, too. He’s not going to have been able to wipe his connection to you enough to hide it from the NSA. You’re making them both vulnerable.”
    “What do you want from me, Russell?” Instead of snapping at me, his tone was quiet. Desperate. “I don’t know what’s right. Don’t know what to do.”
    Fuck.
    I drove in silence for a few minutes, hating myself.
    “I’ve got a bike near here in a storage unit,” I said finally. A peace offering. “In case you don’t want to steal another car.”
    “What? Yeah.” His spoke as if his mind was a million miles away. “Good. You take it. Ain’t got no license.”
    “Okay.” Neither did I, but then, I didn’t have a real driver’s license, either.
    “Just gotta pray the NSA are the good guys here,” Arthur murmured. “Think they are, but I seen enough corruption to—ain’t got no choice, though.”
    I didn’t agree, but I pressed my lips together. He didn’t want my opinion.
    “Hope Dr. Martinez is all right,” murmured Arthur. “She’s gonna think we’re dead. That the bomb got us.”
    The non sequitur threw me. “So will the bad guys. That’s part of the reason I did it.”
    “And to keep the street safe,” Arthur added absently.
    He always had a higher opinion of me than was warranted, but at this particular moment I wanted to deck him for it. Instead I just didn’t correct him.

Chapter 6
    I parted ways with Arthur and jetted my sport bike up to Van Nuys, a slightly less glamorous neighborhood in the Valley where people who weren’t movie stars could afford to live. I parked the motorcycle a few blocks from Checker’s house and snuck around the block and through his backyard, just in case there were already eyes on him. Not that it would help if the men in black came knocking. Fucking NSA.
    Checker’s computer cluster and workspace was a converted garage he had affectionately nicknamed “The Hole,” and I pushed open the side entrance to find it a flurry of activity. The space was already crowded, what with the stacks of computer towers and monitors wallpapering it on all sides, and in the small space in the middle Checker was zipping his wheelchair back and forth and throwing tablet computers at Pilar while trying to tell her things she obviously already knew.
    “Just make sure that—”
    “I know!”
    “And if they say—”
    “I know! I’ve got it!” She tucked the tablets into a satchel. “Hi, Cas.” She flashed me a big smile. Pilar was a perpetually friendly, perpetually energetic young woman, curvy and attractive and warm and exactly the type of person most people wanted to be around. In other words, the opposite of me.
    “Kick ass for us with the Feds,” I said. “You’re packing, right?”
    Her dark skin flushed a little, and she reached toward the small of her back self-consciously. “Yeah. It feels funny. Um, you don’t think I’ll have to—”
    “Better to be prepared,” I said. “Just remember, in a gunfight the person who lives is the person who’s more willing to pull the trigger.”
    Pilar made a scrunched-up face like she had just tasted something bad, and Checker cleared his throat and spoke up. “Can I just say—that does not sound like the most, uh, sane approach to gun safety—”
    “Those who refuse to learn to handle firearms aren’t allowed to talk,” I said, crossing my arms.
    “For the last time, guns aren’t my—”
    “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I said to Pilar, loudly, over Checker’s annoyed squawk.
    “Yes, uh—yes, I gotta go. I’ll be okay,” she added in Checker’s direction. “Good luck to you guys, yeah?” She gave me another smile, not quite as big as the last one, and squeezed by me out the door.
    Checker reordered his various tablets and laptops in her wake, then grabbed the long desktop and pulled his chair over to a large flat screen monitor. “For the last time, I

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