“You sure? You mean to tell me after what you did this morning that you’re not hooked?”

“I can honestly say I’m not.”

“I don’t believe that. Tell you what, I’m hacking some of the upper levels of the Chrysler building next week. It’s just crammed with secrets.”

“Tell you what,” Jack said. “You find a giant roc egg up there, you let me know. I’ll come running.”

Dud grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. “Yeah, Q, man. If I get caught, I’ll say Larry Cohen made me do it.”

“Just be careful, Dud.”

They shook hands and parted, Milkdud heading for his job at Coconuts and Jack heading home for a shower. Definitely a shower.

And then a call to Alicia. See one, do one, teach one, Dud had said. Well, Jack had seen one, and now he was going to do one. With Alicia. On her father’s house.

4.

4.

Kemel hung up on the incredulous Gordon Haffner, who still was having difficulty accepting the fact that his clients were going to pay Alicia Clayton ten million dollars for her father’s house.

But it was true. Kemel had held his breath as he’d contacted Khalid Nazer, but Iswid Nahr had agreed to the price.

Kemel should have been elated—so close to success, so close to being able to run home to Riyadh and his son—but suspicion soured his mood.

Someone had been listening to his conversation with Thomas Clayton.

Oh, yes, they had alerted security and called the police, and maintenance men had been sent to check the ventilation system, but no one really believed him. Even after the grate had been removed and he had pointed out the disturbed dust within, they had only shrugged and said maybe there was some sort of animal in the ducts. No one would believe that here in Manhattan, with such an extensive array of sophisticated electronic bugging devices to the public, that someone would crawl through a ventilating system to eavesdrop on a conversation.

Kemel sighed. Perhaps they were right. It did seem farfetched.

But he could not shake the feeling that someone had been listening. When he had pressed his face to that grate, straining to see through the slits, he thought he had sensed someone in the darkness on the other side, looking back, watching him.

He racked his brain to remember what he and Thomas Clayton had said in that room, reconstructing the conversation word by word.

Nothing, he was sure. Almost sure.

One thing an eavesdropper would have come away with was that the house was worth more than ten million dollars to the buyers. If Alicia Clayton suddenly raised her asking price, Kemel’s suspicions would be confirmed.

If she did not… if the deal went through, then he did not care if a whole army had been listening.

5.

5.