She shook her head. “I don’t know, it’s possible. It’s above my pay grade, that’s for sure.”

He shouted, “Possible? The deal’s already done. Just call my police chief, he’s an experienced professional. Why the fuck do you think I brought him on the force in the first place?”

It made me think about Bonnet. Last time I’d seen him, Daniel’s shotgun had cut him in half. I wondered which half the mayor wanted to say hello to. I said, “You want to be reunited with Bonnet?”

The mayor nodded greedily. “Bring him, yes!”

I shot him in the head.

The bullet entered just under the right eye, which flipped up in its socket, like a spun pinball. There was a momentary pause before the mayor’s body slumped into death. I took advantage of that moment by kicking him off the chair. So, the unique crypto codes didn’t get deleted. They stayed right there, highlighted and blinking on the screen.

On the other side of the room, the girls were not huddled with their heads down anymore. We had their full attention. Eyes wide and staring at the mayor’s body. They looked relieved and excited.

I said to them, “You can rest easy now, this is over. You’re going to be fine.” I looked at Nazari. “Crypto currency. I’ve heard of it, never seen it.”

“Me too. I know what it is, in theory.”

“So, in theory there’s no bank, no nothing right?”

“Nothing, just that code right there.”

We both stepped closer. Ten million. Didn’t matter if it was ten million bucks, dollars, euros, pounds. Ten million of anything is a lot. There were two strings of gibberish. A long mix of numbers, and lower and upper case letters. One string of numbers and letters was longer than the other.

I said, “So that nonsense gets you ten million bucks.”

“I guess so, there are ways of checking how much exactly.”

I looked over at Marbot’s body, slumped awkwardly on the floor. “No reason to doubt him though.”

“Not really, given who he was, and what he’s done.”

I said, “So what happens to the money when the real BRI gets to it?”

Nazari was looking at the computer screen, like it was something powerful and magnetic, which I guess it was. She shrugged. “I’m not sure exactly. I don’t think many people know what this stuff is. They’ll probably accidentally delete it. If not, they’ll call up a bunch of experts, who will swarm around the computer, blocking it off with sheets of plastic maybe. Then, best case it’d go through a long process. Could take years. Most of the money would get absorbed by the process. Like any kind of government thing.”

“Like taxes.”