When Villains Rise (Market of Monsters #3) - Rebecca Schaeffer Page 0,88
fear that the information hadn’t transferred, that something had gone wrong.
But when she plugged the hard drive in, it was all there, all thirteen terabytes of it, an impossibly large amount of information she couldn’t imagine where to even start parsing.
She stared at it a long moment. This was it. This was the power she craved. Here was the information that could crumble nations, destroy powerful men, change her life.
She had no idea how to use it.
The words blurred in front of her. She didn’t know any of these names, didn’t know who she needed to blackmail to stay safe, didn’t know how to best deploy this information. Didn’t know what was important and what was junk, didn’t know who was at the top and the bottom.
She let herself be overwhelmed by it all for a moment, the sheer magnitude of what she didn’t know, of what she had to learn.
Then she pulled herself together and took out her phone.
Adair picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“It’s Nita.” She forced herself to sound cool and confident. “I have the information. I successfully robbed Tácunan Law.”
There was silence on the other end of the line before Adair finally whispered, “Well, damn.”
A smile crept across Nita’s face at his impressed tone. Just hearing those words made something ease in her chest. She had done something incredible. She could do anything she put her mind to. She would figure all of this out.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” he admitted. “I’m impressed.”
“You shouldn’t have doubted me.”
“Of course I should have. I’d doubt anyone trying to rob something as big as Tácunan Law. Even if they were a professional. I’m sure people have tried before.”
Nita had to admit this was true. “But they didn’t have Fabricio.”
“Precisely.”
For a moment, she thought of just how dangerous it must have been to be Fabricio, knowing that all anyone wanted him for was a chance to steal his father’s fortune in information, and she remembered his look of pure happiness and relief as he explained that with no more Tácunan Law, he was free.
“I have the only copy of the information now,” Nita told Adair. “The servers there have been wiped.”
“And that will be the end for it.” Adair’s voice was soft. “It’s been around longer than I’ve been alive. It’ll be strange to see it go. I wonder what will take its place.”
Nita shrugged. “Don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Not at the moment.” There was a short pause and then he said, “Well, I have some information I want, and you have some misinformation you want me to spread, so shall we get started on this exchange?”
“Let’s.”
“Do you have anything on Arlene Qiu?”
“Spell that?”
He did, and Nita searched her hard drive. She found the file and clicked on it, horror mounting as she realized that she had more than forty thousand pages of text on file. Documents, court records, account details, correspondence, audio recordings. An impossible number. It would take her a year just to get through one person’s data.
How was she even supposed to begin sorting this?
“Do you have anything?”
“I have . . . a lot.”
“Define a lot?”
“If I printed it all out and stacked it up, it would probably be as tall as your pawnshop.”
He paused. “I know what I’m looking for. Send it all.”
“All of it?” Nita’s voice was mildly incredulous.
“That’s my price. Everything you asked for. I’ll have your video with Reyes debunked as best I can. When people come to me to buy information on you, I’ll tell them it’s fake and that your time in the market was all a clever scam to get in, rob them, and burn it all down. I’ll tell them whatever you want to be known for.” He paused. “And all the information you asked for, on INHUP, on the list. Anything I know.”
Nita was silent a long time. She didn’t know how to use the information she had. These documents were probably worth far more than what Adair was giving her for them. But she needed what he had, she didn’t have the influence or power to make things happen. All she had was information, and valuable as it was, she didn’t have the knowledge to make a counteroffer. Things were only as valuable as they were useful to you.
So even though Nita knew she was getting the bad end of the deal, she said, “Fine. How do you want me to transfer the data?”
He sent instructions on how to upload her files to a private