Harrelson’s dramatic sigh gusted over the line. Nell reached the corner and turned left, heading westbound on Forty-Second Street without a destination in mind. She let the crowd and the city carry her, moving her down the canyon of glass and stone as the traffic inched along, molasses thick, clogging the grand boulevard. She hugged the binder of letters close to her side, keeping a tight grip on her treasure.
“Because she’s royalty,” Harrelson said.
“That’s news to me. Sure you didn’t just make that up?”
“When a peasant needs a royal boon, the queen doesn’t go to her. The peasant goes to the queen. And she gets down on her knees before the throne and begs for the queen’s graceful benevolence. Hope you wore your good kneepads today.”
He hung up. Nell didn’t miss a beat or a step. She dialed Leda’s office line.
She didn’t think Leda was that petty, but if she had to beg, she’d beg. Nell had her pride, ferocious pride, but if that was the cost to set Tyler and Seelie loose, she’d pay it without thinking twice.
Leda picked up the phone. No preamble. “You actually dated that man?” she asked, her voice light as the summer breeze.
“You hired him.”
“We’re both guilty of poor taste. He has his uses, though.”
“Name your price,” Nell told her.
“It’s not a matter of price. No. I want to give you a test.”
“A test,” Nell echoed.
“Yes. Don’t worry, it’s not the pass/fail kind. There are no right or wrong answers, only…consequences. Your role is to consider the choice of consequences before you and pick the ones you can live with. In the process, you and I are going to learn all about Nell Bluth.”
Nell inhaled through gritted teeth.
“Why are you doing this?” she said. “Cut the crap and tell me what you want—”
Leda’s voice cracked across the line, sharp as a bullwhip.
“I want to know what you’re made of,” Leda said. Then, calmer now: “I want you to know what you’re made of.”
“I already do. I’ve been me for my entire life, so I’m in a pretty good position to have that information.”
“If that were true, there would have been no point in the advice of Socrates. Nosce te ipsum—know thyself—is an insight that must be actively pursued, not passively received. I want a sacrifice. No. Let’s do this properly. I want three sacrifices.”
“I’ll go find a goat,” Nell said.
“Don’t be glib. Now, a proper sacrifice is meaningful. It’s an offering to a deity, sometimes in the hope of receiving blessings, sometimes simply out of love and devotion.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re not a deity.”
“You don’t know what I am,” Leda replied. “But Tyler and Seelie’s fates are in my hands, which means…well, to the three of you, I might as well be a goddess, no? For the duration of this test, I’m your goddess. Which means you want to please me.”
“You’re a billionaire with her own tech company. I’m a broke, mostly fired reporter who doesn’t know how she’s going to pay rent. I don’t have anything valuable to offer you.”
“Sure you do. You don’t know this because you’re not allowed in the newsroom, but I penetrated the network at the Brooklyn Standard two hours ago. Suffice to say, your and Tyler’s hard drives have been thoroughly, comprehensively scrubbed clean.” She paused. “But I know you maintain a backup server, just for the two of you. Your first sacrifice is simple: give me the password.”
“You can’t hack it yourself?”
“Eventually,” Leda said, “but that’s not the point. This is your sacrifice. I want you to willingly give it to me.”
Nell shook her head. “It’s not just material on the Loom being stored on that server. It’s years of work, all of our research, our interviews, thousands of scans of source material. Everything we’ve ever worked on together.”
“I know,” Leda said. “And when you give me the password, I’m going to log in and methodically erase every single file. Every last one. Gone forever.”
“Why?”
Silence answered her. Whatever was driving her, petty sadism or some grand scheme, Leda didn’t feel like sharing it.
Nell considered her options. What was she really giving up if she said yes? The keepsakes of her old glories were just that, keepsakes, a digital monument to her own ego. She could surrender that. As far as their Loom research went, anything lost could be found again. Interviews could be reconstructed, data dug up from its shallow grave. This wouldn’t stop them.
It would sting, but that was all. No boxer got in the ring