their chances of expanding into New York,” Tyler said.
“And now we know why.” Seelie stared at the screen. “These people are fighting a secret war. It’s like…two submarines, hunting each other in the dark. The file name makes me wonder, though.”
“About what?” Nell asked.
“Are Arthur and his friends supposed to be the Erinyes, avenging crimes against the gods, or are they the sinners being marked for righteous punishment?”
“What about the second project?” Tyler asked. “‘Hypnos’?”
Nell clicked her mouse. A second spreadsheet opened in a new window.
“This one is longer and a lot weirder,” she said.
Reading books on lucid dreaming merited two points per title. Patients at sleep clinics were awarded anything from half a point to a whopping ten, depending on the condition they checked in for and the state of their medical records. People in therapy for chronic nightmares were singled out for extra scrutiny. Seelie lifted her eyebrows.
“‘Interest in psychic phenomena, neo-paganism, and/or new age spirituality’ gets you three points,” Tyler muttered. “What the hell is this company doing? And look at this: they’ve breached the databases for two of those ‘send in a DNA swab and learn your ancestry’ companies.”
“Bonus points for Irish blood,” Seelie observed.
“I don’t get it,” Tyler said. “I mean, with the other file, we don’t know why the Weaver Group is out to find and kill these modern-day Culpers, but at least we know what they’re trying to accomplish. What could they want with this kind of data?”
Nell didn’t answer. She sat there, pensive. Tyler cocked his head, studying her, a quiet understanding passing between them.
“There’s something else on the USB stick,” he said, reading her face.
She held her silence a moment longer, not looking at either of them.
“Seelie,” Nell said, “you should go downstairs.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Because you don’t need to see this.”
“Um, hello?” Seelie jabbed a finger at the laptop. “Half of this criteria involves lucid dreaming and reading books. I could literally be on their target list, right this minute. And considering these people already want me dead—”
“It’s not that.”
Nell leaned on her armrest. Her cheeks were bloodless, moon-pale in the glow of the screen.
“There was one last thing. A video file.”
“Play it,” Tyler said.
The cursor hovered over the file, subject-8.avi. Nell’s fingertip froze on the mouse button.
“Play it,” he said.
28.
Nell double-clicked. The video rolled.
The camera’s eye stared at a still urban night. Dark sky, no moon, a wind gently ruffling the limbs of an old and withered oak tree. It was a cemetery. Crumbling stones marked a lonely dead acre. Seelie didn’t recognize the place, but the distant echoes of a rattling train track told her the city wasn’t far. An ambulance siren wailed, faint and muffled, then fell into silence.
The woman before the camera had seen better days. She was maybe in her twenties, but a hard road and a needle had aged her thirty more years. She scratched at the track marks on her arm with one restless hand, gripping a shovel—its steel blade pristine, fresh from a hardware store—with the other. The graveyard wind played with her tangled black hair.
“This is the spot?” she said. “I just…dig it up?”
The camera caught the cultured voice of Dieter Rime, standing behind the lens.
“That is correct. You may begin whenever you are ready, Subject Eight.”
“You said I could get high.”
An exasperated sigh clung to Rime’s voice.
“When you’re finished,” he told her.
“And the money?”
He stepped into the camera’s sight, a dark shadow at the corner of the screen. He lifted a black leather briefcase for her to inspect; his fingers stroked it like a beloved pet.
“The money and your chemicals. Waiting for you, as agreed. Once you’re finished.”
That mollified her. She lifted the shovel with both hands and then speared it down into the dirt, propping a gym shoe on the top of the blade for leverage, wriggling it back and forth.
“Soil’s stony here,” she said.
Tyler leaned in closer at Nell’s shoulder, perplexed. “The Weaver Group is running a program to…recruit grave robbers?”
“Keep watching,” Nell said.
The woman grumbled while she dug, shallow scoops, dirt and pebbles raining as she flung them over her back. It didn’t take long for her to tire out, and she’d barely made a dent. She glared at Rime, who had retreated back behind the camera.
“Why can’t you give me a hand?”
“I’m not special,” the assassin replied. “Not like you are.”
“Special, my ass. German prick.” She grunted and leaned into the shovel.
“I’m Hessian, actually. Please continue.”
“This goes on for a while,” Nell said.
She clicked the timeline and