Stane shook his head. "But," he said, rising to walk across to the neatly stacked shelving unit lining the rear wall of his main room, "if you'd like to plant this little electronic gadget, I'll be able to hack into their security system and keep an eye on him for you."
He came back with something that looked like a little black beetle. It even moved like one.
"What is it?" I asked, leaning closer but not actually touching it. Bugs, like spiders, weren't really my favorite things to play with.
"This, my friends, is a semi-intelligent spybot, and the latest in nanotechnology."
"It's a robot?" I said, touching it lightly. What looked like bug-skin was actually cold metal. "How does it work?"
"I give it basic commands from here, and it goes to work. In this case, you drop it inside the Phoenix, and I'll program it to go into the office area and hide in some corner. It'll then send through everything that goes on in that office."
"And what if someone spots it?" Tao asked. "You couldn't afford to get something like this squashed by a well-placed boot."
"That's where the intelligence comes in. If it senses a threat, it scuttles."
"Amazing," I murmured. And scary. No one would ever suspect that an everyday-looking bug could be a spy camera. It made me wonder just what else was out there. I glanced at him. "How the hell did you get hold of it?"
"Ask no secrets and you'll be told no lies." He grinned and dropped it into my palm. "I'll program it as you're heading to the bar. Just be sure to place it near the office. Otherwise the walk will drain it and it won't be able to transmit immediately."
"So it recharges itself?"
He nodded. "With whatever is the closest power source—in this case it'll be either body heat or heat from the lights."
I wrapped my fingers around it. Its little legs made my skin itch, and it felt for all the world like I was holding a real bug. I shuddered and carefully dropped it into the unused coin section of my purse. At least it wouldn't get lost there.
Tao glanced at his watch, then said, "We'd better get going. You've got the morning shift tomorrow, remember?" When I groaned, he slapped me lightly on the back, adding with a smile, "It's Wednesday. Wednesdays are always slow."
For him maybe. I was the one who did all the paperwork, and Wednesday was paperwork day. But I was betting that all the little numbers were not going to make sense after tonight.