Beating Ruby by Camilla Monk Page B

air vent. Then I remembered Prince. “Can we stop at the lobby? There’s someone I’d like to see.”
    He seemed to ignore my request, allowing the elevator past the first floor without stopping. “Prince Grimaldo?”
    My throat went dry. “Look, the air vent thing was my idea. He’s not gonna get in trouble, right?”
    “We have no interest in him at the moment.”
    I welcomed the news with a sigh of relief. The elevator stopped, steel doors sliding open on the fifth floor’s pristine hallway. As we walked toward a set of doors guarded by a policeman, a young engineer came out, escorted by a second policeman. They walked past us and toward the floor’s open space, from which Thom was supposed to have jumped. The guy’s shoulders were hunched, and one of his hands kept smoothing wrinkles from the front of his shirt. Having to work under the constant scrutiny of a cop—I could relate to that kind of tension.
    The cop allowed us inside the clean room, and right after we had put on our overshoes, I peeked up at Alex. “Does EMT know that I have to work with you?”
    He gave a quick nod while we made our way through a maze of alleys lined by dozens of server racks encased in tall black glass cabinets. “Yes. EMT’s top management has been made aware that you’ll collaborate with our investigation, as one of Thom’s closest collaborators.” He paused. “The . . . details of your situation haven’t been disclosed to anyone, though, and will not be brought up as long as you cooperate fully and help us recover that money.”
    I tried to answer with the same professional, remote tone he was inflicting on me. “Thank you for your discretion. I appreciate it.”
    “Hey!”
    Alex stopped; I jumped and spun on my heels, searching for the source of the youthful voice I recognized. A black-haired head popped out from behind a cabinet at the end of the alley. Long bangs, round glasses. Turtle-boy. He walked toward us, hands tucked into the pockets of really skinny jeans. He didn’t exude the same sort of confidence Alex did. Scratch that—once he was standing right in front of me, he looked frankly intimidated. Which was odd, given that he had at least three inches and ten pounds on me. Plus he was CIA: a nerd heavyweight of sorts.
    I gave him a timid smile, which he returned with equal uncertainty.
    “Great to see you again.”
    “Same here. I think we’re gonna work together, right?”
    He seemed a little fidgety. “Yeah. I’m Colin.”
    “Just Colin?”
    His eyes darted to Alex, who nodded in response. “Colin Jeon.”
    Holy macanoly. Now I remembered where I had seen this guy before. On TV. And on the Internet. And fricking everywhere for a couple of weeks, actually. “Oh my God! You’re the Wall Street Avenger, right? We discussed your method in my network security class, back when I was in grad school.”
    Turtle-boy scratched his head. “Ah . . . yeah.”
    Not very enthusiastic for a guy who had once managed to get trading suspended for two of the country’s largest banks after hacking into their networks and publicly sharing more than two hundred thousand confidential e-mails and documents.
    “And now you’re working for the government?”
    He looked at Alex and winced. “Didn’t have a lot of options.”
    Okay, the CIA clearly had him by the balls. “Well, that’s . . . cool, I guess.”
    I gave him a thumbs-up to cheer the mood; my heart went out to this fellow prisoner.
    Our jailer interrupted this emotional bonding sequence. “So, Colin, you were checking the servers Island mentioned? The ones Roth didn’t destroy?”
    He walked to an open cabinet. “Yeah. You were right. I recovered logs and data up to April 8. But I found nothing interesting so far. Just standard backups, simulations with nothing in common with the scale of the attack he led.”
    “Which makes sense, in a way. Let’s say I believe Thom did this—he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to perform a large-scale