Page 92 of Hellbent

Her eyes were shining. “I could kiss you. Figuratively. Each rack has sixteen graphics cards. At four chips per card and 2,048 cores per chip, that gives us 8,192 graphics cores per card. We have thirty-two cards, which makes”—she closed her eyes again, her lips twitching—“262,144 graphics cores.” She looked up. “That’s a lotta horsepower.”

“So I can just use my bitcoin-mining setup?”

“No.” Her irritation flared again. “Everything has to be reconfigured.”

Evan looked at the Snickers wrapper on the kitchen counter, the T-shirt pillow on the couch. “Pack up your stuff,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“I just came up with a new Commandment.”

At this her eyebrows rose. “A new Commandment? What is it?”

“‘Don’t fall in love with Plan A.’”

42

Undone by Target

Joey stood in the great room of Evan’s penthouse in Castle Heights, staring at the tall ceiling, her mouth gaping. After the places she’d lived, it probably seemed like the Serengeti to her.

Watching her, Evan felt discomfort beneath his skin, an awareness of his posture, how he was holding his arms. He could count on his fingers the number of people who had been inside 21A, and not one of them had known Evan’s real identity.

“By bringing you here, I am giving you my absolute trust,” he said. “Trust I have given no one before. Ever.”

Joey was taking a pass through the kitchen, trickling a finger across the countertops, the island, the Sub-Zero, like a housewife at an open house. But at his words she paused and looked over at him. The weight of the moment was potent enough that it quieted the air between them.

“What if I don’t deserve it?” she said.

“If you didn’t deserve it, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

“This place,” she said. “It’s like something made up.”

“What did you expect?”

“Judging by your taste in motels and your lovely safe-house decor, I thought you lived in … I don’t know, a shoe.”

“A shoe.”

“Yeah. But this? This is like a Louboutin.”

“What’s that?”

“A fancy shoe they talk about on TV.”

“Oh.”

“Where do I stay?” She looked around. “I guess I could sleep on the dumbbell rack.”

He hadn’t thought about it. “There’s a couch in the reading loft.”

“The reading loft. Of course.”

He pointed at the steel spiral staircase. “Full bathroom, too.”

She gestured tentatively. “May I?”

“Yes.”