Skinner by Charlie Huston

like, Jae, is fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes of your time. For which I will double what you are owed for the Creech consultation. That will finance a great deal more running away and hiding.”
    He gestures at her open duffel on the floor, the pill bottles and baggies.
    “And buy you a great deal more self-medication.”
    She doesn’t come into the room, but she doesn’t walk to the car, either.
    Cross looks at the open door.
    “There is some delicate information involved.”
    He directs his eyes at the ceiling, deep focus, beyond the ceiling to the sky.
    “We’ve had a good look at the area, doesn’t seem that anyone is on hand to peep on us, but every little bit of discretion helps.”
    This isn’t going to end. Whatever it is, having pushed it this far, Cross isn’t going to let it end until he’s had his say.
    And also there is this: Haven has not looked her in the eye, and she wants that.
    She steps in, closes the door, takes her phone from her pocket, pushes buttons, and looks at Cross.
    “Fifteen minutes. When the timer beeps, you fuck off.”
    He nods.
    “You met Skinner.”
    Jae makes a point of not saying anything.
    Cross is watching her face; he nods.
    “I see he made an impression. Did you get the briefing?”
    She nods.
    “Are you planning to use me to chum for sharks again?”
    Haven dips his head slightly, seems to look at his shoes.
    “ Chum. ”
    Jae feels an urge to throw something at the back of his head. Something hard. She could go outside and get a rock off the ground and come back in and throw it at Haven’s fucking head. And then leave.
    Cross takes a half step, placing himself at the midpoint of an imaginary line running from Jae’s eyes to the back of Haven’s head.
    “The job, Jae. Have you reviewed the file?”
    She focuses on Cross, the sooner to be done and on the road.
    “Espionage. Industrial. Possible foreign involvement. Travel. Danger.”
    Cross rubs his forehead with the back of the hand holding the spider.
    “Espionage. That doesn’t quite cover it. It’s a cyber attack, Jae. Sabotage. The real thing. A virtually mounted, Internet-based assault on a piece of key infrastructure. The grid. They took a crack at the grid. Tried to start a cascade. We don’t know, we don’t know was it a feint, a test, see if their code will do what it is supposed to, but they did it. And you know how this stuff goes, routed, rerouted, bounced, reflected. We have a trail, we have our guys at the keyboards tracing, but we need, I need, someone there, the physical sites, as we trace where this thing came from. I need someone to get in there and see where they were, where they went. This is it, first shot fired, maybe it was one over the bow, but I want to know everything. Everything. And that includes the weird stuff. Whatever the weird stuff is.”
    He hefts the spider.
    “And that’s you, Jae. Disaster Robot Lady . Finder of lost things.”
    She’s thinking about how many people could die if someone really crashed the grid. Thinking about stopping that from happening. Saving lives instead of digging up the bodies. Is this what Terrence was talking about?
    “Yes.”
    She walks into the bathroom and starts collecting her toiletries, stowing them in a small ripstop nylon bag with a drawstring top, comes out, faces Cross, and holds out her hand.
    “My spider.”
    “Your phone hasn’t beeped.”
    “I said yes. What else do you want?”
    “He wants you to agree to take someone besides Skinner. My people.”
    Haven has turned around. Gracefully blunt in his movements, a physicality that accurately suggests his vast training and experience in matters related to killing.
    Jae looks at him, but her eyes fail to burn holes in his forehead. She takes her travel alarm from the bedside table, the extra water bottle she left there, the merino wool sweater she’d meant to wear at Creech.
    “It’s Terrence’s op. I travel with his people. Terrence sent Skinner, so Skinner is my