“What’s so damn amusing?”
No one said a word as Dixon scribbled on his notepad. Blackbeard.
“Blackbeard?”
Pirate.
“You can’t be serious. You mean pirate, as in the pirates who sailed the seven seas before the Declaration of Peace? The same pirates who almost single-handedly destroyed the alliance among the old countries with all their looting and plundering? The ones who claimed government mandates for the destruction they wrought?”
Tristan nodded. “I suppose they thought it funny. They weren’t fans of the alliance.”
“That alliance has kept the Romans at bay for several centuries. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Tristan shrugged.
“What does Blackbeard have to do with Edward Teach, anyway?”
“It was Blackbeard’s real name,” Toxic explained, before launching into a vulgar sea shanty.
Lila frowned. The only thing she knew about pirates had come from movies. “So Chairwoman Wilson is funneling money through an account named for some pirate who’s been dead for…”
“About three hundred years,” Tristan supplied.
“And she’s transferring that money into the accounts of two Bullstow militiamen as payment for her dirty work?”
“Looks like it.”
“Shiver me timbers.” Lila pushed her laptop away. “Lovely. This just gets sillier and sillier the longer it goes on. The woman can’t even be a dignified criminal.”
“What? It’s funny.”
“Being cute when you’re naming accounts like that can come back to bite you in the ass. It’s not funny. It’s sloppy.”
Toxic sat forward. “How much is in the account?”
“Millions. Nearly fifty million, to be exact.” It was stupid of Chairwoman Wilson to put that much in one account. A hacker could just spirit it away with the touch of a few buttons.
Lila could move it.
She could move it anywhere she wanted.
Her fingers twitched at the ready. She could almost see the look on Chairwoman Wilson’s face after finding her account empty.
She could almost feel her own arms being forced behind her back and cuffed. The cold seat in the back of a militia cruiser. The look on her father’s face. The surprise.
The disappointment.
She’d never actually stolen anything before, not without prior authorization from the owners, and only as a test of their security. Not even Serrano’s cigars really counted. He passed them out like candy, especially to heirs.
It wasn’t really stealing, was it?
Lila didn’t know anymore.
She took her hands away from the keyboard. Moving the chairwoman’s money, even if it would belong to her family soon, crossed a line.
“Why does Chairwoman Wilson need millions?” Tristan said, returning to his post at the window. “You don’t need that much to pay off a couple of dirty militiamen.”
“No, you don’t need millions,” Lila agreed. “Money not used to make money is money wasted. She’s up to something. Could be anything.”