The Cyber Twins novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Days

Jillian meets Wynne at her studio and offers to keep taking credit for her patches; Wynne catches that Jillian's login is in none of the logs and gives her three days to explain the manifests, and Jillian shows a note in Nico's hand: he is hunting the Ghost.

I didn't close the window.

*How long have you known?* I typed.

*Since April,* Jillian wrote back. *I traced a patch to this building. I almost died when I saw your name on the lease.*

In the next room Nico's chair scraped again.

I held my breath until it went quiet.

*Don't type anything else tonight,* Jillian wrote. *He watches the house traffic. Come to your studio in the morning. I'll bring coffee.*

The window closed on its own.

I lay awake until the sky went grey.

Jillian was at my studio door at eight, with two coffees and a paper bag of the almond croissants I love.

She hugged me hard, in the doorway, with the whole street watching.

"Oh, Wynnie," she said. "I'm so sorry. I wanted to tell you in April. I didn't know how."

I let her in and locked the door behind her.

My workbench was covered in a ledger from 1911 that I was rebinding for the county archive, its spine split down the middle.

Jillian sat on my stool and crossed her legs.

"Okay. Here's the truth. You're the Ghost. I've known for months. I haven't told a soul."

"Why not?"

"Because Ottavio would kill you, Wynne. He means it. You heard him last night."

Her eyes were wet.

"So I've been covering for you."

"Covering how?"

"I take your fixes and I hand them to Nico as mine. That way he never goes looking for the Ghost in his own bed."

I looked at her for a moment.

That sounded generous.

It would have been generous, if Jillian's name had ever shown up in my logs.

"Which hole did you close last month?" I asked. "Say the date."

Jillian smiled. "God, I lose track. I close ten a week."

"The one on the fourteenth. The ledger server in the east dock office."

"That's the one."

"I closed that one," I said. "You never touched it. Your login isn't anywhere in the log."

The smile stayed on her face, but nothing else did.

"I was going to say," Jillian said. "I fix them from the outside. It doesn't leave a trace."

"Then how did you know it was done?"

She picked up her coffee.

"Because Nico told me, Wynne. Obviously."

That was a good answer, and I wished it hadn't been.

I took the ledger off the bench and set it down on the shelf, carefully, so my hands would have something to do.

"What do you want, Jillian?"

"Nothing! God. Just for you to keep doing what you do, quietly. I'll keep the credit. You keep your life. Everybody wins."

"I want my name on my work."

"And Ottavio wants your head on his table." She said it kindly, which was the worst part. "Your name isn't worth that. You know it isn't."

I pictured forty people laughing at my veal.

I pictured Nico's hand on my knee under the tablecloth.

"There's another thing," I said. "The hole on Tuesday. The one in the dock manifests."

"What about it?"

"It was opened from inside. With a real key. Someone with a login walked in and left the door open behind them."

Jillian put her coffee down.

"Plenty of people have logins, Wynne."

"Nine people. And only two can make a key like that."

"Nico and me." She laughed, lightly. "So you think it's Nico?"

I said nothing.

"Wynne, honey. You've been in the dark too long. Don't start seeing shadows in your own family."

"He isn't my family yet."

"No," Jillian said. "And he won't be, if he finds out who you are. You know that."

That one landed, and Jillian saw it land.

She stood up and picked up her bag.

"Three days," I said.

"What?"

"You have three days to tell me what you're doing with those manifests. Or I go to Nico myself, and I tell him the Ghost is me and the leak is you."

I heard how it sounded.

I meant every word.

Jillian stared at me. For a second she looked like a stranger.

Then she smiled again, the warm one, the one I had trusted for eight years.

"Okay," she said softly. "Three days. But you should see something first."

She took out her phone, found a photo, and held it up to me.

It was a page torn from a legal pad, in Nico's handwriting.

The writing was black, pressed hard, and underlined twice.

*The Ghost's name is worth my life. I'll find them before my father does, and then I'll decide.*

Underneath, in the corner, he had drawn a small, careful line of brackets.

I knew those brackets.

I made them myself, every night, in the chat window.

"He sits up every night hunting you, Wynne," Jillian said. "Think about that before you go to him."

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