Chapter 19: The Cloud

I drove us up the hill at exactly the speed limit.

"Lacey, it's 9:52."

"The limit is twenty-five."

"The midnight deadline is real. I'll pay any ticket."

"A ticket is two hundred and thirty-eight dollars," I said. "I don't owe it, so I won't earn it."

My hatchback shook at twenty-five miles an hour. Silvan held the dashboard with both hands.

His assistant was on speaker, and she had never sounded so calm.

"The download needs two things," she said. "Your login, and a code that shows only on the camera."

"Gerald's wearing it."

"Gerald is asleep, with the collar on, in your house. Go and read the code off his neck."

"Understood," Silvan said, and then, to me, quietly, "Twenty-five."

"Twenty-five."

We reached his gate at 10:14.

The chef was in the hall in a robe.

Gerald lay on his nine-thousand-dollar bed with his chin on a throw pillow.

Silvan knelt, and Gerald opened one eye and thumped his tail.

"Sorry, buddy," Silvan said. He turned the collar until the little screen lit up.

He read the numbers aloud, and Gerald yawned in his face.

The screening room was cold and dark, and the laptop showed a bar that said 0%.

I sat beside him on the leather couch with a blanket over our knees and watched it crawl.

At nine percent, he said, "I should have told you about her sooner."

"You told me."

"I should have told you in the first hour."

"You were busy offering me ten million dollars."

"I was," he said. "It was a very full hour."

At thirty percent, the bar stopped.

It sat there for five terrible minutes while the laptop thought about it.

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