I cracked my neck and settled down over the harsh light of my laptop, quickly cycling through the different scripts and programs I’d slapped together for this job. It was sloppy work by my standards, full of dead ends and irrelevant code; for anybody else, it would have been their magnum opus.
And I could all but guarantee the people I was about to point it at had never seen anything like it.
I quickly threw up my seeker algorithm, scraping the data of everybody in the coffee shop around me. I frowned as their lives spread themselves out before me, scoping each of my potential targets out for the maximum payday. Hitting them all would be too risky – not hitting enough would be… unwise.
I absentmindedly rubbed my arm, still feeling the steel grip of the enforcer’s fingers wrapped fully around the bone. Shuddering, I turned my attention back to the task at hand.
The guy opposite me looked interesting – tight suit, sensible haircut, pretentious espresso shot in hand as he scrolled the stock market on his phone. I pinged his newly-minted folder on my computer and frowned. No dice: he was deeply in debt to a tattoo artist specialising in realism.
Interesting, I mused, giving him another look. No wonder the suit was so tight – he had to hide the ink from his corporate overlords.
Dispensing with the dud, I flicked around the room.
Not the waitress, no to the postal worker, the student on his lunch break—
Gotcha, I grinned to myself as I landed on a woman in the back of the room. Corporate attorney, with the stern posture to match. Owned her apartment (and three others in the city), no debt to a bookie or the best tattooist around Brisbane. Just a nice, clean bank account…
And a terrible firewall.
I rolled my shoulders triumphantly and put my hand in the air, flagging down the waitress I’d spared.
‘I’ll take a coffee, please,’ I told her with a smile. ‘I might be here a little while.’