13
SCOUT
Tito is staring at me like I’m speaking a foreign language. Bewilderment is written across his perfectly chiseled face at my question. Why wouldn’t he tell everyone by now that he’s in the mafia? At this point, it’s more of a liability for them not to know what they’re really doing than it is the other way around.
“They deserve to know.” I press, and he shakes his head.
“We’ve talked about this, Scout.”
“Yes, but that was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before you almost died.”
“I didn’t-”
“So, you lied?”
“No.”
“Then you’re lying now?”
“Scout.” He admonishes.
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“Well, stop.” He raises his voice a little, and I cock my head in response, shocked by his vehement disapproval of merely a question. It’s the worst time for someone to walk in, but they do. And they can sense the tension in the room.
“Morning.” They mumble and head over to an unoccupied computer. We mumble our greetings back to him and begin working in silence. As everyone else files in and the room becomes aware of what we’re doing, Tito has to speak up to explain. He gathers everyone around his desk while I continue to work on running diagnostics.
I mostly tune out the entire spiel because I’ve heard it before and because I know exactly what went wrong last night. The fact that it was my fault that Tito almost died crushes me inside. And the fact that I still haven’t delivered the tech to the FBI’s dropbox means I’ll be receiving a call soon enough. How am I supposed to keep this up?
I thought choosing to work with the FBI would keep Tito safe, but in actuality, my very actions against the San Giovanni’s are what’s causing them to be in harm's way. I feel the pang in my chest, and the tears well in my eyes as I run the final diagnostic on a tracking device. The problem with this is that I know exactly what went wrong because I was the one who did it. I’m the one who fucked up the codes and changed them to not perform correctly.
When Tito sees this, surely he’ll know someone did it intentionally. A missing line of code or a wrong number here or there is normal. Though, we were meant to catch those mistakes with our proofreading groups, so that makes it far less likely that someone wouldn’t have seen major issues. It’s clear that someone, me, went in and intentionally changed it.
Shit. What am I supposed to do? I can’t throw someone else under the bus. I’m already lying enough, and I don’t know how much more I can take. All I know is that I’ve got to come up with someone fast before the diagnostics are delivered to his computer.
I glance over as he continues to explain how crucial this next fix is because we’ll be having a trial run next Monday. If I heard that right, then that means we have another round of putting him in danger, and I can’t stomach doing it a second time, now that I know the real risks. My mind is a jumbled-up mess as I hit send for the results of the diagnostics run on all the devices.
“Isn’t that right, Ms. Summers?” I feel a chill down my spine at the way Tito called me what only Agent Riggs calls me. I bite my lip and turn my eyes to the many looking at me, anticipating and answering a question I didn’t hear.
“Uhm.” I swallow. “What?”
“I asked if you would be personally overseeing the final stages of our coding this time. You know because you’re an expert at it.”
“Oh.” I nod. “Yeah.”
“Great. So, it’s settled. We’ll get right to work on the reforming of this tech. I suggest staying in the same groups as last time, since each group knows their tech the best. When I read the diagnostics, I’ll deliver the results to each group so we know what to keep an eye out for with this next round. Understood?”
“Understood!” everyone choruses before scattering to different parts of the room. I grab the motherboards off every server connection and bring them over to Tito’s desk, where he’s beginning to study the coding for one of the devices. My heart is beating so quickly that I think I might pass out. I try not to lock my knees as I watch him read, a strange look growing over his face.
“You just ran these?” He looks up at me and nods quickly, unable to speak. “And, did you read the results before you sent them?” I shake my head. “The results reflect a strange pattern of coding that I’ve never seen before.”
“It might just be—”
“I think we still have a bug in our system.” He concludes, giving me an easy out.