Free The Intern's Handbook: A Thriller by Shane Kuhn Page B

device will track every data event that happens on her laptop through her processor. Thetransmitter is virtually impossible to detect, unless someone knows exactly what to look for. The only problem is it sends me a raw data dump that takes time to sift through. But this proves to be a sound move, because my encryption breakers are still not into her hard drive when I hear her stir. I quickly shut down her laptop and put it back in her bag.
    “Did I pass out?” She is groggy, trying to focus.
    “Yep.”
    “Did we . . . ?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Such a gentleman. Wow, my head feels like it’s going to explode.”
    “I guess Tequila and Jäger might be a good recipe for an incendiary device.”
    She laughs, then holds her head in agony. I might have overdone it with the Ambien. My bad.
    “Look at me. I’m a real classy date.”
    “I had fun.”
    “Me too. The parts when I was conscious anyway. What time is it?”
    “About three-thirty.”
    “Holy shit. Do you mind if we have hot sex another time? I think I might need to barf in the not so distant future, and I don’t know you well enough to ask you to hold my hair back.”
    “Rain check.”
    She kisses me and I am on my merry way.

12
----

THE MOTHERFUCKER
    A fter leaving Alice’s place, I go home and take a very cold shower—yes it does work—and drift off to sleep, kicking myself for squandering a free pass to knock boots with a woman whose beauty and intellect are matched by what I am guessing is a profoundly depraved sexual appetite. But I feel better about it the next morning when I open a packet of data downloaded from my transmitter. I’m in luck. It looks like Alice answered a few e-mails after I left. I pour myself some coffee and click on a message in her in-box. An encrypted e-mail program begins to load. Then I see the logo in the upper right-hand corner of the screen:

    Motherfucker.
    - Special Agent. Organized Crime Unit.
    Motherfucker!
    - Cover name: Alice
    Cheeky little monkey. Alice is just about the best cover name there is, if you’re into that whole literary thing. And if you’re into the whole rap thing, you could say playa been played. In addition to operating under my nose without a scent, she’s been assigned to Bendini, Lambert & Locke to find out which partner has been selling witness protection names to the street. After being there more than a year, she has a suspect: Bendini.
    Invariably, every job throws you a curveball. Sometimes, like this one, it doesn’t break and hits you square in the jaw. I like to call it The Motherfucker. And you learn to take it on the chin, so much so that when you don’t take it on the chin, you get very superstitious. Everyone knows that this work attracts bad luck like flies on shit. Bad luck likes the taste of your blood, sweat, and failure. It’s the universe telling you, “Hey, asshole, I see what you’re doing. And if you think I’m going to make things easy for you, think again.” It comes with the territory, so put a six-pack on ice for The Motherfucker because you’re going to become BFFs. And now it’s time for me to suffer one of the biggest Motherfuckers of my career: Alice, the curveball.
    It’s not a curveball because Alice is a fed and I didn’t know about it. Undercover people are undercover for a reason—because they’re good at it. I’m not psychic. I may have eyes in the back of my head, but they don’t have X-ray vision. All of the bullshit TV shows and movies that portray people like us as omniscient are written by gutless nerds who never even got into a grade school scrap. I don’t care how long you’re out here on the razor’s edge, sooner or later you’re going to get cut, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. So the revelation that Alice is a junior G-man is only part of what makes this a Motherfucker.
    The fact that she is pursuing the same case as me, for different reasons, obviously pushes the Motherfucker needle into the red. What