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resistible desire for more of the drug. Determined to keep it that way, I forced my thoughts back to Rob’s words. “Why are you calling me Miss Daegberht again? We’ve been over this before, Rob.”
    “Maybe I like all of your name. It rolls off my tongue so nicely.”
    My stomach chose that moment to gurgle its unhappiness with me. “I got carried away.”
    “I saw you had been working, which is why I let you sleep. Find anything interesting?”
    “The police are hiring. It wouldn’t surprise me if Kenneth asked me to try to infiltrate them. They’re taking anyone who qualifies and passes background checks, apparently—including unawakened.”
    “Too dangerous.”
    “The unawakened won’t be working with the public sector. It’s all private, behind-the-scenes work. It might gain me access to their databases. If Kenneth asks me to try, it means he’s desperate—if he’s desperate, that’s good for us. I can think of a lot of ways we can put police contacts to good use.”
    I meant to sit up, but Rob had other things in mind; he slid his hand beneath my blanket and shirt to trail his fingers along the curve of my throat. “Interesting. You’ve put some thought into this.”
    The way Rob caressed my skin made me want to abandon thoughts of work altogether, but I forced my attention to the immediate problem of dealing with Kenneth Smith and Dean Lewis. I wiggled away from him, sat up, and reached for my laptop. “I manually copied the database of dae from the college laptop. It has government spyware on it. My laptop doesn’t. I didn’t want to risk anyone finding out I had made a copy.”
    “How’d you manage that? They’ve been installing spyware on all systems for at least a decade.”
    “Now you know why it takes so long to boot up.”
    “Where the hell did you get it?”
    I preened at the admiration and surprise in Rob’s voice. “Stole it fair and square from the collection of an elite who had crossed Kenneth. He had a mausoleum of old computer artifacts. I grabbed the first system that booted up. I doubt he missed it; there were tons of them in there.”
    I was pretty certain the brand no longer existed; along with the formation of the caste system, companies with a more philanthropic bent, especially in terms of employee treatment, had undergone mysterious failures. Empires had fallen and disappeared, paving way for the current system.
    Those who hadn’t bent to the designs of the elite had disappeared right along with the mega corporations.
    The same elite had also possessed one of the better libraries. I wondered if the wealth of knowledge still existed. The manor had been several hours outside of Baltimore, tucked away out of sight, which made it a prime location to avoid detection.
    It hadn’t been easy busting into the elite’s vault, either.
    “A kiss for your thoughts?” Rob murmured in my ear.
    “What happened to pennies?”
    “I enjoy kisses more than pennies.”
    “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be paying me instead of the other way around, Rob.”
    “You enjoy them, too. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
    I couldn’t argue with him on the point. Laughing, I gestured to our laptops. “I was thinking about the elite I pilfered this laptop from. I don’t think the computer had ever been used before I stole it. It’s so old I had to hunt down an obsolete version of the government systems to load on it because it won’t run the newer ones. That’s part of the reason it lacks spyware; those versions didn’t have it. But in addition to the computers, he also had a lot of history books and other banned materials.”
    “You stole a lot more than money and drugs from him, didn’t you?”
    “Knowledge, and a lot of it. The elite was away for a month on business, and once I learned the schedule of his caretakers, I spent a lot of time in his place. He was an interesting fellow; didn’t have an alarm system worth shit on his house. From all appearances,