Jessa Ch. 15

"Okay," Torah agreed tenuously. "Given that process, how can we get from here to who has it and how did they get it?"

"I want to buy it."

"Excuse me? What is that price in real money?" he asked, pointing at the value figure on the screen.

"It doesn't matter," she replied, studying other screens.

"A dress in Paris doesn't matter. King Tut's jewelry might matter."

Jessa rolled her eyes, without really taking her attention from one of the other screens. "It's not your money."

"And whose money is it?" Torah asked with a hint of his ominous voice.

He suddenly had Jessa's full attention. She straightened in the chair, rolling her shoulders back as she considered how to answer. "I sort of created an alter ego. It's what I do when..."

"Yes?" he prompted, quietly.

"Well, when I need to be anonymous. I'm sure your people do it all the time."

"I'm sure," he agreed. But they don't have - what? - six hundred thousand Euros to spend."

"Um, seven hundred eighty-five," she whispered.

"And where did your alter ego get that kind of money?"

"It's not real money, she said with a shrug, as if to brush it off. "It's all electronic, you know, ether." She added a wave, hoping to deescalate the conversation, but realized instantly that the wave fell as flat as the shrug. She could feel Torah tensing beside her. "What do you care? They are criminals," she argued, changing tack.

"Real people invest real money in this particular ether," he replied, his voice low. She realized he knew much more about the Bitcoin reincarnation than she had given him credit for. "You're suggesting torpedoing the value of their investment just as the stock markets are beginning to come back on line in any real fashion."

She was about to snap "For the Circles," but bit her tongue before it started a whole new argument. She took a deep breath instead. "Technically, they're investing in the internet company that has created the 'bank' and tracks the transactions, keeps everything moving smoothly. They've made the choice to invest in a company whose mission is anonymity."

"I didn't say it was a wise investment. And your little trick, when discovered, will destroy a nascent company and its technological infrastructure."

"I'll make you a deal. Let me buy this and see where it leads us, and I'll let... the company... know how I did it. And how to prevent it in the future."

"You can do that? Reach out to the company? Not just the storefront?"

"I said they were a nightmare to track down. Not impossible. Obviously, I had to get inside to 'move' funds into my account."

"Funds from where?" he demanded, not missing the sharp edge of sarcasm to her statement.

Jessa shook her head slightly. "Torah, please," she begged. "Don't ask questions you don't want to hear the answers to." Then she immediately cringed, waiting for the explosion to come. She tried to catch a reflection of his face in the monitor screens, but the light was all wrong. She couldn't see more than a shadow that had gone impossibly still.

"Stand up," he said in that deathly quiet voice. She'd learned, over and over again, that disobedience brought even more painful corrective lessons. She stood, albeit slowly, turning toward him with her eyes downcast, not that she thought for a moment that a penitent façade would appease him. He took her shoulders and spun her back toward the desk. "Bend," he commanded harshly, pushing her over none too gently. His hands moved to her wrists and he leaned over her, pushing her even farther down as he molded her hands over the edge of the desk. "Don't move," he ordered, his mouth next to her ear as he satisfied himself with the position of her arms. Then he straightened suddenly and yanked her hips back, so that she was stretched taut and had to hold tight to the desk to obey his command.

Jessa's pants and panties were pulled down even as his foot swung side to side, kicking her feet wide apart, preventing the clothes from descending past midthigh. There was a long moment of silence after that. Jessa didn't dare raise her eyes from the floor before her, or ask a question. Even though only her ass had been uncovered, she felt totally exposed, waiting to find out how angry he was, how much he intended to hurt her this time. Would it always be like this? Whenever he started seeing her as something other than just a vessel for his seed, she would relax her guard and say or do something that would bring out the angry Torah.

He was suddenly leaning over her again; his weight, his steely hardness pushing down on her spine, arching her back. His hands gripped the desk, covering hers, his hot breath washing over her ear. His voice had returned to the soft, cold tone that was far more frightening than if he had screamed at her. "When I ask a question, you will answer," he instructed, in the same quiet voice. "When I ask for an explanation, you will elucidate, without sarcasm, until I understand. Before you undertake questionable activities, you will ask permission. Do I make myself understood?"

"Yes," Jessa whispered. She attributed the tremble to the position he had put her in and the weight against her spine. Just a suddenly, he straightened, and Jessa heard a rustle behind her and the unmistakable sound of a belt being pulled free. Inexplicably, she steeled herself, hoping that if she bore his wrath well or at least stoically, he would return to the more amenable Torah that much sooner.

There was another long moment when nothing happened, then she felt his hands on her hips again, sliding slowly down over her bared skin, his thumbs tracing her tailbone and then down the fully exposed crack of her ass. Despite her stoic pledge, Jessa gasped softly. It was not the contact she had expected, but she knew how effective the shock value of contrast was. She locked her elbows, shoulders and knees.

Suddenly, he was pushing inside her, not forcefully, but inexorably, until he had reached the very depths of her belly and stopped, his cock twitching and her pussy throbbing in response. Jessa held her breath, her mind spinning with confusion. How was it that her pussy was wet and ready, when she was so sure a beating was coming? And how had she not been aware of her betraying arousal? Worse, if Torah didn't know before from his touch trailing down her ass or her musky aroma, he certainly knew now. "Breath, Jessa," he commanded, and she dipped her head. Of course he knew. There was nothing he didn't know about her. She could be miles away and roll her eyes. He would know. And at that moment, she made the connection. It wasn't the anticipation of punishment, of pain, that aroused her. It was simply that he knew her so well, so intimately. Whenever he was near, she wanted him inside her, utterly necessary to her completion. Even angry Torah, she realized with horror.

He leaned over her again. "Breath," he repeated, and in his voice, she heard the surety. He knew exactly what was racing through her mind, even as her pussy ached for him to move. "You want respect," he stated, tonelessly, then suddenly shoved impossibly deeper into her. "Then give respect," he snapped, straightening and pulling almost all the way out, then slamming back in. Jessa gasped, then solidified her position, daring him to give her more. She could sense his grin without turning her head to look. His fingers laced in her hair and yanked her head up, arching her back. She understood. This was for his pleasure and he wanted her deep and hard. She smiled. She didn't mind. It was fast becoming a truism that what brought him pleasure, fed hers. She held firm as he pounded into her, savoring the soft sounds he made in his orgasm even as a sparkling blue electrical field seemed to envelop her from foot to fingertip. Some might have thought it was just a screensaver kicking in on the monitors before her. She knew better.

When she began to recover, she found herself on her back on the floor of the computer room, her head in Torah's lap. He was running his fingers through her hair, watching her, his face no less serious, despite the last few minutes. "Is it always going to be like this?" she asked.

"Like what?" he asked with an innocent shrug. She grimaced, but with a soft, well-pleasured sigh. "So where did the money come from," he asked, back to business.

She shifted uncomfortably, and he looped an arm across her chest, keeping her flat on her back, giving baby making every opportunity. "I found a slush fund. I hid the transfers out by making them look like purchases similar to those that had been made earlier. It looked like a number of individuals had access to the account, so they would hopefully assume one of the others had made the purchases. Even if they figured it out, who are they going to complain to? They would have to admit that some of the illegal purchases were real."

"Who's slush fund?" he persisted.

"Um," she hesitated and his arm tightened about her. "The Council," she hurried on. "The Dusseldorf seat."

"Explain." His soft tone was belied by the set of his jaw.

"Not all of the Council, I don't think. I sort of back-traced the 'shopping' and there were definite interests and fingerprints, of maybe five individuals. Of course, others may know. Or not realize that their slush fund is being spent on such things."

"How do you know it is the Council?"

"There is a currency exchange of sorts. If you want to deal in Bitcoin, you purchase x amount of buying power to spend with sellers willing to take bitcoin value for their goods. You purchase that x amount with real Euros. Or, you 'sell' goods for bitcoin value, like gold, diamonds, weapons, even uranium. And, um, slaves." She would have sworn Torah actually paled, though he didn't say anything. She hurried on. "I looked at some of the more recent incoming value to the slush fund. Some of it was in Euros that could be traced back to Council accounts."

"Really," Torah said and it was a statement, though she treated it as a question.

"Yeah. It's not that unusual, actually, for people with a lot of money, as opposed to real property, for example. After the pandemic, no one has trusted official currency completely. Bitcoin has been one way of hedging bets. I mean, all banking, all transfer of funds, now, is done through technology, so why not something called Bitcoin, as opposed to the Euro or the dollar? They used to complain when currency was no longer backed up by gold." He released his hold across her chest. She sat up with her back against the wall next to him. "Now, no one knows what the value of an electronic blip is, or more to the point, what it will be tomorrow. And who wants to go back to carrying gold coins around?"

"So you stole from the Council," he again stated as fact rather than question.

"Not all of the value of the account was from presumably legitimately acquired Euros."

"Oh?" He was back to asking questions.

"The things sold on the dark web for Bitcoin, between anonymous buyers and sellers, well, it's pretty safe to assume the transaction involves items that aren't supposed to be bought and/or sold, or not the seller's item to sell. I mentioned uranium before. Weapons. Land."

"Land?"

"Land in Italy, in fact." Jessa held her breath.

"What else do you know?" he said softly.

"Not enough. There just wasn't enough time, and really, by definition, stuff happening on the dark web is pretty much all shady."

"Then you need to learn more and fast," he said, using the wall at his back as a brace to rise gracefully to his feet. He reached down and helped Jessa up, gesturing at the monitors. "I'll see where dinner is at."

He turned to head up the stairs, but just then Erich came clattering partway down them, throwing a bundle at Torah, who caught it without comment and stripped Jessa's jacket free from the outside of the bundle. "Trouble coming," Erich muttered before disappearing back up the stairs.

Torah had unwrapped his own jacket and was tucking the inner contents of the bundle into various pockets. As he tucked a gun into his belt, he nodded toward her. "Might want to pull your pants up," and Jessa blushed redly.

"I need to clear the computer," she said, turning back toward the desk, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her stumbling toward the stairs.

"No time," he said calmly. When he had pushed her in front of him toward the landing, he paused long enough to toss something into the computer room.

"Torah, what..."

"Move it," he snapped with a hard push and then a grip on her arm to keep her upright.

They reached the kitchen and Jessa noticed with dismay that the delicious smell was still entrenched inside the oven. "How do you know how much time there is?" she asked, turning toward him as she wrestled with the fly of her pants. In answer, he threw her over his shoulder and she was roughly jounced as he ran for the door. Around his side, she could just make out the car, with Erich at the wheel, spinning in a wide circle toward them, spraying gravel. Then everything happened at once. Erich screeched to a stop and she and Torah were slammed against the car by an immense blast just behind them. The sound, the hot blast of the explosion and a storm of flaming shards hit her all at the same time. Jessa brushed furiously at an ember that had caught in the collar of her shirt and was burning its way through to her skin. Torah had already recovered his balance, yanked open the back door of the car and was throwing her inside. Her jacket followed, covering her face. Erich had the car moving again before Torah was even entirely inside.

By the time she got disentangled from the jacket and her legs out from under Torah, he was already reading a text on the phone Erich had handed him. Jessa brushed embers from his hair, wondering how he could be oblivious to them, then stared out the back window of the car, watching the conflagration that had enveloped the farmhouse so utterly, as it disappeared rapidly into the distance.

"What is it?" she asked softly as he snapped the cheap phone shut. He shook his head, but she just looked at him until he relented and handed the phone over. "Thank you," she murmured as she opened the cover. She glanced at the text still on the screen, her brow furrowed. When she looked back at Torah, he had a very faint, but unmistakably wry smile on his face, daring her to make sense of the cryptic message.

"Fasten your seatbelt," he told her with a nod toward Erich.

She complied, still studying the text. 'D nos, A71 2 20, 10 out, GP, Comm SF TL;MP;SE scram.'

"What's our charge?" Torah asked Erich.

He threw a scowl over his shoulder. "Not nearly enough. It wasn't even plugged in for an hour. Hope you brought your walking shoes."

Torah sighed. "Well, obviously Montpellier is out."

"If we backtrack over the mountains to Avignon, we might find something seaworthy to take downriver to the Med, but..."

"I know. I'm not crazy about hiking over the mountains this close to winter, even if it makes it harder for him to find us."

"Not to mention burning through whatever juice we have even faster."

"For who to find us?" Jessa interjected.

The shadowy wry smile was back. "Didn't you read the message?"

Jessa scrunched her nose. "I could use a hint."

"It's a standard tracking message," Torah said, mocking her earlier sarcasm.

"Wait. Tracking." She closed her eyes, searching her memory. "Target, route, distance or time, transport modus, um..." She looked at the text again. "D. Drau. Drau knows." Torah nodded in admiration. "So route could be A71 to A20. He's headed south?" She looked at Torah for confirmation. He merely cocked an eyebrow. "Toward us," she added softly.

In the front seat, Erich snorted. "How about that. She has studied the old road maps."

Ignoring him, she glanced back at the phone. "So this next must be ten hours out, right? I mean, if it was ten kilometers, you wouldn't have been in such a hurry. Unless... Ten kilometers from the house?" she asked, paling.

"Well," Torah drawled, studying his fingernails. "The message was from Jacq and in his world, everything revolves around Paris, so I think it's safe to assume he meant ten hours out from Paris."

"Oh," she said softly, looking at the screen again. "So GP is gas-powered. To be able to travel far and fast," she quoted Torah's statement explaining his need for a gas-powered car. "But I don't get the rest of this. Except scram. Was that why we had to leave so fast?"

Torah rolled his eyes, again mocking her and she began to understand why he had found it so annoying when she had done it. She threw the phone at him, only half in play and he snatched it out of the air. "The last section of the tracking message. 'Who else knows.' Communications. SF - Special Forces. TL is Toulouse, SE is Saint-Etiennes. I have to assume MP is Montpellier, though a base there is news to me. Scram means scrambled. He doesn't know what was sent, but I think it's safe to assume it was orders to look for us." He handed the phone back up front to Erich.

Jessa flashed on memories of being taken captive and brutalized by Renik. Torah reached over and squeezed her hand, ever so briefly, but she understood. This time, he was here. With her. She still needed to be strong, but not by herself, not this time.

"Two roads diverging in the woods," Erich announced, slowing. "Decision time. The one less travelled by?"

"No," Torah said calmly. "Fuck it. The last place they're going to look for us is in their midst."

Erich cocked an eyebrow, but he accelerated, continuing on down the main highway, though he extinguished the headlights. Like Erich, Jessa kept her silence, but her heart did a bit of a flipflop. Then Torah was pulling her against his shoulder. "Don't worry, I have it on good authority that the Special Forces have excellent computer equipment." She noticed Erich rolling his eyes before she closed hers and willed herself to sleep, not daring to wonder when the next chance might come along.

****

When Jessa opened her eyes again, the car was rolling very quietly and bumpily along a dirt track that probably hadn't seen a car in forty or fifty years. At some point, Torah had taken over the driver's seat and Erich was exhibiting that amazing ability of theirs to sleep wherever, whenever, curled in the passenger seat, belt unfastened, she noticed with a sniff. She leaned forward and glanced over Torah's shoulder. The battery gauge was pretty much flatlined, the car still moving by Torah's strength of will alone, as far as she could tell. The only light was provided by an almost full moon. When the car finally ground to a stop, refusing to go another inch, Jessa climbed out and navigated the ancient ruts nestled between walls of overgrown trees and stared at the night sky. Part of her brain was calculating directions and times, but most of it was simply adoring the beauty of the swath of stars that she could see. It had been early on in Paris since she had simply stared at the night sky for the sheer beauty and magnitude of it.

When she returned to her present reality, she looked around to find that Erich and Torah were pushing the car toward what she had only just realized was a small lake. She hurried to catch up and help, though it earned her a scowl from Torah. Still, he didn't command her to stop 'exerting' herself and she counted that a small triumph. "I don't suppose there's time for a swim," she said sadly, knowing the answer.

Erich looked at her in disbelief. "You do know it's winter, right?"

"Not officially," she pointed out.

"Save your energy for hiking," Torah told her. He had stopped pushing and was retrieving provisions and backpacks from the trunk of the car as it tettered at the edge of a sharp slope into the lake. When they went back to pushing, and Jessa jumped to help, Torah shoved canteens in her hands. "Fill these and put the potable tablets in."