9. New Assets and Other Necessary Evils
Mina
He would want me to destroy it.
No number of years could have made me uncertain of that. Never mind that the card contained nothing but a sequence of numbers, uncrackable without prior knowledge of our system of twelve randomly rotating book codes. Never mind that all it translated to was a time and date, a set of unmarked geographic coordinates, and the words “bring the new boy.”
The Old Man would consider even that much information a perilous exposure, and he would expect me to burn the card itself as soon as my eyes recorded it.
It wasn’t the nest full of fluffy baby birds on the front wishing “Happy Seventeenth Birthday to a Very Special Girl” that made me keep it intact in my bag’s inner lining. The prepackaged sentiment was almost as
