Amanda sat across from Nick in his usual booth. She had turned down the coffee and ordered tea.

"Smart choice," Mable muttered.

"I scrambled every truck ID in their database. It will take ACE a while to get it sorted out," she told Nick. "You know that once they find the truck, they can pull the local GPS history and see where ya been?"

Nick slid an envelope across the table. "A little extra bonus for all the help you've given us." Then he grinned, "I'm countin' on them findin' it." He told her. "Each time I communicate with Viktor Bakos, I add to the risk that he can trace me. If he can find his stuff through the truck GPS, that's one less link to me."

Amanda looked at him with a little more respect. "If ya don't mind my askin', what kind of name is Ramrod?"

Nick laughed. "I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid. My favorite was a TV Western rerun called 'Rawhide'. Clint Eastwood played a cowboy, Rowdy Yates. He was the ramrod on a cattle drive.' Nick shrugged.

"What's your real name?" Amanda wanted to know.

When Nick shook his head she said, "You do realize it would take me five minutes to hack you online?"

He laughed. "Winston. Nicholas Winston. My old man is a banker. So I followed in his footsteps."

Amanda cocked her head and gave him an enquiring look. "Howzat?"

"We both take money from people. I'm just more honest about it. How about you? I always thought hackers had exotic names, like Red Fury or the Dragon Lady?"

"You watch too much tv." Amanda changed the subject, "Speaking of thieves, I want in on the Bakos op. I wanna help take him down."

"We're not doing that, Amanda. We're droppin' Bakos. He's way too dangerous."

"I can hack his systems and he'll never know who did it. We can..."

Nick held up his hand. "Stop. Let the cops go after him if they want. We stung him once and got away with it. He'll get over that. We won't be so lucky a second time."

Nick didn't want to tell her that he had already set Bakos up for a second sting. Viktor was going to be very angry and he didn't want Amanda anywhere near it. He should have told her. Instead he said, "I look forward to working with you on other, uh, projects. But stay away from Bakos. I mean it."

"He pays off half the cops and politicians in the city and the rest are all scared of him. I guess you're scared, too." Amanda grabbed her bag and angrily pushed out of the booth. "Have a good life," she told him.

It was a little thing. Amanda was just a contractor, not a full team member. But it was a fine crack that threatened to break apart Nick's entire team. If Nick had known what was going to happen, he would have never let her walk out that door.