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of their block, and the room swelled with noise. Then the siren trailed off, leaving a silence. Kera found that she could n’t get Travis Bradley out of her mind. Even if sh e’d at first been annoyed that Gabby had sent her to the meeting with the ex-quant, and even if she was still skeptical about Bradle y’s credibility, his allegations were unsettling. Out of curiosity sh e’d done some research into ONE that afternoon. The compan y’s stock price, which sh e’d been studying when Parker arrived home, had closed the day in record territory. Other than hiring the twelve quants, however, she saw no indication that ONE was branching out into anything beyond the entertainment industry. In a decade ONE had patched together a gargantuan media empire by gobbling up every small magazine, newspaper, TV station, record company, and film studio on the map. They were buying competitors and start-ups at a rate of a half dozen a month. It was impossible to walk down the street or turn on the TV without encountering ON E’s influence. They seemed to control every third billboard in the city, every third song that played on the radio, every third movie opening in every megaplex. What was this need to own everything ?
    She put on music and rinsed two dusty wineglasses while she watched Parker struggle to ease the cork from the bottle with a tool she knew had been designed to make the task much simpler than it appeared to be for him. While they sipped wine and waited for dinner, Parker told her about Dubai. He had traveled there for something called a global social networking conference.
    “The place is unreal. The whole time I was thinking about how much yo u’d love it. I’l l take you with me sometime. If we pick up this business, I’l l have to travel there once a month.” Parker worked at a peppy start-up firm that specialized in digital marketing and that was owned by a distant friend of a family friend. “Remember that thing I was telling you about with the shoe designer app? W e’r e pitching a soccer brand for a campaign that will lead up to an international tournament the y’r e hostin g . . . ”
    Kera did remember him telling her about the shoe app. And no matter how much she tried to prevent it, her reaction now was as it had been the first time h e’d brought it up: her eyes glazed over and her mind drifted back to her own work. She wondered whether the hacker arrests overseas had been made public yet. With any luck, data on hard drives had been recovered in the raids that would lead her team to additional hackers in the network.
    “ I’m boring you,” Parker said.
    “No, babe,” she said, though they both knew sh e’d been caught with her mind wandering. She slid a hand up the back of his shirt and spread her fingers across his lower back. “ I’m glad it went well.”
    Another siren crescendoed on the street, momentarily drowning out the Internet radio.
    “Can you believe all that?” Parker said.
    “What?”
    “She lived a few blocks from here.”
    “She who?”
    “You did n’t hear?”
    “ I’v e been doing work stuff.”
    “And you call yourself a newswoman,” he joked.
    “What happened?”
    “Rowena Pete.”
    It took Kera a moment to place the name. The singer. Yes, that was right. Kera liked the music of Rowena Pete. “Dead?”
    Parker nodded. “I read about it on my phone. And then it turns out she lived so close. They shut down a whole block, and the cab had to go around. I t’s a complete circus.”
    Kera poured them more wine and sat on the couch next to him. He was on his computer now.
    “Gnos.is?” she said disparagingly.
    “The y’r e the fastest. Look,” he said, opening the Global Report in a new window for comparison. He was right. TGR had n’t yet published any reports on the death of Rowena Pete. Neither had the New York Times or any other serious news organization. She rolled her eyes as Parker, his point made, clicked back to Gnos.is. “They think