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Exposure

“Tea, these girls are white trash. Don’t be friends with them,” said Chris. “Their minds are different.”

They were at Naan and Curry, a twenty-four-hour Indian and Pakistani restaurant in San Francisco’s theater district. It had been three months since Tea hooked up with Chris, and she was with him for one of his monthly trips to the Bay Area, where’d he meet his mysterious hacker friend “Sam” just before dawn. They were only four blocks from Max’s safe house now, but Tea wouldn’t be introduced to the hacker on this trip or any other. Nobody met Sam in person.

She was fascinated by how it all worked: the cashless nature of the crime, the way Chris organized his crew. He’d told her everything, once he thought she was ready, but never asked her to hit the stores with the others. She was special. He didn’t even like her hanging out with his cash-ing crew, for fear that they’d somehow taint her personality.

Tea was also the only employee not being paid. After she’d protested the $40 Chris left on the nightstand, Chris concluded that Tea didn’t want any money from him at all, despite the long hours she was spending on Carders Market and the Russian crime boards. Chris was taking care of the rent on the Tea House, buying her clothes, and paying for her travel— but she found it a strange existence, living online, traveling on confirmation numbers instead of plane tickets. She’d become a ghost, her body in