No Time for Surprises (The No Brides Club Book 6)

by Karen McCullough

  He nodded. “I know what this sounds like, but I always knew you’d succeed. You’re the best and most creative developer I’ve ever met. Are you still living in the West Village, sharing that closet?”

  “Still in the neighborhood, but I’ve got a bit more space now. Moved into a single bedroom flat by myself about a year ago. Nancy—you remember my roommate then?—got married and they moved to Yonkers. It was good timing. I was ready to have a place to myself. What about you?”

  “Still in the same place in Brooklyn. What can I say? It’s cheap—relatively—and it suits me well enough. Let’s me put a good bit of my salary away for the future.”

  “Have you bought a car yet?”

  He sighed. “Not yet. Still haven’t seen the point. Someday I’ll move out of the city and I’ll need one. Until then I get around on the bike or subway, and I rent a car when I need to go out of town.”

  “So, you still toodle around on the bicycle on weekends?”

  “I don’t toodle around. I roll gracefully over city streets and torpedo through parks.”

  “You forget. I’ve watched you pedal. Efficient, maybe, but graceful wasn’t the word I’d use to describe it.”

  He laughed. “Maybe so. But you were always poetry in motion on a bike. Do you still ride?”

  “Not as much as I’d like.”

  “You still have the bike?”

  “I have a bike. I upgraded a bit.” She looked almost embarrassed about it.

  “So you have a great bike and no time to ride.”

  She set the fork on her now-empty plate. “Something like that.” A hint of color rose in her cheeks, barely visible in the dim light. Odd. Evasive wasn’t really Julie’s norm.

  “We ought to consider riding together again sometime,” he suggested.

  She raised her head and stared at him. He was pretty sure he saw a momentary flash of interest in her eyes before it faded into anger. “I don’t think so.”

  The waiter showed up with the check and they both reached for it. He got there first. “It’s on the expense account,” he assured her when she started to object. Once he paid, they got up and left.

  He’d pushed enough on their connection for today. He’d tossed out a few seeds. Whether they’d take root and grow remained to be seen.

  CHAPTER 5

  J ulie let out a sigh of relief as she got back to the office. Time spent with Dan used to be restful, exciting, or invigorating. Now it was just stressful. She didn’t understand what he wanted and hadn’t sorted out yet what she was willing to give, if she could afford to give him anything beyond being a co-worker.

  He seemed to be hinting he might want to renew their friendship and maybe even take it further, but she couldn’t figure any way that would be possible. Too many things stood between them. Forgiving his lack of trust in and support for her when she’d needed it most was beyond her. And she’d sworn off romance. If only a tiny little spark of attraction didn’t insist on trying to poke through the anger and resentment.

  She paused in front of her desk. Only four things sat on the surface, an ethernet cable plugged into the wall outlet on one end, with the other end free, ready to plug into her laptop; a power cable, also plugged into the wall on one end and open on the other; a pen; and a small paper notebook. But something was subtly different from when she’d left for lunch. She studied the layout. The notebook wasn’t where she’d put it down. Normally she’d leave it and the pen up against each other, but now the pen had rolled to the side of the desk and the notebook was pushed toward the back.

  No one else should ever be using her desk, but it appeared someone had been there. Snooping? She picked up the notebook and thumbed through it. Nothing struck her as different and it seemed unlikely anyone could glean useful information from her scribbled notes. Most of them detailed coding issues with the latest app and items she needed to fix or improve. Unlikely anyone else would even understand her scrawled directions to herself.

  Still, it disturbed her. She looked around uneasily but the only two other people nearby paid no attention to her. Warily, she unlocked the drawer where she kept her laptop and tablet, then put the laptop key in the USB drive to activate it.

  Maureen returned from her lunch date a few minutes later and stopped by. “You ready to get rolling again?”

  Julie nodded. “Definitely. We’ve got good momentum going on this and we really don’t want to fall behind.”

  “I’m heading back to my desk. Ready to shake down the registration pages.”

  “Sounds good. Hey, did you by any chance move my notebook around right before or during lunch?”

  Maureen stopped, turned to stare at the object, then shook her head. “I left before you did and just got back. You think someone tampered with it?”

  “I don’t know. It looked like it had been moved from where I left it.”

  Maureen watched her for a moment. “That’s…disturbing. Can you tell if anything was missing or messed with?”

  Julie picked up the notebook and thumbed through it. “Doesn’t look like it. Maybe I’m just imagining things. Spooked by all the changes the last couple of days.”

  “It’s been pretty unsettling,” Maureen agreed. “Especially for you, I’m sure, given your history with these people.”

  “No kidding. The last thing I need is someone trying to mess things up.” She looked around but none of the few people in the large open office paid any attention to her. “Maybe I’m just getting paranoid.”

  Maureen smiled and quoted a shared favorite line. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

  “Good point.”

  She picked up the pen and notebook and went in search of Stan. She found him in his tiny, cluttered office next to the main computer area. Better yet, he was alone. She tapped on the door until he looked up and saw her. His lopsided grin welcomed her and apologized for the chaos of his space at the same time. “Hey. Come on in. Push a few things off the chair.”

  She gently moved a pile of boxes, circuit boards, hard drives, and a rattling keyboard from the chair and deposited them on the floor nearby. “Jake’s not still here?” she asked.

  “He got an emergency call from back at his office. Sounded like someone’s monitor died.”

  “Oh, good. Not the monitor, I mean. I’m glad he’s not here for the moment.”

  Stan nodded. “I was going to come find you later. We need to decide what to do about those files in your partition.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t know what the time frame for combining the systems is, but I need to make some changes. I need to add the new ID’s to the exclude list.”

  “I’ll get them for you,” he said. “How do you want to explain those files to Jake?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t say anything. I don’t really mind him knowing. He only started at Spieler a few weeks before I left, but we had a good working relationship while I was there. He was never hostile when the others were, and I think he really believed I hadn’t done it. But he’d still probably feel obliged to tell others, and I’d rather no one else knew.”

  “What if he decided to open one of them himself, to check out what they are? It would be a reasonable thing to do.”

  “Would it?”

  “This network’s my responsibility. You can be sure I want to know what’s on it. And some of those files will get flagged by a malware checker. I had to set ours to exclude them. That would raise a few red flags.”

  “True.” Julie considered pros and cons. “What do you think?”

  Stan took a moment to consider. “It’s not really fair to keep that from him or ask him to hide it from his superiors. And I don’t know him well enough to say what he’d do. But…

  “What?”

  “Why not tell him? And let him tell everyone else. He’s the only who’ll understand what they are anyway, so even if he spreads the word they’re there, they won’t know what it means.” He st
opped and scribbled a few notes. “Frank said you used to work for Spieler, that they’re the company accused you of leaking code.”

  He waited for her nod before continuing. “I gather you think the leak was an inside job, and the person who did it might still be working there. Would they dare try it again?”

  “I don’t know. I never knew who it was or why they did it. That’s what bugs me, and why I don’t want to advertise those files.” She tapped her pen on the pad. “We could go through Dan. I’m reasonably sure he had nothing to do with it, and he should know how to handle explaining it to Jake.” She stood up. “I’ll talk to him about it. Can you give me a heads-up if and when you have to transfer my files?”

  “Sure. And I’ll get you the ID’s. Planning any tailored subroutines?” He gave her a wicked grin.

  “Who knows? Maybe. Better get back to work now.”

  She spent the rest of the afternoon working on the transaction-logging app, conferring with Maureen a couple of times to fix issues the other woman found in testing. Once or twice she caught sight of Dan walking around, stopping to talk to various people, but he didn’t come her way.

  She put the talk she needed to have with him on her to-do list but didn’t try to engage him then. Her brain already had enough interaction with him to process in one day. At four o’clock, she packed everything up and headed home. Leaving an hour early meant her three-stop ride on the subway would be crowded but not yet at sardines-in-a-can level.

  She had no plans for the weekend, other than catching up on chores, reading, and relaxing. Dan’s hints about the bike, though, goaded her to get it out and take a spin on Saturday. Beautiful early June weather didn’t hurt, either. She reveled in the forgotten pleasure of sailing along at high speed, feeling the warm breeze caress her. She’d long ago learned to tune out the city noise of traffic and sirens. Riding up to Central Park and along its many paths offered a feeling of freedom she’d forgotten over the last few months as she concentrated on the coding for several apps that moved her closer to her eventual goal of moving out of the city. She loved New York, and was grateful for the opportunities it offered, but someday she hoped to have a family, and the city wasn’t the best place for raising children.

  The only shadow on her joy in the ride was a secret, scary wish she had a companion to share the pleasure.

  After treating herself to an early dinner at a favorite bistro, she biked home as the daylight began to fade into twilight. Sunday, she caught up the chores she’d put off the previous day and met a couple of old friends for lunch.

  Monday morning, she started early by clearing email at home and then headed for the office just after nine. She plunked down the laptop case at eighteen minutes to ten and poured a cup of coffee from the bottle she carried with her. While she was attaching the lock cable to her laptop, Kris Thompson stopped by her cubicle. Her smile made Julie’s skin feel itchy.

  CHAPTER 6

  “So glad you’ve decided to join us this morning,” Kris said. The acid in her voice said exactly the opposite. “I hope you enjoyed sleeping late.”

  People at desks nearby turned to stare at them. Julie suppressed the urge to yell or hiss. Instead she made sure her tone was as even as possible, when she said, “I thought you knew I’m a contractor, not an employee. I get paid for providing finished, working code, not for being in a chair at certain hours. I do a lot of my work off premises where I can concentrate better.”

  Kris gave her a look that made her eyelids sizzle. “Yet we’re expected to provide you with all the resources you want whenever you deign to join us.”

  “Frank Worth thought it a good bargain. Someone in your company must’ve agreed since you bought Worth & Cummings.”

  “Excuse me—” Maureen handed some papers to Julie. “Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got to head out to a dentist appointment. I wanted to give you the results of my last test runs. Mostly good news.” She pointed to a couple of anomalous responses and a few error messages.

  Kris harrumphed and headed away.

  “Hope you didn’t mind the intervention,” Maureen said, low enough only the two of them could hear it.

  “Nope. But I can handle her.”

  “I know. But why entertain the office at your expense?”

  Julie laughed. “Good point. By the way, have you seen Dan Foster this morning?”

  Maureen gave her a raised eyebrow.

  “No.” Julie shook her head. “Just need to consult him about some files on the system. One of my stipulations about continuing to work on this app was that all interactions were to go through him. Kris just broke that one, but I’ll let it go this time, since she didn’t actually interfere.”

  “He’s the only person at Spieler you trust?”

  “And I’m not even sure about him. But I do trust him more than the others. At least he isn’t actively hostile.”

  “Definitely not,” Maureen said. Her tone said a lot more than the words.

  Julie set down the notes with a thunk. “We’re not going there.”

  “If you say so. Anyway, I heard he’s at their main office today. Should be here tomorrow.”

  Maureen went off to her appointment and Julie spent the rest of the day working on the code for the app. Stage two, deliverable at the end of that week, was to have the main part of the public interface functioning and ready to demonstrate. Most of the work on it was done, but it still needed tweaking and fine-tuning. Using Maureen’s notes and observations, she got most of the fixes done, then began working on the database connection, which was actually part of the stage three package.

  She got in a little earlier the next day and immediately went in search of Dan but found him in the midst of a meeting with two people from the finance department. He looked up and met her eyes, nodding acknowledgement, but glanced at the others. Julie got the message and returned to her cubicle.

  He stopped there an hour or so later, when she was consulting with Maureen again, trying to pin down an anomalous issue the woman had found with the interface. Instead of interrupting, he just put a note on her desk that said, “Lunch at 12:30?” with a phone number below and “Call me when you’re done.”

  She nodded at him. She’d prefer to discuss the files issue off the premises anyway.

  Once Maureen had gone off to lunch, she called Dan to tell him she was free. They met in the elevator lobby five minutes later. “How about Mexican today?” she suggested. “There’s a place a couple of blocks away.”

  He looked down at her feet as the elevator doors closed and smiled when he realized her shoes had just a one-inch heel. “Shoes you can walk in?”

  “I don’t usually wear spike heels, except when I might need them as weapons.”

  “I don’t recall you ever wore them, back when…”

  She sucked in a breath. Keep it light, she told herself. Don’t let him know how raw it is to discuss anything about their past. “When we were dating? I didn’t. A couple of years ago I discovered their remarkable ability to reinforce my power potential when needed.”

  “I had no idea.” The elevator dinged and they walked out as the doors opened.

  “Neither did I, then. A friend suggested it, when I was feeling low after another job rejection. She said a good pair of power shoes would do wonders for my image.”

  “What do they do for your feet? They didn’t look comfortable.”

  “Everything has a down-side. Sometimes the trade-off is worth it. Maybe that’s even part of the secret. The pain in your toes lets you know that you can endure anything.”

  His mouth curled in a wry grin. “That’s a different way to look at it.”

  “I’m a bit different. Always have been.”

  “Not so—” He broke off and shook his head. “You’re a very attractive computer geek. I suppose that is different.”

  “Among other things.” His flattery shouldn’t touch her, shouldn’t get him any response. They left the building and she directed him to the right, then left at
the next block. Traffic noise made conversation difficult as they walked, so she remained silent.

  They got to the restaurant and sat at the bar drinking sodas while they waited for a table. The spicy aromas filling the place whetted their appetites. And revived memories of past visits to places that smelled of Mexican spices.

  “I went for a spin on the bike Saturday,” she told him. “It had been a while and I’d forgotten how good it feels.”

  “Glad you did it again. Some friend and I are thinking of doing the Shore Parkway Greenway this coming weekend if the weather permits. Would you be interested in joining us?”

  The offer startled her. “No.” No way. Far too many memories waiting to ambush her along any bike trail.

  He accepted her refusal without pushing. Instead he told her about a couple of other rides he’d made recently, entertaining her until their table was ready.

  After they’d ordered, she got to the reason she wanted to talk to him, telling him about the files in her section of the Cummings & Worth system and why they were there. His expression grew serious as he listened. “So, you have a bunch of bear traps in among some totally useless programs in your allotment on the central storage drive?” He asked when she finished. “How long have they been there? And why do you think you need them?”

  “More like intruder traps. They’ve been there for about a year. I put them in when a couple of hackers tried to get in.”