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

by Karen McCullough

  His eyebrows shot up. “Someone tried to steal your work? You’re sure?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly. But someone did try to hack into the system, and Stan thought they tried to get to my folder. Maybe they were just rummaging around for anything useful they might find, but after what happened three years ago, I can’t afford to take chances.”

  His expression didn’t change. “What would happen if someone were to open one of those files?”

  “It depends on whether it was someone from outside the organization or inside.”

  “Suppose it was someone outside?”

  “They’d get an ugly surprise. I repurposed some nasty ransomware code to encrypt files on the user’s hard drive. Not all hackers would even care, but some would. And there’s no way they’d ever get a decryption key from me.”

  His eyes went wide. “You don’t pull punches, do you? What about someone inside?”

  “They’d get a less destructive but more…humbling surprise. I’d rather not say what, except that no destruction or encryption of files would be involved.”

  “Sirens, whistles, balloons, or other embarrassing displays?”

  “Something like that, possibly.”

  His expression wavered between horror and wry humor. “But you do promise no catastrophes, tragedies, or natural disasters will ensue?”

  “Not for anyone within the organization. Stan is supposed to get me internal IDs for everyone on staff, so I can incorporate those into the algorithm. And I have a secondary verification system to ensure that no one inside the system will find their files encrypted. Stan and I tested it pretty extensively and it works. Plus, even in the event of a failure to distinguish an insider, Stan and I both have the decryption key.”

  “Cripes. What do you need from me?”

  She hesitated. “Not that I’m blaming him, but Jake’s not going to like it.”

  “You think? It’s kind of his job to safeguard the network and all the company’s IT resources.”

  “I know. And he has no reason to trust me. Arguably less than none. But I need to do this.”

  He studied her expression for a moment. “Is this part of helping you catch whoever leaked the code before? You think they might try again?”

  “Truthfully, probably not. It’s more a case of covering all possibilities.”

  “With possible hints of paranoia thrown in?”

  “Possibly. But you know the old saw. Just because I’m paranoid—”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” he finished, just as Maureen had.

  Maybe she’d tossed that phrase around a bit too often. “Right. I call it insurance.”

  “So I need to convince Jake to leave those files alone.”

  “There's more. Those files will show up on a malware scan, so I need him to set it up to exclude certain files in my directory from it.”

  “Crap. He’s going to have a cow.”

  “I know. That’s why I need you to convince him to let it go.”

  He sighed and went silent for a minute or two while he finished his tacos. He tried to keep his expression blank, but she could guess at the debate raging in his brain. Excluding files from a malware scan was a serious risk, particularly when you knew for sure some of them were, in fact, dangerous. He had to take her word they wouldn’t damage anything inside the organization, which meant trusting not just her word, but her ability. It would be a heck of a leap for him. Relying on one of those would be bad enough. Believing both might be more than he could handle.

  A bit of sauce leaked from one of the tacos, running down his hand, and he wiped it with a napkin. He stared at the red splotch for a moment before he balled up the napkin and tossed it on the empty plate. “I’ll talk to him. Lord knows how he’ll react, but I’ll do what I can.”

  “That’s all I can ask.”

  His smile showed the adorable creases bracketing his mouth, which nudged at her heart. Dang it! His willingness to trust and help her, poked a little hole in the wall of reserve and anger she’d build around herself.

  They put business aside as they walked back to the office. Instead he regaled her with stories of a couple of mishaps on his bike over the last couple of years, including one that had nearly pitched him into the East River. “Last summer, I hit a bottle someone had tossed on the Shore Park Drive and went sailing over the handlebars. Slid across some gravel and dirt. Only a fence rail kept me from going straight on into the ocean.”

  “Yikes. Were you hurt?”

  “Just a few bruises, a cut on my forehead, and a large dent in my pride. That’s how I got this.” He pointed to the scar that split his eyebrow. “I like to think it gives me a rakish, piratical air. Really, I was lucky in more ways than one.”

  “Wait. Shore Park Drive. Isn’t that the same place you invited me go cycling with you?”

  He grinned. “I promise we’d sweep it for hazards before you get on it, if you come. It’s really a beautiful ride. We did it a couple of times before. And the weather’s supposed to be beautiful. You’d love it.”

  She knew she would, but that wasn’t the issue. She couldn’t afford to let any kind of relationship develop between them outside the necessary working one. She’d gone down that road once, and the results had shattered her heart, and for a while, her entire life.

  “I don’t think so,” she answered.

  He accepted that, and they went their separate ways when they got back to the office. She didn’t see him again for the rest of the day.

  CHAPTER 7

  She and Maureen worked on the interface for the app and got all but a few of remaining issues worked out. One problem gave them considerable trouble, since every time they made a change to it, errors would show up in other parts of the program, and nothing seemed to fix it. They still hadn’t resolved that one at five o’clock.

  As usual, Julie spent time the next morning working by herself at home, hoping the quiet conditions would lead to some inspiration. It didn’t work. She still didn’t have a good solution by the time she headed to the Cummings & Worth office.

  Once she’d dropped her purse and laptop case in her desk, she went in search of Maureen. The woman wasn’t at her desk or in any of the nearby cubicles. Julie finally found her in Stan’s tiny office, spewing words at breakneck speed.

  “…And then she had the nerve to make a nasty remark about my shoes. My shoes! Said they were dowdy and not appropriate—”

  Stan looked up to see Julie in the doorway. Maureen stopped and turned toward her also.

  “Who said your shoes were dowdy and inappropriate?” Julie glanced at Maureen’s feet. The black leather lace-ups could be called dowdy, but certainly not inappropriate. The woman had issues with bone spurs, which made most dress shoes painful for her. But she didn’t deal with the public in any way or represent the company to customers or potential customers, so it hardly mattered what her shoes looked like.

  “That woman, Kris something.”

  “Kris Thomas.”

  “Right. She said my shoes don’t comply with Spieler’s dress code.”

  “Spieler had a dress code when I worked for them last, but the only thing I remember it said about shoes was that flip-flops weren’t allowed.”

  “She also mentioned that my shirt was a bit casual for this company.”

  Julie gritted her teeth to keep from saying something decidedly inappropriate herself. “Cummings & Worth has never had a problem with the way you dress. It’s not like we interact with the public all that much.”

  “I don’t at all. And you only do when they trot you out to show off their resident genius for new product intros.”

  “Or for the important shows.” She shuddered, remembering the last one, where she’d had to shake hands with strangers for hours on end and smile until her jaw hurt. Plus she’d had to wear a suit and heels for three solid days. By the last day her feet hurt so much she’d made Frank get her a stool to sit on. “Fortunately for all of us, they don’t do i
t very often. But all that’s irrelevant here. You have a reason to wear the shoes you do. And she’s not supposed to interfere with our work. I’ll ask Dan to talk to her, get her to back off.”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Maureen lifted a leg and stared at her foot. “Inappropriate, my tushy. That woman’s one of those people who likes to spread poison and create drama.”

  “You know I think that might be true. Maybe she has some self-esteem issues. After all she’s Quigley’s niece and deep down she may believe she only got the job because of that.”

  “Didn’t she?” Maureen asked.

  “Hard to say. From my experience with her, she’s reasonably competent at what she does, which is mostly marketing. She can glad-hand with the best and be utterly charming when she wants to be.”

  “She strikes me as a classic drama queen. One of those people who isn’t happy unless there’s some excitement going on around her. And if she can’t find any, she’ll create it.”

  Once again Maureen’s insight into people surprised her. “Yeah. I think that’s pretty accurate. Anyway, I’ll talk to Dan and ask him to tell her to lay off.”

  “He’ll be thrilled about that, won’t he?”

  Julie gave a hard laugh. “No. But he’ll do it.” She stopped to consider what she’d just said. She believed it. Her confidence in that statement was a bit of a shock even to herself. But she knew he would do it. She trusted him that far, at least. “Anyway, when you have some time, I want to go over some ideas for the verification issue.”

  “Sure. Give me a couple of minutes.”

  They spent much of the rest of the day wrestling with the problem of the app giving errors when certain values were entered in one of the fields. Maureen went to lunch and Julie continued to search for an answer to the issue. With just two days before this part of the app was due to be delivered, she was starting to feel frantic.

  At a certain point, battering her brain about it became counter-productive, though, so she changed course and worked on tackling the other few issues for the rest of the day. Most of those were resolved easily and quickly. By the time she left that evening she felt she’d made decent progress.

  On Thursday morning, she got to the office at just after nine, and found Maureen fuming again.

  “Now it’s my lunch hour she’s objecting to. I take ten minutes longer than everyone else. ‘It sets a poor example.’ I tried explaining to her that I get here half an hour earlier in the morning than everyone else, but she didn’t seem interested in hearing that.”

  “Good grief.” Julie sighed. “You work harder than any other two people here and you do get here earlier.” She looked around. “I’ll go see if Dan’s here. If he doesn’t come in this morning, I’ll head for the Spieler offices to find him. This has to stop.”

  “Thanks.” Maureen went back to her desk. Julie went in search of Dan. He wasn’t in the office he used at Cummings & Worth, but one of the assistants told her that he should be there in an hour or so. She left a note on his desk, asking him to come and find her when he got in.

  She and Maureen were both in her cubicle, going through the code line by line, trying to figure out why entering certain values in one field seemed to cause random problems in other parts of the program, when a voice from behind jerked them out of their concentration.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Dan Foster said. “Especially when it looks like you’re deep into something, but you did leave a note that you wanted to see me when I got here.” He raised an eyebrow at Julie.

  “I did.” She looked around to see several people watching them from other cubicles. She chewed her lip for a moment. She didn’t like leaving her laptop, but she didn’t want to entertain the office again.

  Maureen sensed her discomfort and said, “Go on. I’ll stay here and work on this.”

  Which meant she’d be guarding the computer, too.

  “Can we go to your office?”

  He nodded and led the way, then closed the door behind them. “What’s up? It looked like you’re having some kind of problem with the app?”

  She inhaled and reminded herself to stay calm and professional. “We are, but that’s not what I wanted to see you about.”

  “What is it?”

  “I know the agreement was only that all interaction with me would go through you. But that should apply to Maureen as well. Kris has been harassing her. Telling her that her clothes are inappropriate and don’t meet company dress code. Complained about her shoes! Maureen wears those shoes because she has problems with her feet.” Despite her best efforts, Julie’s voice was rising. “And she’s taking too long at lunch. Maureen does usually take an extra ten minutes because she meets her husband. But she comes in half an hour earlier than anyone else, and, frankly, she works harder. Frank was always okay with flexible hours as long as the work got done.” She blew out a harsh breath.

  Dan frowned. “I know Kris can be difficult at times. She’s really invested in the company and in this merger. She badly wants to make it work.”

  His defense of the woman infuriated her. “Maybe so. But Kris has never liked me, and that doesn’t seem to have changed. She tried to give me a hard time about coming in late a couple of days ago and I shut her down. So now she’s getting on Maureen. It’s not supposed to happen.”

  He sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her about it. She knows she’s not supposed to interfere with your work. But I don’t have any real leverage with her, so I can’t promise anything beyond that.”

  “I get that.” Calm down. She drew in a deep breath and let it out on a long exhale. “But you need to make her understand I do have some leverage and I’ll use it if I have to. At this point I’m committed only to finishing the current app for Spieler. Anything else I do, I can sell somewhere else.” She rubbed her forehead where a headache had begun to take root. “I’ll tackle her myself if I have to, but I suspect that could get ugly. I don’t like playing these kinds of games. You should know that. It’s not who I am or the way I prefer to work. But this harassment has to stop. I can’t work this way. We can’t work this way. We’re supposed to deliver the second stage of the app tomorrow and we’re still fighting to iron out one last bug. We don’t need any more distractions.”

  “I understand, and I’ll do what I can.” He looked at her sharply. “Are you all right?”

  “Bit of a headache. I have some aspirin back at my desk. I’ll take some.”

  He nodded. “What about the bug in the app? Can I help with that? I’m not a deep-in -the-code sort like you, but sometimes a fresh perspective helps, and I’m generally pretty good with the overall flow and seeing patterns. Want to tell me what the problem is?”

  “I don’t know there’s much you can do, but I need all the help I can get. Time’s pressing on me since this is due tomorrow. Here’s what the issue is.” She went on to describe the problem in depth. He listened quietly until she finished, “…and we get random errors on other fields when we enter anything between fifty and five hundred in the maximum amount box.”

  He thought about it, then said, “Can you show me?”

  “Sure.” They walked back to her cubicle. As they went she caught a whiff of his fragrance, a fresh, piney scent so painfully familiar it froze her for a moment. That aroma brought a flash of memory with it.

  The day they went to the Metropolitan Museum to see a special collection of early Greek artifacts, they splurged on a fabulous dinner at a tiny, exquisite restaurant just off Fifth Avenue afterward, and held hands as they walked together from the subway station to her apartment later. He kissed her for the first time that evening, in the hallway. She melted in his arms, caught up in the feel of him, the strength and gentleness of his embrace, the warmth of his lips on hers, and that pine scent.

  It had been the best day of her life.

  He stopped to go around a bend in the maze of cubicles and turned to her. “Sure you’re okay?”

  She shook herself out of it. “Fine. Just got lost in my t
houghts for a moment.” Lost in a memory so vivid and immediate it hurt. Pulling herself out took an effort, but she had to let it go, concentrate on the here and now.

  She hated these flashbacks, hated him for putting her in his company again, and for all the painful reminders. Maybe she should just let Kris drive her away. But, no. Not letting the woman win.

  Maureen was giving the app interface another test try when they got to the cubicle. She put in a number, then made a few other entries, and swore under her breath when an error box popped up. “Thought I had it, but no such luck.”

  She turned and saw Dan Foster watching. “Hi. Sorry about the language. I’m guessing Julie told you about this stubborn problem we’re having.”

  “She did. I haven’t done any coding for years, but I did once and I get how it works. I offered to see if bringing a fresh set of eyes would help.”

  “Not a bad idea.” Maureen tapped her pen against the page where she recorded what she’d tried and the results. “Here’s what’s happening.” She restarted the interface and entered information until an error box popped up again. “We’ve narrowed it down to entering a range of numbers from 50 to 500 in the maximum amount box as causing the error. We just don’t know why. It isn’t always the same error if I enter different data in the other fields.”

  He leaned over to see the screen. “Can you show me a couple of examples?”

  “Sure. I’ll start with one that works.” Maureen entered data, her fingers flying on the keyboard as she filled in the blanks with sample data from her pad. When she pressed the “Submit” button, the page came back with the “Successful” message.

  “And now one that doesn’t work.” She cleared the screen, brought up an empty form and started typing again. This time she put 400 on the maximum amount field, went on, and two fields later an error message popped up.

  “And a different one.” She typed information in again. This time it went all the way through, but when she pressed the “Submit” button, a box popped up saying the data couldn’t be processed, with a long string of numbers.