by Steve Jordan
“It is an inside job!” Gail breathed, and her eyes narrowed.
“Well… it might not be,” I told her. “The data I received told me something Lou neglected to mention when I spoke to her. The office has a wi-fi connection.”
“What?”
I nodded sickly, knowing how big a bone this might throw into my plans. “It looks like it’s a small server attached to a common printer in the office. It lets anyone print to the printer at the office, including someone who might come in with a personal computer, without having to run a bunch of wires around for everyone. The problem is,” I continued, “the same connection allows anyone who knows the right passwords to access the main server, and any computers connected to it and running, from anywhere within range of the wifi signal.”
“Don’t wifi signals broadcast out to, like, fifty feet or more?” Gail asked.
“Yup.”
Gail’s eyes went wide. “But that means—”
“It means the perp could be sitting in the office, or outside in the parking lot,” I stated. “And if we don’t get there before they’re done, we may never know who it was!”
“We can’t possibly get there in time!” Gail said, just as she was swinging us onto the highway and flooring the Eclipse.
“Hopefully,” I said, “I can slow them up…” Lou had given me enough information about their office’s servers to allow me to log in and mess around. I was trying to do that now. Basically, I just started a few routines that would slow the operations of any computer connected to the server to a crawl, and even force up some error messages. Hopefully the perp would roll their eyes a bit at the delay, and maybe even restart their connection in hopes of clearing it, but not cut and run before they were done. Gail, guessing at what I was doing, shut up and let me work, and we passed the next few minutes in silence. It was thankfully after rush hour, and already starting to get dark, so hopefully Gail’s white streak would manage to avoid any police engagements.
At about the time I guessed we’d be running out of time, Gail swung us off of the highway, and we ploughed down the industrial park roads to get to Coyote Chow. As we came around the corner that finally put the building in sight, we could see a car bouncing out of the parking lot and into the street ahead.
“We caught ‘em!” Gail cried.
“Don’t lose ‘em!” I cried back.
8: Chase
We were pretty far back behind the other car, but I could tell it was something low and speedy.
“Is that a Vette?” Gail wondered aloud. “If that’s a Vette, and they know how to drive it, we’ll never keep up!”
“Get close enough to see the license plate!” I shouted, rummaging through my gear bag. I pulled out two things: A digital camera; and a makeshift-style zoom lens I bought online. The lens strapped over the camera, some home fabricator’s idea of a telephoto lens for any camera. It was a kludgy setup, but it more-or-less worked. Trying to hold the camera still, I trained it on the car ahead. It was a Vette, I noticed right off… and I could see the license plate clearly. I took three shots, to compensate for blur, then did a quick check on the monitor. One shot was blurred, but the other two were readable. “Got it!” I confirmed. Now, even if we lost it, we could still trace the license plate.
“We’re gaining,” Gail said. I guess ed whoever was behind the wheel wasn’t that good a driver. Gail continued to close the distance, and when we were just two blocks away from the highway exit, Gail planted her foot, and the Eclipse shot forward. She slalomed the car aside the Vette, effectively putting us between the Vette and the exit. I looked hard to see the driver, but the windows were blacked out… no wonder police hate those things.
Blocked from the highway exit, the Vette abruptly swerved away and back into the industrial park. Gail swung her car around to avoid losing them, and I was thrown against the seatbelts. Now I wished there was some police around!
Now the Vette seemed to be doing much better against us… possibly the driver hadn’t realized before that we were chasing them, until Gail blocked them at the exit. An Eclipse has some peppy power, it’s true, but it’s no Corvette. However, the industrial park roads were short, blind corners were everywhere, and it made it pretty much suicidal to be running around like a bat out of hell around here. This allowed Gail to keep up, by the skin of her teeth.
“Got your phone?” I demanded. “Does it have Lou’s number?”
“In my purse,” Gail replied, and I grabbed at the bag and hustled the phone out. After a few seconds in the address book, I said, “I don’t see—”
“It’s ‘Wiley’,” Gail said.
“Right.” I found it, and dialed.
“Gail! Wassup, Wonder Woman?”
Wonder Woman? “Lou, it’s me, Mike! Does—” Wonder Woman!? “— Uh, does one of your employees drive a Vette?”
“Mike? Oh! Uh, yeah… Barry does,” Lou replied, obviously taking a few seconds to shift gears away from… Wonder Woman?!?!!! “Why, what’s going on?”
“Well, he’s leading us on a merry chase from your office, after he downloaded the Trojan Horse,” I said to her.
“Barry? That’s crazy,” Lou said. “He couldn’t possibly… I know he doesn’t know enough to hack our system!”
“He doesn’t need to,” I pointed out. “He has access through your office-wide servers… and I’ll bet, as your receptionist, he probably knows some of your admin passwords too, doesn’t he?”
“Well… yeah… but—”
“No ‘buts’,” I said as Gail threw us around a sharp corner, “he’s rabbitting right now!”
“Dammit,” Lou muttered. I think she was finally getting what was going on. But her next words left me unsure of that: “I’m gonna kill Fern!”
“Kill… Fern? What?”
“Fern recommended him for the job, after she was promoted from it,” Lou said. “And after I did her a favor… she said he was reliable!”
“Waitaminit! Fern is… real? You mean Phil wasn’t just kidding when he said—”
“Of course Fern’s real, though sometimes I’d rather have a plant,” Lou said. “You passed her in the office… the mousy girl with glasses.” I did remember a girl with glasses, now that she mentioned it. The girl that looked noticeably plainer and mousier than the rest of the guys and girls in that place. Who looked out of place in the midst of all those beautiful people. The kind of girl you never notice—
Oh, no. Could it be that simple?
I looked ahead at the Vette, straining to see through the windows, but it was useless. “Can you catch up to him?”
Gail didn’t bother to look at me. “Maybe.”
“Try to run him off the road!” I snapped. Gail obligingly found a convenient moment to take a shortcut through a parking lot, as the Vette took a right turn, and she floored it. For a second, I thought she was going to broadside the Vette… but at the last second it swerved left, bounced up the curb violently, and came to a stop on the sidewalk. It happened so quick, it made me wonder whether Gail could have done that at any time, instead of driving behind him like a maniac for so long.
When the Eclipse came to a stop, I threw the door open and ran around to the driver’s side of the Vette. The door was unlocked, and I yanked it open. Barry sat there in the driver’s seat, which had apparently been modified somewhat to accommodate his small stature.
He glared back at me, with a strange expression in his eye. “If you’ve done any damage to this car, you will never be through paying for it, buddy.”
I ignored Barry’s bluster, and looked around inside the car. It was a small enough cockpit to verify that there were no other occupants, and no computer in there. Barry watched me as I peered inside, and when I brought my eyes back to him, he sat still so as not to give anything away.
“Nice diversion,” I muttered. “Hope she was worth it.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Barry stated calmly. “I was the one hacking into the servers.”
“To get what?”
“A new file encryption… system…”
I smiled. “Almost convincing. Doesn’t matter though. You and Fern are boned.” Barry tried not to react, but I could see by his eyes that he didn’t want that. He started to close the door, but I reacted by grabbing his arm. “Going somewhere?”
9: Nailed
I would’ve loved to see Fern’s face as the Corvette came back for her. Of course, I knew now that it was always Barry’s plan to draw any pursuers away from Fern, so she could slip away. But she would have waited for a time, just to make sure he didn’t lose his tail and circle back for her. She would’ve waited in the shadows, holding tightly onto the laptop that held the incriminating files she’d downloaded. A familiar-sounding car engine would have made itself heard in the distance, getting closer, and her heart would have leapt in anticipation.
Hopefully, she actually had feelings for Barry… I’d hate to think that the office ugly duckling was just taking advantage of the office pipsqueak , the next one down on the totem-pole. Hopefully, she planned to give him a cut of her ill-gotten gains, and not just cut him loose once she scored.
So, she would’ve waited until she saw the Vette come around the corner, and drive slowly into the parking lot, staying close to the shadows. She would’ve stepped tentatively out of the dark corner where she had been hiding, and then, once she confirmed that there were no other cars coming, would’ve come around the car, opened the passenger-side door, and climbed in triumphantly.
Then she would’ve seen me sitting there in the driver’s seat instead of Barry, looking back smugly at her, and realize she was boned.
In fact, there was only one difference between what I imagined, and what actually happened: Barry’s driver’s seat and controls were so modified for his size that I couldn’t get into a comfortable position. In fact, it was all I could do to drive the damned thing. And as I sat there, looking at Fern’s shocked expression, I knew the expression on my face communicated anything but smugness.
“Is there actually a way to lower this seat further?” I asked her outright. “Or is it pretty much stuck this way?”
Fern responded by jumping back out of the car. But by then, of course, Gail was already pulling up into the parking lot, followed by another two vehicles, one of them being a police car. The other car was a new-model Mustang that, upon stopping, immediately engorged Lou and Phil. As I unfolded and practically tumbled headlong out of the Vette, Lou rushed over as the policeman stepped up and turned Fern to face the side of the vehicle, hands on the trunk.
“I can’t believe you, Fern,” Lou snapped as she approached. “Like you didn’t have a great job just working for me!”
“Oh, yeah, great job,” Fern shot back. “Getting everything through your pity! You only gave me the promotion to satisfy a contractor, then gave me nothing but crap that no one else would do—and you all laughed like it was funny! I didn’t deserve how you-all treated me!…” What followed was a rapid-fire stream of epithet -filled monologues from both women that I wouldn’t print on toilet paper, much less repeat here. I kept expecting her to say something about how she would’ve gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those meddling kids…
But it was funny, I noted as the two women stood there chewing each other out: Fern was not really ugly. Or, for that matter, particularly mousy. In fact, she was pretty, and shapely, and I’d bet that if she took those tortoise-shells off, it would be like a Clark Kent-to-Superman moment. (Well, maybe a Diana Prince to Wonder Woman moment.) I ( Wonder Woman?) … uh, I couldn’t imagine this woman feeling inadequate, even in an office full of TV supermodel-types. Sure, maybe next to Lou Chow, she didn’t look drop-dead exotic the way some Asian women tend to look to Europeans. But mousy? No way.
A shame such a not-mousy girl was about to be boned.
Lou, for her part, gave Fern a nasty look—one of those “I gave you everything, how could you betray me?” looks—before she turned to me. “Did you get all the evidence you needed?”
I indicated the laptop in the Vette, the one she had had when she got in. “My Trojan Horse data will match that laptop there. I’d say you’ve got her dead to rights.”
Lou looked over to the police car, at Barry who was already in custody in the back seat. “I didn’t even know the two of them were a thing,” she said. “They certainly kept it to themselves.”
“Did they?” I found myself asking. “Or did you guys just not notice them?”
Lou looked at me hard, but she didn’t snap off an answer. I suspected it was because she wasn’t positive of the answer herself, and was rethinking her worldview a bit. After a few seconds, she came up to me and said, “You have my thanks, Mike. Send me a bill, and don’t be modest. And you and Gail are welcome at my place anytime.”
“Thank you,” I said graciously, as the other officer finally got out of the car, and approached Lou to ask some questions. As Lou and Phil went off with the policem an, and the other cop was herding Fern into the cruiser, I noticed Gail sidling up beside me.
“Well, that was a nice job,” she said smugly. “You have my thanks too, for helping out my friend.”
“Don’t mention it, Wonder Woman,” I replied.
Gail’s head snapped around fast enough to throw her hair every which way, and she looked at me with piercing eyes. A few seconds later, it occurred to her where I had heard the name, and her eyes softened noticeably. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that name in public,” she said quietly. “Old nicknames are kind of embarrassing to me.”
I nodded. “You have any newer ones I should be aware of?”
Gail’s eyes narrowed again, just a tiny bit. “Not today,” she said. “But for now, I think a reward is in order. I was originally coming over to take you to dinner.”
“Really? Where at?”
“Kansas City Bar-be-que,” she said. “It’s famous around here, because they filmed scenes of Top Gun on the premises.”
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“Don’t know Kansas City Bar-be-que?”
“No… never heard of that Top Gun thing. What was it, a TV show?”
“Hmm… your dinner prospects are getting smaller and smaller!”
“Then maybe we should settle on dessert,” I said. “I know some things we could nibble on back at your place.”
“I plan to do more than nibble.”
“You drive.”
10: Tossing the Trojans
Gail’s dropping me off at Pete’s apartment the next morning felt just a bit like a drive-by dump, thanks to some meeting she said she couldn’t be late for. We pulled up to the building, and I got out from the street. Gail had leaned over so I could see her from the street, and said, “Bye, lover!” before she peeled off for business parts unknown.
I reflected on our now-typical wild night last night, as I made my way inside. Three times, I had tried to broach the Wonder Woman thing, and each time, Gail had started to… do things… that promptly made me forget I was asking anything. After awhile, I came to the full understanding that the subject was off-limits, and gave up on it in order to enjoy the rest of the night. But I had gotten a strange impression, by about the fourth orgasm of the evening: I had the distinct feeling that Gail was holding back… something. Besides old nicknames, I mean. Although, frankly, it was hard for me to imagine what this woman could possibly not be giving me.
At any rate, we had gone at it until we’d collapsed and passed out, on opposite ends of the bathroom this time (I got the shower, while she ended up on the rug… gotta plan that better next time), and when I woke up, she was already washing up at the sink. As soon as she saw I was awake, she hustled me at my clothing, so she could drop me off on the way. I could tell she was in full businesswoman mode now, so I threw my stuff on, and followed her out when she was ready.
“One of these days,” I’d said on the way, “maybe I’ll visit your office.”
“I don’t think so, Romeo,” Gail had
said. “It would give them the wrong impression.”
“Letting them think you have a boyfriend is giving them the wrong impression?”
“They don’t think I have a social life,” she’d replied. “Just work.”
I’d thought back on all the times she seemed to be able to get out of work during the day, to hang out with me or help some friend of hers. “How do you convince them of that?”
“By being very careful,” she’d said. “And I can’t afford for that to change right now. So for the time being, I’m afraid you won’t be coming to any office picnics.”
“Does your office actually have picnics?”
“No.”
I was still thinking about that, when the elevator door opened, and I stepped out on our floor. I entered Pete’s place, to find him out on the balcony… like he’d never moved since I’d left. No, strike that: The drink was a different color. So he’d moved at least once.
Pete twisted about when I came in. “Hey, Mike! How did everything go?”
“We pulled it off,” I replied, walking up to the balcony and leaning against the open glass door. “Inside job. The receptionist and the ex-receptionist were in on it together.”
“Kinky,” Pete smiled.
“Weird,” I said. “Apparently the ex-receptionist had a severe inferiority complex, exacerbated I guess by working with all those hardbodies in there. But if you get a good look at her, she’s got no reason to have a complex at all. And I hate to think that’s what made her go for the height-challenged guy…”
“Overcompensation, huh?” Pete nodded, and stared somberly into his drink. “Yeah, that can be hard to handle.”
“Yeah. Oh, by the way: Does Gail go by any nicknames?”
“Well,” Pete mused, “I’ve been using ‘B itch who ruined my life,’ but it doesn’t seem to stick.”
“Heh.” I started for the shower—after last night, I was a bit ripe—but before I left the balcony, I paused a moment. “You know, that Coyote Chow setup didn’t look bad. Lou seemed to like my work… she as much as told me to write my own check for this job. Maybe I should see if they need a full-time IT expert.”
