2 Executive Retention

by Maria E. Schneider

  The door to the hallway, and freedom, clanged shut behind me.

  Chapter 10

  Frantic to escape, I stomped down hard with my left foot, but missed. "Mhnung!" A hand pushed the back of my head into a muscled chest to keep my scream muffled.

  "Shhh," someone breathed in my ear. "I need your help."

  As calming phrases go, it wasn't a bad one. I'd have felt better if whoever had me let me put my feet down, but after I tried stomping, he must have decided it was too dangerous. I settled for twisting my head so that my face wasn't stuffed into his t-shirt.

  His hand let up enough for me to raise my face.

  Mark was smarter than his brother Steve about some things. I only had to tackle Mark once before he learned about my impulsive no-flight-always-fight stupidity. After seeing me panic once, he knew it was better to control any reaction with brute force if necessary. "Mark!"

  He eased my feet back onto the floor. I glared at him, but he was busy listening and looking around to make sure the stairwell was empty. Finally certain no one else was around, he grinned down at me, his teeth flashing white. "You're cute when you're mad," he whispered.

  "Leggo!" I muttered back, threatening with the one word to get loud. "What're you doing here?" I knew Steve had attached himself to the board of directors similar to the way he had at Strandfrost. I hadn't known what part Mark might be playing in the whole scheme.

  Mark smiled again, stepping back enough that I could see his white t-shirt and dark jeans more clearly. "I work here. Only there was a little mishap in the lab just now. I think I knocked the computer system down."

  "So?" I should probably thank him since it appeared he was the reason I was getting to leave before nine o'clock.

  "Won't it be obvious to someone when they come in that I was tampering?"

  I narrowed my eyes at him. He hadn't let me go completely. His hands were resting on my arms, holding me gently in place.

  I finally answered. "Yeah. But the IT guy will be on call so he'll get paged and come in and fix it." I certainly didn't want to spend a lot of time making it work again. For one, I didn't get paid that kind of money and for two, once I knew it was back up, someone might think I should finish my report.

  Mark swiveled me towards the stairs leading down. I dug my feet in. He sighed. "I haven't exactly started working here on the payroll," he clarified. "I would rather the IT guy not find out that I tripped the power in the locked room with all the company computers. I switched the power back on, but it doesn't seem to have brought the computers up properly."

  I swung around and gaped at him. "You. Don't…work here yet?" Was I about to be fired for consorting with a burglar?

  He flashed his beautiful smile again. "You could always tell them you did it."

  I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling I did not want to get caught inside this building with Mark. Something told me that he could lie himself out of the Queen of England's jewelry room, and I would be the one left looking guilty. With as much dignity as I could muster, I marched down the stairs.

  We both checked the hallway before exiting the stairwell.

  At the lab door, I badged us inside. He stopped, removed the cover from the back of the badge reader and disconnected a wire, disabling it. The door wouldn't open from the outside with the reader disconnected, not without a key. I closed my eyes. I did not want to witness this.

  At the very back of the lab there was a series of locked doors. I hadn't asked what was back there, but apparently it was where Acetel had its own servers for company business.

  Someone had moved a lab bench near the locked door. The ceiling tile above the door was missing. The open cavity contained a large crawl space with air ducts, cables, and support beams.

  "Let me guess," I said dryly. "You didn't have a key."

  He shrugged. "How much time do we have? No one can get past the badge reader at the moment, but there are ways around that, and I would rather no one find it out of commission if we can help it."

  It was pretty obvious that he knew all about getting around readers and locks. I looked at my watch. It was almost seven-thirty, too early for anyone to be in bed. I had no idea where the IT guy lived or what his habits were. Mr. IT would know that by seven or eight o'clock no one critical was likely to be accessing the network so he wouldn't have to hurry. If he was eating dinner, we probably had another hour. If he wasn't, then it depended on how far away he lived.

  Mark got tired of waiting for my answer. He put his hands around my waist and boosted me onto the bench. I grabbed his head even though he was plenty strong enough to keep me steady without my help. "Just take hold of that bar and swing over," he instructed. "Or do you need another boost up?" He had one leg up on the bench and was getting closer by the second.

  I grabbed the rail. He put one hand on my butt and the other on my leg and very helpfully kept me steady and going in the right direction. He didn't abandon me either. His hand strayed down my thigh and stayed there until the last possible moment. "Stop that!" I hissed back at him. I was breathing hard. The jump up hadn't really taken all that much energy.

  He laughed in a whisper. Instead of sounding diabolical, it was darkly sexy as if he knew I was struggling to keep my voice even. I crawled away fast, and lowered myself into the room using one of the computer racks to climb down. There were three separate rows of computer cabinets housing various storage and networking equipment. Company equipment was always kept separate from the lab equipment. Otherwise, someone might accidentally destroy real data by using the wrong piece of equipment.

  Mark had already unlocked the doors to the server cabinets. Almost all computer racks by a single vendor used the same key--which was given to all customers--so requiring a key at all was pretty silly.

  I figured out the server problem almost immediately. Whatever he had been doing with the electricity had tripped the surge protectors and shut down each cabinet. When he restored power, the trips didn't reset. Even if he had reset them manually, the external storage had to be powered up first, then the switches and last the servers. I had to hunt for the various switches to manually turn off certain equipment until I wanted it powered on.

  "Can you fix it?" he asked.

  "Almost through." A thought occurred to me. "I can't necessarily get the servers back up and communicating. I don't have the password. But I can make it less obvious that you were here." I glanced up at the ceiling tile.

  He must have agreed about the other, more obvious signs of tampering, because he left me alone to finish my work while he went and erased signs of our entry. I was guessing the door wasn't locked on this side because he went out that way and left it propped open so that he could get back in easily.

  I was just about done when he appeared at my side like a ghost with a big dog chasing him. "Eek!" He put a hand over my mouth and gently dragged me backwards. Automatically I struggled, nearly capsizing us both as he tried to shove me behind the last row of racks.

  "Sedona, for God's sake." He grabbed me around the waist and squeezed all the air out of me. I finally heard the key in the outer door and stopped wiggling. That, and his hands were starting to grab at things better left alone.

  We were both breathing hard, but the machines made a lot of noise. It was very warm wedged behind the last row of cabinets. The disk drives generated an incredible amount of heat.

  If the IT guy came back here, I was hoping Mark had a plan other than the current one, which appeared to be smashing me through the wall.

  He must have been worrying about the same thing. In order to talk without being heard, he tucked his head next to mine. He skimmed my jaw, and I could feel him breathing against my neck and ear just before he whispered, "Will he come back here?"

  Hot as it was, I got goose bumps all up and down my arms.

  I shook my head back and forth and eased up on my tiptoes to answer him. The only way I could keep my balance was to brace my hands against his white t-shirt and hold on. "Shouldn't. Already reset."r />
  He stayed in that position, holding me against the wall with his body, my hands over his heart.

  I could hear cursing as someone rolled the chair that was in front of the main rack of servers. The IT guy had to be wondering what caused the machines to all lose power and then come back on. Just as I had done seconds ago, the guy went around checking the power at the front of the other cabinets. I knew they were fine. I was hoping he wouldn't have to come around to the back. I panicked for a minute when I couldn't remember if all the power indicators were in the front of the cabinets or if some were in the back.

  With relief, I heard the chair again and then some distant typing.

  It was really very, very warm in the back with all the hot air blowing and no room for daylight between Mark and myself. I was starting to have trouble breathing. He tilted my head sideways and practically nibbled on my ear in order to ask, "Doing okay?"

  The whisper of touch had the effect of an electrical current. My toes tingled. So did my fingers. I told myself it was just poor circulation due to lack of oxygen. I breathed out some kind of unintelligible answer to his question. I would have nodded, but I didn't dare move.

  The typing went on for almost twenty minutes. I was about to pass out when I felt more than heard the door open and close. Mark held up a hand and cocked his ear towards the door. "Will he come back?"

  I shrugged and started to wiggle. "Who cares! I'm gonna pass out in a second if I don't get some air."

  He stared down at my futile attempts to move him. He squeezed my waist. "Keep wiggling like that and you won't have any need for air," he muttered, his lips bending dangerously near mine.

  I stilled instantly, but he didn't move away. He held me frozen in his grip, staring down at me intently. His hand moved from my waist to my face, and he caressed my bottom lip with his thumb. It was the first time I realized I was panting. "It's probably a good thing I haven't really cleared you with Steve yet."

  I had no idea what he was talking about. I was breathing hard enough, and we were close enough that he could feel my breasts struggling to expand with each breath against his chest.

  "Man, are you ever going to be a problem," he swore.

  Without another word, he shoved himself away and disappeared around the row of machines. Without his hold, I almost fell flat. I was dizzy enough that I considered crawling, but figured I had made enough of a fool of myself.

  By the time I reached the front of the room, he had the door open and was checking the lab. "Hurry! You can be found in the lab. You belong here."

  He grabbed my arm when I was close enough and pushed me through. I plopped down on the nearest chair.

  I rested there, trying to regain my breath and sanity. With no warning, the IT guy came back around a row of machines. I shrieked.

  The poor guy jumped high enough that he could have actually dislocated the ceiling tiles again. "Aggh!" he yelled right back at me.

  "Eeee!" I shouted a second time.

  He stumbled back a few steps. Wildly I looked around for Mark, but he had vanished as if he had never been there. "What…what are you doing here?" I asked stupidly.

  "What are you doing here?" Maybe I had been wrong about the guy not being in bed this early, because unless he always walked around with his longish brown hair standing on end and dressed haphazardly, he had to have been sleeping. His jeans came complete with holes, and he wore a large jacket over a very wrinkled flannel shirt.

  "Working," I guessed after a significant delay.

  "Oh." He blinked. "Me too. Is the server back up?"

  I shrugged. "It was down a bit ago."

  "I know. That's why I'm here."

  I stood up. He shoved his hands in his pockets, put his head down and went for the security door housing the company servers. If Mark had gone back in, I let him get caught. I was getting out while I could still walk.

  Chapter 11

  When I was in high school, my parents tried once and only once to pick my friends. I did not like the prissy, straight-A, always volunteering girl they chose for me. I was told to like her anyway, right up until she was arrested for "cruising" up and down Main Street with an open container in the car. She was sixteen.

  This job Huntington had picked for me was a lot like being told how to choose friends. Normally, nothing in this world short of food rationing, gas rationing and near starvation would convince me to eat in a company cafeteria. It wasn't just that I liked good food, it was that no one with a life actually sat in a dreary cafeteria eating leftover pizza cured and mummified under a heat lamp.

  There is only one reason to get food in the cafeteria and that is because you have to work during lunch. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no good reason to eat the lunch in the dining area. Like being seen in a psychiatrist's office, you have to make up an excuse for being there.

  But Huntington had this bizarre idea that I had to make friends in as short a time as possible and that meant trolling various parts of the building, including the cafeteria.

  I wandered through the line, inspecting each selection. "I'm going to starve on this job." Eyes watched me, I could feel them. I turned around.

  It was my IT buddy from the night before. He tossed an orange one-handed into the air while staring in my direction. The same ragged jeans tried not to fall off his skinny frame. They were topped with a different shirt, but the same denim jacket. As soon as he noticed me notice, he put his head down and got in the checkout line. I knew he wanted to look back, so I stared hard at the back of his head.

  Following his lead, I grabbed an orange and a greenish banana. Forget Huntington's ideas. If I had to stay in for lunch, I was going to sneak in takeout. Getting in line so quickly put me right behind the IT guy.

  When it was his turn at the register, he turned enough to watch me through his long, dark bangs. His eyes were mostly hidden, but they flicked in my direction more than once. He was making me nervous.

  "I see you got the server back up last night," I said.

  He jumped, almost as high as when I had startled him in the lab. "Uh, yeah." He scrabbled away and then stopped, just as I was finished paying a ridiculous three dollars for two pieces of fruit.

  "If I bring back the peelings, can I get a partial refund?" I complained.

  "No, ma'am," the checkout woman replied, giving me my two bucks worth of change.

  "For three bucks, maybe I'd better eat the peelings."

  I think IT smiled behind the hair. "Uh, you got a second? I wanted to ask you a question."

  I stopped, holding my fruit rather awkwardly. "I guess so. But do you mind if we go by the lab? I gotta make a phone call and see if I can get some Chinese ordered in here."

  He shifted his feet awkwardly. "Uh, you're not supposed to do that."

  There went my meek, get along with everyone act. But I was hungry. Huntington said I had to be nice and not get fired, but he didn't say I had to starve! "I'll meet them in the parking lot if I have to." I marched towards the lab, wondering what IT guy could possibly want. Had he seen Mark? Did he think I had shut off his stupid machines? I knew Mark was going to leave me holding the bag--or in this case the power cord.

  Getting madder by the second, I stomped to my area of the lab and pulled up the phone number for Happy Family Chinese off the internet. All the while, IT stood in the background, watching and peeling his orange.

  I ordered enough stuff from Happy Family that they recognized my voice. "No, I work at Acetel now." I gave them the address and said, "I'll meet Deke in the parking lot." Their eighteen-year old son did all the deliveries. I glanced back at orange-peeler and noted again how skinny he was. "You want something?"

  He kind of shrugged. "Uh…"

  Social skills of a computer nerd. "Do you like chicken, beef, or shrimp?"

  "Yeah."

  "Throw in a combination fried rice," I said into the telephone. "Okay. Twenty minutes. Front door. I'll be there."

  I hung up. "The rice is seven bucks. I throw
in a three dollar tip, but I'm already tipping them so you could get by with the seven."

  He shrugged again. "Ok." He was looking around now, sort of swinging his head back and forth, trying to see around his hair. For some reason he didn't just reach up and push it away from his eyes.

  It took me a minute to comprehend his problem. "Oh, sticky hands." I handed him a tissue from my box.

  He wiped them off, pushed his hair back and walked away without another word.

  The guy reminded me of Turbo, only he was younger. He moved in fits and starts, didn't say much and went about his business in a manner that a lot of people might find strange. Most people wouldn't walk away in the middle of a conversation while waiting on Chinese with no explanation whatsoever. Because I was used to dealing with Turbo, I understood that this guy had processed the likely timing of events and re-prioritized his actions. Like Turbo, he had seen no need to explain himself.

  I shrugged and peeled the banana. I was too hungry to wait for the Chinese.

  When the IT guy came back he handed me a ten. I reached in my pocket and gave him the two bucks I had just gotten from the cafeteria.

  "Keep the whole thing for the tip," he said generously. "Is this place any good?" He noticed me devouring my banana like a starving elephant.

  "Uh-huh." I pulled a tissue free and wiped my hands. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

  Instead of answering my question, he asked, "Want to walk outside and wait?"

  He probably didn't want to ask me questions where the other lab technicians could overhear. Rats. I had been hoping he wasn't going to pin me on the previous night, but what else could it be?

  It was cold out, so I grabbed my jacket, made sure I had a twenty to pay Deke, and started walking and thinking. IT trailed along behind me like a shadow, hugging the wall and incorrectly thinking he could somehow manage to look inconspicuous.

  He certainly wasn't invisible, skinny though he was. In his hoodlum attire and ragged hair, he was not ever likely to go unnoticed. His large tennis shoes were quiet on the carpeted floor, but one of them was untied and every once in a while the lace would hit the wall with an audible snap.