by Marie Astor
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After showing a trader with the attention span of a three-year-old how to reset his email password for the umpteenth time, Dennis Walker settled behind his desk. A smile was playing on his lips. It seemed that circumstance had a way of bringing him and Janet Maple together. He found his encounters with Janet most entertaining, but now Dennis realized that Janet Maple could be a lot more than a flirtation. While Dennis was certain that he could gain access to Bostoff’s customer files, navigating Bostoff’s systems on his own was a lot like trying to find his way in the dark. Turning on the light would make things so much easier, and Janet Maple could be the light switch he needed. Dennis had spotted a very important detail while helping Janet to gather folders off the floor: one of the customer files was entitled Emperial.
The Treasury Investigations unit had been trying to get its hands on the Emperial hedge fund for a long time. While Bostoff Securities had enough violations to build a solid case, Bostoff’s clients were the main reason why Dennis had jumped on the assignment. For the past two years, the Treasury Investigations division had been tracking several notorious hedge funds that were suspected in a number of infractions, including tax evasion and insider trading. Getting access to the hedge funds had proven to be next to impossible: all attempts at turning former or current employees into informants had failed, and getting Treasury investigators inside as undercover employees had proved impossible as well. Bostoff Securities had appeared on the radar because of its client base, which included Emperial and other shady hedge funds. With Janet’s help, Dennis could bring the Bostoff investigation to closure much more quickly. His boss’s recognition aside, the added bonus of this achievement would be retirement of Dean Snider’s persona. For as much as Dennis loved his job, he was getting tired of wearing ill-fitted clothes and being snapped fingers at as though he were a maid.
Now that Dennis had a valid reason to get close to Janet, he had to devise his plan, which would not be too difficult given the fact that Janet and he were located on the same floor. There were a number of places where they could run into each other – the kitchen, the employee cafeteria, or the copy room. Of course, Dennis would have to tread lightly lest he risk compromising his cover. He would become Janet’s office buddy, and gradually, he would become her confidant. For any other man, these plans might have sounded overly ambitious, but not for Dennis Walker. He had tested his powers of persuasion on many occasions. Granted, the persona of Dean Snider was not the most advantageous one when it came to the art of female seduction, but Dennis was not planning on seducing Janet Maple – at least not while he was on the assignment. Instead, he planned to become her friend, and Dean Snider was just the sort of man women tended to trust.
Chapter 10