The Passionate Mistake

by Amelia Hart

  The Passionate Mistake

  Amelia Hart

  Kite Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organisations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Kite Publishing

  86 Kiteroa Street

  Karapiro, Cambridge

  Waipa 3494

  New Zealand

  Copyright © 2013 by Rebecca Leys

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Kite Publishing.

  First Paperback printing: June 2013

  First Edition

  For Thomas Leys,

  A loving family man

  Chapter One

  It was a good place to work. She hadn’t expected that. Somehow it made it more difficult.

  This morning Front Desk Rachel – she of the manic smiles, all bubbling over with fizzling energy – waved Cathy in and gave her a stack of folders to distribute. The woman was an endless font of chores and errands.

  “The names are on the front. You know where everyone sits by now, don’t you?”

  “More or less.” She’d carefully memorized the physical layout of the place the first two days she was there, making a map and reproducing it a couple of times at home until she was certain. But those wretched programmers switched workstations like it was musical chairs. One couldn’t count on anything.

  “I’m sure you’ll find them all,” said Rachel, grinning like it was some delightful game.

  Cathy gave her a half-heartedly smile that became pinched lips as she turned away.

  These menial tasks were driving her insane. All she wanted was privacy so she could get to work for real. Instead she had to put her head down and get on with jobs any idiot could do.

  She hitched her baggy jeans up around her waist and turned left towards the developers’ area. It looked like an overgrown adventure playground rather than somewhere actual grownups went to work.

  Grant was closest to the door, his workstation an odd-shaped yellow swirl with a good vantage point into the atrium. He was a ‘people person’, always with time to waste on idle chit chat. If she was his boss she’d crack the whip right over his head.

  He saw her coming – that head up as usual rather than focusing on his work. Slacker. He smiled in welcome and held out his hand for his neon yellow folder, took it and looked at it contemplatively.

  “So old-fashioned,” he commented as she was turning away. She paused for a second, letting him finish without making eye contact; a bare minimum of manners. “Folders I mean. We could do this all electronically. Then you wouldn’t have to hand the things out every week.” His tone was sympathetic, inviting her to agree with him.

  “And I’d be out of a job.” From the corner of her eye she saw his face slacken in faint dismay.

  “Sorry, I . . .” he began, but she was gone, out of his work area and onto the next. It was a treehouse, a cute little square thing perched in the fork of a gigantic slab of wood; or pseudo wood. How much must it cost to create these bizarre edifices? She still couldn’t get over the waste of them, the pointless expense. It was so unnecessary to indulge the programmers as if they were children.

  The entrance was three steps up from the floor. More like a small ladder than steps. She didn’t bother climbing, just left Alex’s lilac folder in his doorway. That was good enough. Let him scoot his chair over to get it.

  She wasn’t a very good go-fer. Or more accurately, she wasn’t a willing one. Anyone could do this job. But those who smiled and chirped their way round the building were the quintessence of the role. She was about as chirpy as a thunderhead.

  Helen’s work area was an egg. A gigantic egg made of who knew what sort of polycarbonate polymer whatever. The entrance was at the gently rounded end, with the desk at the other end, inserted in the tip. It made Cathy shudder. Too confined, and with one’s back to whoever entered. Helen was a real stoic to put up with it.

  Or no, that wasn’t quite accurate. Helen could have chosen any of the workstations on this level, or the more conventional cubicles around the edges of the massive, open plan area on the ground floor. Helen obviously preferred a womblike atmosphere.

  There wasn’t enough space on the tiny desk for the folder so Cathy left it propped up against a gently curving wall. “Your Inspirations are back,” she said and walked off before Helen could turn.

  Outside the egg she paused for a moment. If she went through the forest to the little cottage, she’d take the least time. But for an extra minute’s climb up the side of the mountain, she could ride the slide down and come to it from the other direction.

  She huffed, scowled, looked around to see no one was in sight, then took the slide.

  It interrupted the internal sulk, the fugue of bad feeling she got from thinking about the time she was forced to waste. The slide broke that pattern. Halfway down she wanted to laugh, as her hair flew out behind her and she had the giddy feeling she had left her stomach somewhere up at the top.

  At the bottom she jumped to her feet – folders still clutched tightly to her chest – paused a moment, pulled herself together mentally and carried on, the tiniest smile curving her lips despite herself.

  That was the whole problem, of course. It was a good place to work. Too damned much fun. The whole building was tricked out to inspire, to stimulate, to motivate and encourage all the creative geniuses, techno whizzes and uber geeks.

  She wanted to play. She wanted to take her place among them and rule, queen of the keyboard. All this enforced mediocrity made her want to scream with frustration. Not to mention being so close to her goal and still so far away. Worst of all was the awful conflict of doing work so at odds with her morality. It was pulling her apart.

  “Oh hey, Cathy, isn’t it? Thanks for that,” said Ben, taking the folder she offered and putting it on his desk without looking at it. “Listen, could you run to the printing room and get me the stack of a hundred invites I’ve just printed off? It’s for the work party. Keep one for yourself and pass the rest around.”

  “You should have emailed them, and saved the paper.”

  He frowned, bewildered by her curt rudeness. “Oh, I . . . um . . . I guess I could have done that. I . . . just thought people would like a physical copy. You know. To stick to their fridge at home or whatever. So . . . will we see you there? It’s Friday night.” He tried out a tentative smile on her. She didn’t bother returning it.

  “I’m busy.”

  No point in being friendly. Friendships would only make things harder. It was the guilt, really. She hadn’t expected the guilt. Hanging out in the midst of all this positive energy just made her feel like the most evil thing in town. Winning people over would multiply her deception. So she was doing a hateful thing. Let her be hateful then.

  Okay, so it wasn’t exactly the brightest choice. But she was really struggling with this, and it was getting harder every day.

  She went and got the stack of invitations, piling them precariously on top of the folders, and carried them straight back to him, slapping them down on his desk and walking away.

  “Oh no, I said you could . . . pass them out . . .” he trailed off lamely. She ignored him as if she hadn’t heard.

  Tui’s workstation was empty but his bag hung on the hook by the massive stone slab that was the desk. It was like something out of Stonehenge. She laid a cautious hand on the seat. Still warm. He’d just gone. She checked her watch. He
’d gone for his morning coffee, regular as clockwork. He’d tried sending her for it the first three days she was here. Technically that sort of thing was her job but she’d delivered it with such a poisonous look each time he’d eventually decided to get it himself, as she’d intended.

  He’d be gone at least six minutes. She pulled the USB stick out of her bra and slid it into the port then opened one of the folders she carried – Tui’s one – and leaned over the desk as if inspecting the contents, blocking the view of anyone passing by. Her hand hovered within inches of the drive, ready to pull it out.

  No one came. There was just the whisper-quiet tapping of keys, and a conversation going on in hushed tones twenty meters away to her right.

  The little light on the USB drive stopped flashing and she whipped it back into its hiding place, closed the folder, whirled and was out of Tui’s area in two seconds, her heart thumping.

  She handed out the rest of the folders, denied herself a second turn on the slide when she passed by it again, and went back to her own more pedestrian work station, near the reception desk. Close to the door for running errands, the kitchen for fetching fodder for wunderkinds.

  There was a single package on her desk, with instructions attached on a sticky note. She read them; nothing urgent. It could wait until the mail run. Good.

  That gave her a free moment to log in under Matthew’s password and attack the secure computers using a yet-unknown exploit specific to their operating system. She knew it would be her ticket until it was recognized and fixed.

  Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “Ah . . .” she muttered a bad word under her breath, disgusted. They must have patched it themselves. Damn but these guys were cautious; and smart.

  The first level of access had only taken two hours to bypass, and half of that time was spent loitering around near Matthew’s desk recording keystrokes until she cracked his passcode. When she had conquered it – so swiftly, so easily – for a dizzying moment she thought her own genius had overcome DigiCom’s defences.

  But six searches later – each turning up only meager results – and she realized there were more layers, more information hidden behind encryption and firewalls.

  She had devised a new attack based on what she had learnt about their system from the inside but then that was blocked as well, and though she had hijacked part of a machine she thought might be within the Datacentre she couldn’t get root.

  And to think she had thought it would be easy. Two weeks wasted already.

  Or, well, not wasted. Getting to know the DigiCom internal software had been quite an education in itself. Apparent simplicity layered upon fiendish level after level of functionality and options. The thing could do everything except sit up and bark like a dog. She would be taking ideas away with her when she went.

  Which would hopefully be soon.

  She started the algorithm then sat tapping her fingernail against her teeth as she watched numbers scroll past. Her nails were growing out. She set to nibble them back to the quick. That probably meant it was time to touch up the dye on the roots of her hair, too. She mustn’t let the glint of blonde start to show through the mousy brown. That would look weird.

  When the screen flashed and changed she jumped, then fought down a grin of exultation. She wanted to whoop and fist pump. Instead she restrained herself to a smug curl of lip and pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose. They slid back down again.

  Ignoring them for the moment she eagerly scanned the new information on the page, tapped in a query and waited for a peach to fall into her hand. A minute later she realized her computer had been frozen.

  Another defense? It must be. Arrgh! She ground her teeth in frustration, holding down the button for a hard shut-down with measured restraint when she longed to rip the machine from its moorings and hurl it across the room.

  Click. Back on and ready for another try. Though to be on the safe side she should steal another password. If she had tripped a guard wire the system might now be monitoring all activity under Matthew’s name. Or if they were really quick off the mark – and sufficiently paranoid – someone might be physically watching him. Now whose passcode? She scanned the room thoughtfully, looking for a spot to be to all appearances innocently busy, while actually overlooking a keyboard.

  The building was wrapped around a massive double-level atrium, all glass and openness to bring light into the giant playground of the developers’ floor. This ground floor was also high-ceilinged to accommodate the slide, the treehouse and the other crazy workstations, greedy space-hogs that they were. Plain cubicles would have been a much more efficient design.

  The kitchen, the gym and the IT room with its glass-enclosed Datacentre – for a moment her eyes rested hungrily on that Datacenter, locked up tight as a clenched fist – ran along the back wall. Her desk was snuggled up temptingly close to this beating heart of the operation: the ranks of servers wrapped in their layers of physical security and firewalls. So close, so infinitely far; but getting closer every day.

  Jay was coming towards her, his eyebrows raised. Innocent Jay, chirrupy and well meaning, with owlishly enlarged eyes behind his glasses. His hopeful look, head on one side like a bird waiting for crumbs, drove her up the wall for no reason she could really define. But then everything was doing that right now. “Hey Cathy, come up to the meeting. We need you to take notes,” he said, managing to make it sound like a suggestion rather than a command.

  She didn’t bother to respond but she stood and he took that for the assent it grudgingly was, carrying on towards the lift and the meeting rooms that were up on the second level. Her tablet was in her satchel and she pulled it out to take with her. It would record, and later she could transcribe what was said. The sound pick-up was fairly good.

  If big companies like this were all about true efficiency, she wouldn’t have to be there at all. She could set up her tablet to record then leave the meeting and come back and collect it later. But it wasn’t like that. No one wanted to see employees working smarter, not harder; especially go-fers, who weren’t supposed to be smart; to reason through their workload and design systems to save time. Go-fers weren’t supposed to think at all. Others would mark her as arrogant if she scraped through the bare minimum in a group setting. And in a group setting they might whisper about her to each other. The whole point was to generate no notice. Just to blend in.

  Of course this would allow her the chance to steal another password with almost zero effort. She supposed that was worth the tyranny of another meeting where she must not speak up, let alone dominate the dialogue as she would in any other context.

  As she went past Jay’s unguarded computer she scanned the area with a surreptitious glance, then a more thorough rotation, finding herself alone; obviously his team was already on their way to the meeting. She stuck her USB stick in the port of his computer and paused to wait for the flashing to stop, apparently fussing with the shoe lace of her sneaker, propping it on his desk amidst the encircling glade of real palm trees. Some of the fronds almost brushed the work surface. So impractical.

  Flash flash flash flash and done.

  In the large meeting room people took seats or stood around the oval table, casually, with a bunching towards one end of the room where the wall screen was lit and ready for the first presentation. Beanbags were scattered on the floor there, some of them occupied by programmers who sat with laptops or tablets, legs out straight in front of them, like teenagers lounging around in their bedrooms at home. No rules, no discipline. When it came to the small stuff, the only rule was ‘anything goes’, at DigiCom.

  Sure enough, it only took Cathy three minutes standing over the dozen people seated near her to get a new passcode. Francine’s. She wouldn’t have chosen Francine out of a desire for vengeance – that would be petty, and pettiness was abhorrent – but she couldn’t say she was displeased. Francine did have a patronizing way of dealing with inferiors; inferiors like Cathy. Or more precisely, inferiors like she th
ought Cathy to be. In reality Cathy could eat the Francines of the world for breakfast.

  Francine relished the chance to order someone around, to direct them. And when she had explained with towering condescension the project on which she was working – despite Cathy having never enquired – and then topped off her offense by giving a grating little laugh and saying, “I don’t spose that makes much sense to you though, does it?” she had nearly worn the cup of coffee Cathy was ferrying at the time.

  No, she didn’t want to punish Francine, but if she incriminated her as a person sniffing around secure areas of the network and got her into trouble . . . well, that would just be unfortunate, wouldn’t it?

  Cathy opened the meetings application she had been sent when she first arrived at DigiCom, made a note of all the attendees and their seating arrangements then flicked the tab for record. Keeping her strokes on the screen’s virtual keyboard very light to avoid disturbing the sound pick-up, she got back to work.

  She felt the little surge of excitement as she entered Francine’s password. This task was more exciting when in the room crammed full of the company’s people than alone at her desk. She rolled her eyes at her own thrill-seeking tendencies. She was virtually living on stress and adrenalin these days, in between the maddening spells of boredom.

  No wonder she was nearly going insane, with tension coming and going like a pendulum swing. Who wouldn’t?

  In seconds she was deep in the network, working on the firewall again. She found the tag linked to the unauthorized search query – stupid of her, she should have scanned for that first – and told it Francine was authorized, which it accepted without demur. Her search query – with a slightly tweaked script in case her previous one had been logged and sent a red flag to the system – netted a dozen files that looked promising.