by Dana Marton
Nick stood guard in the cover of the door, watching for anyone approaching their immediate area. Carly pulled off her backpack and took out the five contractor IDs and passed them around. They all looped one over their heads.
“Get down,” Nick whispered and flattened himself to the wood door.
Everybody ducked, Sam and Anita crouching behind the filing cabinet, Gina and Carly behind the desk.
Voices filtered in as two women walked by.
“I probably shouldn’t have another cup. The coffee I already had is eating away at my stomach lining.”
“Want to grab a snack from the vending machine to soak up the caffeine?”
“Might as well glue it to my thighs.”
When the women passed down the hall, Nick got his jeans and shirt out of his backpack and pulled them on over his black bodysuit, then grabbed a handful of papers from the desk and stepped outside. He stayed right there, with his back to the glass wall, as if he’d stopped for a moment to read through the stuff, waiting while the rest of them changed.
Sam pushed the door open. Carly stuffed a handful of blank tapes under her denim shirt—the stiff material hid everything and wasn’t entirely unreasonable given the icy blast from the air conditioner vents—and followed, leaving her backpack behind. Only she and Nick had been carrying bags. It had been enough to hold everyone’s street clothes and the tapes she needed.
“One time up in the States, I worked for this big bank in Delaware. They kept me on for four years,” Carly said to Sam and Anita who were walking next to her.
Gina and Nick brought up the rear. To anyone paying attention, they would have looked like a couple of contractors coming back from the break room.
“That’s good,” Sam gave the rehearsed line. “My longest gig only lasted nine months.”
“Do you mind moving around?”
“Not really. Get to see a lot of places. Coming down here is like a vacation.”
They passed into the IT department, people in cubicles on every side of them. Nobody paid them any attention.
“Right.” Carly nodded. “I wouldn’t mind keeping this job for a few years.”
When they were about twenty feet from the server room, they fanned out. Anita headed to the security office to distract the people who watched the monitors; Nick, Gina and Sam walked to strategic locations from which they could see the server room and could intercept and delay anyone who was headed that way.
Carly walked straight toward it, grabbed a bunch of papers out of the nearest printer then tripped and spilled her armload of printouts just outside the door. She took her time picking them up, hoping someone would come out or go in before she was finished, so she could ask the person to hold the door for her. The door to the server room was on auto-lock, and her copy of a contractor ID wouldn’t work on the keypad.
Come on. Come on. She picked up one sheet after another and stacked them, then when she was done, she began to organize them as if she were trying to put them back in order. Then the door finally opened and a frowning, middle-aged man came out, almost knocking her over.
“Sorry. Didn’t see you.”
“No problem.” She glanced at his tie-dyed T-shirt, smiled and caught the door, walked right in.
Two other guys were in there, both of them completely focused on their work. They didn’t even look up from their terminals when she entered. She scanned the room and headed to the servers in the back, passing a small stockpile of used computers on the floor. A dozen servers stood side by side. No way to tell which one had the data she needed.
“Did Joe leave?” One of the men walked away from his desk and came toward her.
“Just stepped out,” she said, figuring Joe for the man who’d let her in.
“Haven’t seen you around here.” The man, little more than a boy and kind of nerdy, looked her over with interest. He had John Lennon glasses, his T-shirt proclaiming, SERVER ADMINISTRATORS DO IT ALL NIGHT. He puffed his chest out when he caught her looking.
“Just started yesterday.” She smiled.
“They threw you right into the thick of things, huh?” He flashed her an eager-puppy grin.
“It’s supposed to be the best way to learn.” She stretched the smile. Maybe she could get him to help her. “I don’t think the cable to my computer is working. Someone said I could lift one of these from here.” She motioned with her head toward the pile of used PCs.
“Sure. Knock yourself out,” the guy said, but made no move to walk away. He shuffled from one foot to the other, sinking his hands into his pockets.
“You work with the servers?”
“Right.”
“I’m hoping to become a server administrator. I’m taking some classes.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“I started at Delaware University when I worked up there, but when I got this job down here, I had to switch to online.”
He nodded rapidly. “That’s cool.”
“I want to design HR databases.” She went in for the kill.
“You should talk to HR about that. They’re doing major upgrading right now. We’ll be moving the HR data from that dinosaur—” he nodded toward the last server in the row “—and updating everything. Hope to have full integration by the end of the year.”
“Sounds great. Thanks.” She bent to shift through a pile of computer cables.
“No problem. And feel free to come see us if you have any pesky problems with homework. By the way, I’m John.”
“Jen.” She used the name from her fake badge. “Thanks again. Will do.” She half turned, willing him to walk away and leave her alone.
He looked at her for another moment or two before he shuffled back to his desk.
As soon as his attention was once again on the slim monitor in front of him, she stepped to the right server. With her back to the camera that watched this section of the room, she pulled three blank tapes from her shirt, set them on the top of the server and pushed the right buttons.
Come on. Come on. She waited for the green light indicating that she could push the eject button to remove the backup tapes.
Okay. Here we go. She pulled the first tape and eased off the label, stuck it on one of the blank tapes she had. She repeated the procedure three times, listening for the opening of the door or the scraping of a chair that might indicate someone was coming her way.
The bank probably used multiple methods of backup, one of which was the good old tape rotation. A security company took the tapes off-site every morning. She’d seen the truck come and go. She figured they’d bring back the tapes in about a week to be reused. All server content was copied to tapes every night, the tapes removed to a secure site. If there was a fire or the server somehow got damaged another way, they could easily upload the previous day’s data so they never lost more than one day’s worth. There were other, more sophisticated methods used in tandem that recorded all account activity, transaction by transaction, at other bank locations off-site.
The tapes were recycled without anyone ever looking at them, unless they needed them. The chances that the bank would discover the tape switch were slim to none.
Carly stuffed the backups under her shirt and grabbed a computer cable, keeping her movements easy and relaxed, as if she’d been just moseying around in there. Deep breath in, deep breath out.
“Thanks!” She waved the cable toward the two men at their desks as she walked toward the door.
“No problem.” The one she’d talked to earlier waved at her. “Good luck with school.”
She smiled back at him and walked out. The trickiest part was over.
Nick was talking to a woman, but acknowledged Carly with a nod. Gina came up to her. “I’m having trouble with my log-in. You think you could take a look?”
Okay. She tried to relax. They were on the exit routine now.
“Sure. I had the same problem yesterday. Let me see if I can fix yours.” They headed toward the hallway together, stopped talking in front of th
e PR manager’s office.
“Hi, guys, want to go get a cup of coffee?” Anita was coming down the hall from the direction of the security office.
“Wouldn’t mind that,” Carly said, watching for Nick as Sam showed up, too.
He came a minute or so later with the blonde still sticking to him.
“Hey, I’m glad I ran into you,” Carly called to him. “I have a question about the routine you helped me with earlier.”
“Sure,” he told her then turned toward the woman. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”
The woman smiled then walked off toward the break room with a pronounced sway to her too-skinny hips.
She noticed Nick that way, there was no doubt about that.
Carly looked around, and when the hall was clear, stepped inside the office with the others.
“You got it?” was Nick’s first question.
“It’s all here.” She pulled the tapes and stuffed them into her backpack, then swung the straps over her shoulders.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Nick opened the door again and when the hallway was clear, they filed out.
Leaving the building would be easier than getting in. Since badges weren’t checked on the way out, they could leave through the front door.
None of them spoke in the elevator, a tight fit with the five of them plus the two backpacks. Thick as thieves, she thought. Then Anita shifted and Carly had to move back another fraction of an inch, her shoulder pressed against Nick’s chest.
In a hurry to be out of there all of a sudden, she pushed through and somehow ended up getting off first, walking out into the marble-wrapped lobby with the others behind her.
Don’t act nervous.
She turned back, desperate to project the image of nonchalance. “Want to go surfing this weekend?” she asked Sam, who was directly behind her. She didn’t look at the security guards ahead of them or Nick bringing up the rear.
“Maybe. Which beach?” Sam asked, playing along. In reality, they spent every waking moment working on their mission.
Which beach? She only knew the most famous one that tourists talked about at the Café Carib, the same beach that seemed to be on every postcard sold on the sidewalks. “Seven Mile Beach,” she said, as if she surfed there daily.
Were the guards watching?
“Ever been to one of the private beaches?” Nick was asking.
There were private beaches? She really had to get out more. “Once,” she lied in case the guards were listening. Did she look as if she might have friends who owned private beaches?
She kept her eyes on the doors ahead. In half a minute they would be out of there. She couldn’t completely fill her lungs until they were outside and she knew that they’d made it.
They were about halfway through the lobby when the security alarm went off, the loud siren making her jump, the “flight” part of her fight-or-flight instinct kicking in with full force.
Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God. Did someone see something? Were they busted?
She judged the distance to the door with her heart in her throat. Twenty yards. Could they run for it?
No, they couldn’t.
The guards were coming out from behind the desk.
Chapter Nine
She looked ready to bolt. Nick stepped up to Carly and put a hand on her shoulder, gave her a relaxed smile when she turned, glanced at the other women to make sure they weren’t giving anything away. Sam wore her usual I-don’t-care-and-you-can’t-make-me street expression. Gina had her cop/poker face on. Anita was trying hard, like Carly, to appear unaffected.
“Everything okay?” he asked the closest guard over the shrill of the alarm.
The guy shrugged. “We’ll know in a minute. Security alarm locks the doors.” He nodded toward the entrance. “Hang on a minute. It’ll probably be cleared as soon as the chief checks out the system on the computer and figures out what triggered it.”
“So when this happens, cops come out and everything?”
The youngest of the guards nodded, scratching his goatee. “Our system is wired into theirs.”
Damn, Nick thought, but he kept his smile relaxed.
Anita was back in control. She headed toward the armchairs of the waiting area, and sat, all ladylike, then picked up a copy of the International Financial Times and patted the seat next to her for Gina. Sam and Carly seemed to have found their focus as well and followed.
The cops were there in three minutes. The chief of security came down in person to override the auto-lock on the doors to let them out. “False alarm. Some new guy thought he’d pop his head out one of the emergency doors for a smoke.” The man rolled his eyes and snorted back an exasperated laugh. “He didn’t read the Alarm Will Go Off sign.”
Nick took a deep breath and looked at the women who all of a sudden seemed to have something to do. Anita and Gina turned their backs to the lobby and stared out the side windows, Gina held up a business magazine—in Chinese—to partially obstruct her face. Sam was bent over, tying her shoes. Carly practically had her whole head in her backpack, pretending to furiously search for something.
“They know us,” she whispered into the bag. “The cops who investigated the shooting in front of the office building are here.”
Nick stood up and turned so he would cover as much as possible of the women. One of the cops was talking to the security chief, the others were joking with each other.
Go on. It’s all finished here. Nothing to talk about.
The officers were getting bored while their boss chatted up front. They were looking around.
He was trying to come up with something he could do to distract them if they started looking at the women too closely, which was only a matter of time. They were all beautiful. No man would let them pass without a second glance.
Then one did look, paused. Had he been one of the cops Carly had been talking about?
The guy smiled toward the women.
Nick moved to keep them covered. He could drop his backpack, draw the guy’s attention to himself. But he might not have been the one who knew the women. And anything Nick did might draw the attention of the other cops to them. Then one of those might recognize Carly or Anita or Gina or Sam.
The policeman stepped forward.
Nick held his breath.
Then the radios were going off on the men’s shoulders—assistance requested in a domestic fight. They were out of the lobby in less than thirty seconds.
Nick relaxed and waited another thirty before heading toward the door with his team.
CARLY STOOD IN HER KITCHEN, a bottle of water in her hand, and stared at her laptop on the table, waiting for the queries to run.
She had barely slept the night before, had been too keyed up after their big heist, but had decided to leave looking at the data until this morning to make sure her mind was as sharp as it could be when she tackled it.
Her body still hummed with adrenaline from their stint at the bank. That had been wild. She grinned as she remembered the terror of being suspended in the air over the street, the crawl through the vents, what she’d done in the server room, the close call at the end.
She had never felt more alive.
It had been as good as inventing a brand new programming platform. She grinned again and took a swig.
The laptop beeped.
Query complete.
It had taken all day and most of the evening to get this far. She hadn’t gone to the office.
The program gave her two choices: Save or Display results. She hit Save first then opened the file.
Twenty-two names filled her screen.
The query had compared her list of everyone who worked for or was a client of the target companies whose servers she’d gotten into, cross-referenced with the employee and client list of Banca Internationale, cross-referenced with the list they’d gotten from Brant Law that contained the names and aliases of people the FBI and CIA had thought might be in some way connected to Tsernyakov.
She had three columns of names: those who worked for or were a client of Banca Internationale and also among suspected associates of Tsernyakov; those who worked for or were a client of the bank and were associated with money laundering on the island; and those who were associated both with money laundering on the island and with Tsernyakov. Four names were a hit for all three: Philippe Cavanaugh, Jose Marquez, Xiau Lin and Ian McGraw.
Was the man who had tried to kill her one of them? She’d never heard of any of these people before.
She did a quick search on the Internet and came up with dozens of hits for most of the names. Cavanaugh was a major player in international shipping. She stared at the publicity photos on his company’s Web site—thick blondish hair, a straight, pronounced nose and a confident smile. It wasn’t the man who had tried to take her out. Marquez was a venture capitalist from Argentina. She couldn’t find a picture of him on the Web. Lin was on the board of directors of several global nonprofit organizations. He didn’t look familiar either. McGraw had no internet presence.
Carly went back to the other names and searched Google. Only a handful had pictures, the business owners who had corporate Web sites with publicity shots. She didn’t recognize any of them.
Her attention came back to the top four.
Her team’s original goal in getting the bank’s records was to identify the man who had tried to kill her. They had a mission that couldn’t allow for distractions. Now her instincts screamed that they might have stumbled upon something even bigger than what they’d been looking for.
One of the four men on top could be their link to Tsernyakov.
She flipped open her cell phone and called Nick next door. “Weren’t sleeping yet, were you?”
He mumbled something that didn’t sound happy.
“I have something you’ll want to see,” she said and hung up.
He was coming out of her bedroom in less than a minute, pulling a T-shirt over his head. Her gaze dropped to his shorts, a soft cotton that she hadn’t seen on him before. Were those his pajamas? He padded out to the kitchen barefoot. That jolted her. Nick in combat boots was a testosterone bomb. Nick in his island sandals was casually sexy. Bare feet was another thing altogether.