“We’re doing another fundraiser for the volunteer firefighters,” he said. “Would you like to buy a raffle ticket?”
“Sure, how much?” I mumbled, eyes on the computer screen.
“Twenty-five dollars.”
What the hell, it was for a good cause. I knew Jeff and Donna had worked hard on the last fundraiser, and the firefighters had gotten some much-needed new equipment.
“Okay.” I scrounged in my waist pouch for my wallet and managed to come up with twenty-five dollars in cash. He wrote my name on the ticket and handed me the stub, and I tucked it into my pouch without looking at it, already focused on the next entry.
I was thankful for the absorbing task of data entry, but nervousness set in again as lunchtime approached. At noon, I got up with a sigh and headed downstairs, locking the apartment door behind me.
Jeff and Donna were busy behind the lunch counter, and several people stood in line. I took my place in the queue and surveyed the menu board eagerly. When I’d finished the tasty meal, I dragged my feet out the door.
Chapter 4
I eyed the bland stucco facade of Sirius Dynamics despondently. Nothing good had ever happened to me here. It seemed highly unlikely that today would change that.
I shifted my weight from foot to foot before squaring my shoulders and walking up the steps into the main lobby. The guard looked up from his post behind bulletproof glass when I approached the security wicket.
“Ms. Kelly,” he greeted me noncommittally, and spun the turntable around to disgorge my security fob and the sign-in sheet.
I duly signed my life away and hovered in the tiny lobby, too tense to sit in one of the four chairs that were its only furnishings.
Promptly at one o’clock, Kane arrived. He greeted me pleasantly, and I did my best not to ogle the broad shoulders and bulging biceps that strained his black T-shirt.
The rear view was almost as good when he stepped up to the security wicket to claim his fob. As he turned back to face me, I determinedly tamped down the memory of the firmly-packed black briefs I knew he wore under those dark jeans. I didn’t know if I’d been successful in controlling my face or not, but if he noticed my glassy eyes, he gave no sign.
“Let’s go on up,” he said. “And you don’t need to wait for me anymore. You can just go on in whenever you get here. You work here now.”
I sighed. “Don’t remind me.”
We waved our fobs at the prox pad next to the doors, and they released to give us access to the office areas.
“Second floor?” I questioned, and Kane nodded. I felt some of the tension leak out of my shoulders. “At least we’re above-ground.”
He smiled down at me. “Yes. I know how hard it would have been for you to have to work in the secured area.”
“I honestly don’t know if I could do it,” I admitted. “I can manage it for short stints, but if I had to be down there for days at a time...”
I banished the thought as my heart sped up. Underground bunkers are not happy places for claustrophobics.
When we arrived at the meeting room, Stemp was already seated at the table, his reptilian features expressionless as always. Clyde Webb rose when I entered, his lanky arms and legs seeming only loosely attached to his skinny body. His youthful face split into a grin, and I greeted him with pleasure.
“Spider, how’s it going?”
“Great! Thanks to the IPs you gave me last week, we’ve already been able to track down those two Fuzzy Bunny sites. We’ve got them under surveillance now. I can hardly wait to see if you can track down any more.”
I hid my nervousness in a smile. “Guess we’ll find out.”
I gave Stemp a hard stare as I sat down. Nerves twitched in my stomach. We eyed each other for a few seconds before he spoke.
“You can begin immediately. You’ll have an office on this floor. Your top priority is to decrypt the documents we seized from Harchman’s network last week. A close second priority is to see if you can recreate the virtual connections to Fuzzy Bunny’s network and provide the IP addresses to Webb.”
He paused, and I could tell he was struggling to make his next words non-confrontational. “We would appreciate as much time as you could provide for this.”
I gave him a short nod, trying to stay focused on the importance of the work instead of my personal animosity toward the man. “I’ll do my best. I have three clients to see tomorrow, but I have most of the rest of the week available.”
“Very well.” He stood. “Webb will show you to your office and brief you on his efforts to date. If you need anything, inform Kane, and he will make the necessary arrangements.”
I gave him another short nod, which he returned brusquely before striding from the room.
Spider blew out a long breath. “Yikes. That was like watching somebody blowing up a balloon. I was starting to twitch, just waiting for the explosion.” He turned to me. “You’re... You look really scary when you’re mad,” he said hesitantly.
“I wasn’t mad,” I told him. “This time.”
He gave a feeble chuckle. “If I ever see you as mad as you were last week, I’m going to hide under the table.”
I patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I don’t think I could ever get that mad at you. Let’s go find that office.”
The three of us trooped down the hallway a few doors, into a pleasantly bright room containing a desk and chair, along with a small sofa and coffee table. I peeked out the window and took stock of the room with optimism. “This is nice. I can live with this. And I even get a couch.”
Spider returned my smile. “Yes, it’s good to have the couch when you’re going to be in the brainwave-driven network for hours at a time. You stiffen up pretty badly when you’re messing around in virtual reality without moving your real body.”
“Good point,” I said. “I never thought of that.”
“Well, let’s go in, and I’ll point you to where the encrypted files are,” Spider said. “You can have a quick peek, and then we can do some planning.”
I sank onto the couch. “I’m so looking forward to doing this painlessly with a Sirius fob. You have no idea how tired I am of using that network key and getting my brain shredded every time I come out of the network.”
Both men smiled down at me. “I’m glad you don’t have to suffer any more, too,” Spider assured me as he sat in the chair. “That was awful even to have to watch.”
Kane pulled up a chair for himself. “I’ll wait while you go in, and then we can do the planning session when you come out.”
“Great.” I leaned back and mentally stepped into the white void of the virtual reality network, summoning up a simulation of corridors and doorways.
Spider popped into existence beside me a second later. “The files are this way,” he said, and we strode down the virtual hallway.
When we reached the doorway to the file room, he courteously opened the door for me, and I stepped through into the stacks of files.
“Holy crap, there’s a lot in here,” I said. “It didn’t seem like this much when I saw it at Harchman’s.”
Spider shrugged. “I completely gutted their system. There’s probably a lot of irrelevant stuff in here, but I couldn’t decrypt it to find out. That’s your job. Lucky you.”
I sighed. “Yeah, lucky me. Where should I start?”
“How about here?” Spider picked up the nearest file and handed it to me.
I gave him a wry twist of my lips. “Thanks, Einstein.” I flipped the file open and stared at the contents.
My heart sank to my toes. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” Alarm flared in his voice.
“I can’t read it.”
“What?” he demanded. “But you could read everything at Harchman’s.”
“Well, I can’t read this. Can you?” I showed him the file, and he shook his head, consternation written on his face.
“Could the files have been changed?” I asked.
“No. They�
�re exactly as they were.”
“Is it a problem with the network?”
“I doubt it. If there was a problem with the network, you wouldn’t be able to access them at all.”
I snapped the folder shut and flung it back onto the pile. “Goddammit, now what? What could it be?”
Spider stood silently for a few moments before turning an apprehensive face toward me. “I think I might know what the problem is.”
“What?” I demanded. I looked more closely at his face. “Oh, shit, no. No. That would be just too... No.”
Chapter 5
When I stepped painlessly through the virtual portal and returned my consciousness to my physical body, Kane smiled at me. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you come out of the network without suffering.”
I glowered. “Don’t rub it in.”
“What’s wrong?” Tension stiffened his shoulders as he leaned forward, frowning. “What is it?”
Spider answered for me. “Aydan can’t read the files. I don’t know why. I’m afraid... I think she might have to use the network key after all.”
“Dammit!” Kane’s fist clenched by his side. “You can’t read anything at all?”
“Nothing. It’s just gibberish.”
“Dammit!”
I felt the same grim lines on my face as I saw on theirs. I sighed. “Let’s go and get the bad news.”
I dragged myself off the sofa and trailed down the hallway. They fell in behind me, and we made the trip back down to the lobby in dispirited silence.
I approached the heavy steel-framed door reluctantly and bent close to the small aperture for the retinal scan. The featureless door unlatched with a muffled click and I stepped into the cramped chamber beyond it, followed by Kane and Webb.
As the door closed and latched behind us, I stepped a single pace forward to the door at the other side and let it scan me, too. Then I compulsively counted down the thirty-second time delay, trying not to pay attention to the way the walls and ceiling seemed to shrink toward me. Both men stepped away to give me space, but it didn’t help much. The room was only a few feet square. No one spoke.
When the latch released, I snatched the door open with a barely-suppressed gasp. As always, the enclosed concrete stairwell made my heart rate spike in momentary panic.
I walked down the stairs purposefully, trying to hide my shaking legs. At the bottom, I pulled the door open and stepped into the glassed-in corridor of the secured lab area.
The white walls and glass and the constant flow of cool, fresh air helped reassure me. I took several deep breaths, deliberately pushing away the knowledge that I was locked underground.
Both Kane and Webb were watching me and I avoided their eyes while we walked down the hallway to Spider’s lab.
He unlocked the door with his prox card and retinal scan, and we all filed into the room.
“Pull up a chair,” he said tightly as he unlocked the compartment at the back of his desk drawer.
Kane and I both sat, and I scowled at the tiny circuitry inside the small box Spider handed me. Then I snapped the box closed and removed my security fob, looking from one frowning face to the other.
“Well, this isn’t going to get any better for putting it off.” I held the box in my hand and stepped into the network void.
This time, both Spider and Kane appeared beside me. Our walk down the virtual hallway had the feeling of a march to execution. Or at least it did to me. I was too absorbed in my own misery to care what the other two were thinking.
When we reached the file room, I hovered unhappily beside the stack of files. Both men watched me, their faces sombre. I sighed and reached for the file I’d opened earlier.
“Son of a fucking bitch.”
“What?” they demanded in ragged unison.
I sank to the floor and held my head in my hands. “I can read it just fine.”
I rocked back and forth a couple of times and jerked a couple of handfuls of hair. “What the hell did I ever do to the gods to make them this vindictive?”
Spider knelt beside me. “Aydan, I’m so sorry!” He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “This totally sucks!”
I looked into his troubled face and gave myself a mental shake. He was so tender-hearted, he was probably more upset about this than I was. My whining wasn’t going to make things any better for me, but it was going to make him even unhappier.
I squared my shoulders and got up. “Never mind, Spider. Life goes on. And anyway, it’s not like I’m going to be going in and out frequently. A couple of shots of pain a day won’t kill me.”
“But what if you get kicked out of the network again,” he said fearfully as he stood, too. “That was... horrible.”
I shrugged, hiding my own dread. “I can’t see why that would happen. And you’ve still got the signalling device, haven’t you? So you can signal me to come out whenever you need to.”
He nodded, obviously unconvinced.
“Well, that’s about as good as it’s going to get, then. Let’s go break the news to Stemp.” I turned and headed for the virtual portal.
I braced myself before stepping out of the network and back into my physical body. It didn’t help.
Pain lanced through my head and for Spider’s sake, I managed not to cry out. I clenched my teeth on my reflexive profanity and took a few hissing breaths, holding my head and rocking until the pain subsided.
“I really fucking hate that,” I muttered as I straightened up again. I tucked the tiny box into my pocket and turned to the other two. “Let’s go.”
“Um,” Spider said. “We can’t.”
“What? Why not?” I demanded, coldness slithering down my spine.
“Well, we can,” he amended. “But we can’t take the key with us. It has to stay down here in the secured facility. Stemp’s orders.”
“And Briggs’s orders, too,” Kane added. “Everyone is in agreement on this. It’s too much of a risk to take it out of here unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
I took a deep, steadying breath. Then another.
“You mean.” I stopped and cleared my throat to keep my voice from squeaking. “You mean, I’m going to have to work down here?”
My voice came out shrill despite my efforts and Kane responded instantly, his voice deep and soothing. “Not necessarily. Don’t worry, Aydan. Let’s go upstairs and talk to Stemp. We’ll see what we can work out.”
I took another couple of deep breaths and jerkily placed the box in Spider’s hand. “I’m going up now. I’ll wait for you in the lobby.” I grabbed my security fob and walked out, suppressing the urge to flee pell-mell.
By the time the time-delayed door opened into the lobby my heart was pounding, and I controlled the need to flail my arms frantically in the open space. I paced around the lobby, willing myself into yoga belly breathing. Slow and steady. In. Out. Like ocean waves. I surreptitiously wiped my sweaty palms on my pants.
By the time Webb and Kane reappeared, I’d regained a semblance of calm. Nobody said anything while we made our way up to Stemp’s office on the second floor.
Kane tapped on the door and stuck his head inside at Stemp’s terse, “Yes.”
“We have a complication,” Kane said.
“Already?” Stemp’s normally expressionless voice sounded strained. “Come in, then. What is it?”
We stepped into his office and stood side by side like pupils summoned before the principal. I tried not to fidget while something small and frightened skittered in my stomach.
Kane stood at parade rest and addressed Stemp. “The Sirius security fob works to get Aydan into the network, but when she gets there, she can’t decrypt the files.”
Stemp turned a skeptical gaze on me. “Really.”
My temper flared, and Kane shot me a warning glance. This time I heeded him and controlled my anger with an effort of will.
“We’ve solved the problem, though,” I said. “I can read the files if I use the net
work key to access the network.”
“I see.” Stemp turned his impassive face to Spider. “Explanation.”
Spider twitched his shoulders nervously. “I don’t know for sure. My initial guess would be that the brainwave modulator that’s built into the Sirius fobs alters Aydan’s natural brainwave pattern in a way that prevents her from decrypting the files. The network key doesn’t have a modulator, so she can do what she needs to do.”
Stemp made an impatient gesture. “Why are you bringing this to me? You’ve already solved the problem. Get to work.”
“We need your permission to bring the network key aboveground,” Kane said.
“Absolutely not.”
Kane took a breath and spoke steadily. His shuttered cop face and deliberately relaxed posture made his words seem conversational. “Aydan is claustrophobic. She has severe difficulty being in the secured facility for any significant length of time. She needs to work up here.”
“I repeat, absolutely not,” Stemp snapped. “The risk is too great. If anything happens to that network key, we lose everything.”
He turned to me, and I caught the almost-imperceptible glint of triumph in his snake-like eyes. “You will have to learn to tolerate working in the secured facility.”
Chapter 6
I forced my rigid body to turn and walk out of Stemp’s office. Fury suffused me, but I kept my hands loose and relaxed my shoulders while I walked down the hall and into the pleasant office that had been mine for a few short minutes. I lowered myself onto the sofa and stared into middle distance.
“Aydan?” Spider tapped timidly on the door frame.
I focused on his face and he ducked his head as if expecting me to yell at him. I concentrated for a moment on my facial expression, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t glaring at him.
“What?” I was proud that my voice was even.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Come on in.”
He sidled through the door and lowered himself into a chair. A few seconds later, Kane stuck his head in the doorway. He scanned the pair of us before entering the room, closing the door behind him. He strode to the other chair and sat.
Reach For the Spy Page 3