Lucky Charm

by Valerie Douglas

  The office manager, a woman by the name of Beatrice Miller, seemed unconcerned to see Ariel as she exited the elevators. At least, she seemed no more concerned than usual at the prospect of her computers being tinkered with. Tall and brisk, dressed in a dark-red power suit that didn’t flatter her ashen coloring at all, she was brisk, efficient and impersonal. Her accent was from somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line, which accounted for the lack of southern warmth. She neither stared at Ariel too long nor seemed stressed. Was it because the warning had been delivered? Or wasn’t she in the loop? The small signs of the stooges handiwork on Ariel’s face had been erased, more or less, by makeup. The cut on her forehead was healing but hidden by her hair.

  Perhaps Beatrice Miller wasn’t involved in whatever was going on. Ariel didn’t know.

  Whoever had sent the stooges expected her to keep her mouth shut and she did. If anyone watched, she was acting normally. Any nervousness she showed would probably be chalked up as evidence of the warning being delivered, rather than the risk she was taking.

  As usual, Ariel found that half the things that needed to be done before she arrived hadn’t been. Documents hadn’t been copied, bank checks hadn’t been sent to be set up, settings hadn’t been changed or fixed. She set about doing them without complaint. Beatrice Miller left her alone, which was fine with Ariel. She checked the settings on the server and then did the same on all the workstations.

  No one seemed to pay any more attention to her than usual and she was very aware of it.

  The day seemed to go on forever.

  As she did all the prep, she called up the data. If Matt’s friend Bill was right…

  If he hadn’t been…

  Then Matthew could go home safe.

  The anomalies whispered in the back of her mind.

  In finance there were so many fiddles possible. Enron and so many others had proven that.

  Pyramid schemes were the easiest to set up and conceal. Use some of the money from newer investors to pay dividends to the older investors – a fraction of the money invested but a significant share – giving them an edge over the current interest rate but not enough to draw attention. They would talk to their friends, bring more investors into the plan. In the meantime, the vast majority of the money went into secret bank accounts.

  That was by far not the only way.

  She studied the sweep accounts and wondered. Was it just her imagination or was too little money coming back?

  In a sweep account the balance in the bank account was swept out each night to be deposited in an investment account in the Cayman Islands. Overnight it accrued interest and in the morning was swept back into the primary account. Hence the name.

  For a business the size of Marathon, the amount should have been several thousand at the very least but it wasn’t. So they were skimming there, too.

  And that was the least of it.

  It looked more and more as if Matt’s friend Bill had had something to worry about.

  That daily accumulation from the sweep accounts alone, when multiplied added up to more than a million a year. And that was the low ball figure.

  In the back of her mind was the constant worry for Matthew. Alongside it was the fear of her growing attachment to him.

  What would happen when this was over? She lived in Ohio and he lived in Arizona. A very long-distance romance. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t not think about it.

  She would deal with it when the time came and tried not to admit even to herself how much it would hurt even after so short a time. It seemed as if she’d known him for months but in truth it had only been a matter of days.

  What had happened to her carefully constructed defenses?

  They’d folded like wet cardboard.

  Like moths around a light, hope and fear fluttered frantically in the back of her mind, soft wings of emotion battering her thoughts and each other for dominance. The day yawned before her seemingly interminably. Even work, which had been a proven bulwark for so long, failed to distract her.

  At last the long day drew to a close, the sound of drawers opening and shutting as the women retrieved their purses announced that people were leaving for the day.

  Tension was a hard ball around her heart, her fear for Matthew made her hands shake as she watched workers log off the system one by one. There were always the one or two laggards convinced that something had to be completely finished before they left for the day but she finally chased them all out.

  Keeping to her routine, she checked the system and then started the installation before going down to the basement as she usually did for something to drink.

  The doors to the elevator opened and she stepped out.

  For a minute, her heart went cold.

  Matthew wasn’t there.

  There was no sign of him. Had security found him? Or the stooges? If anything had happened to him…

  All her fears welled up inside her.

  No sooner had Matt slipped inside the doors via the loading bay than the sound of footsteps on the stairs warned him. He ducked between and behind the vending machines as one of the security guards pushed through the doors. There was a gap behind it. It was a tight squeeze but more room behind the machine had allowed him some breathing space.

  It had been a bad moment.

  The man looked around idly before he headed for the coffee machine.

  Matt had been careful, slipping inside while the guard at the loading bay was distracted, concealing himself among the packages and whatnot until the end of the day.

  He was more careful when the doors opened the next time, taking a quick look before sliding out from his hiding place.

  Ariel’s face was white. Before that moment he couldn’t have imagined that ivory skin getting much paler. It seemed he’d been wrong. Her relief when she saw him was obvious. In that moment he had a good idea how very much she cared and how hard she worked to control it.

  “I’m sorry, Ari,” he said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  The relief when he stepped out from behind the machines made Ariel lightheaded.

  She shook her head as he took her in his arms. “No, I’m all right.”

  Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, he looked at her. “Not by the color of your face.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him, reaching up to touch his cheek.

  As soon as she saw him all her fears, even the amorphous anxiety that had haunted her all day, melted away. His arms around her both steadied and comforted her. The simple human contact was a balm to her soul after so long without it.

  Taking a slow deep breath, she looked into his clear green eyes. “Let’s do this.”

  Seeing the color return to her face, Matt pressed a kiss to her forehead before releasing her. It was a relief just to know she was safe.

  “Lead on,” he said, sweeping an arm before him.

  They stepped into the elevator.

  Walking out into Marathon’s New Orleans’ offices, Matt could only stare.

  It was an exact copy of all the others. He could have been in Marathon’s San Diego office, or Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, any of them. He’d never really had the chance to notice the similarities before.

  In front of him in the center of the room were the cubicles of the phone bank, the walls of which were only waist high, while at the back along the windows were the executive offices. On his right was a table with copying and fax machines. To his left was a glass enclosure with banks of computers. The only difference between the lower floor and upper was that the lower didn’t have the computer room.

  “Are they all like this?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said in disgust, before giving him a mischievous glance, “they’re financial people, Matthew, they have no imagination.”

  Amused, Matt looked at her and said, “You do remember I have a degree in accounting? Criminal science, too.”

  Her mouth twitching, eyes sparkling, she shook her head. “Oops. I be
lieve you did mention it. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.”

  She suppressed laughter without much success.

  Looking at that twitching mouth, Matt thought he’d help her with that, burying one hand in the thick waves of her hair and catching her chin with the other.

  For a moment he paused as his mouth hovered above hers.

  Hers softened in anticipation. Her lips parted as he took her mouth deeply. Matt explored her as her tongue slid around his. He sucked at it gently. He pulled her more tightly against him. Her lithe body molded itself to him as he pressed her hips against him. He wedged a knee between her thighs, his hand tight on the firm curve of her bottom. She trembled when he lifted his mouth away from hers. Her lips had that lovely swollen look they took on when he kissed her. He ran his thumb across the lower one.

  No security guards interrupted them.

  “You drive me wild, Matthew, do you know that?” she whispered.

  Smiling, he took her hand and pressed it to the hard ridge in his jeans. “You drive me wild, too.”

  “I have a similar problem,” Ariel admitted, smiling.

  His green eyes smoldered. “Can I check?”

  The thought sent a hot liquid swirl through the depths of her.

  “God, Matthew, if you do you’d better take me right here, I don’t think I could stand it.”

  Kissing her quickly, he said, “Later then?”

  With a sigh, she said, “Please.” She took a breath to steady herself. “Anyway, within the limitations of the building itself they’re all exactly the same. It drives me crazy, because they’re not all on the same side of the building so the elevators are always in the wrong place.”

  Matt looked at her, completely confused.

  Sighing, Ariel explained, “I have no sense of direction. The sameness of these offices only confuses me more. I have no concept of right and left, no idea where north is. It’s like being in a maze or a funhouse. Sometimes I can’t find my way out.”

  He thought back to the uncertainty of that first night, the hesitations, Ariel demanding that he point, and the GPS.

  “No idea?” He couldn’t imagine it.

  “None. On the fly, I can’t. It’s a concept that makes no sense to me.” She looked up at him and smiled. “That’s how I wound up where I was that night. I got lost trying to find the parking garage. When I heard voices I was looking for someone to help me find the way out.”

  Brushing the hair back from her pretty, elfin face, he said, “It never occurred to me until now to wonder what you were doing there in that place at that hour.”

  “I think I’ll complain about it less, for a while.”

  She smiled as she led him back to the computer room.

  Smiling back, he said, “I won’t complain about it at all.”

  That kiss was quick but very thorough.

  So far, there was no sign of alarm.

  After all this time, he was in. Matt couldn’t quite believe it. He couldn’t help feeling a certain sense of triumph as she led him into the computer room.

  With a gesture, Ariel indicated he should sit at the terminal next to her.

  “You’re all set up and ready to go,” she said. “You’re logged in with the Admin password. I have to have it to install the software. If you don’t mind, though, let me check something first.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Taking a deep breath, she said, “To see if they remembered to dump Bill’s files from the server while they were getting rid of things. See here?” She pointed at the screen. “All of the offices are interconnected. That’s typical.”

  She pulled up another screen. “This is the list of all the people who need access to the system. A lot of system techs get lazy. Rather than delete people off the system, they simply change their password permissions.”

  Switching back to the other screen, she pointed at the file list. “What a tech will usually do is set up a folder for each user to store their files. Unless someone remembered to tell the tech in that branch to remove them, they may have cleaned his office out but we’ll see if they cleaned his files out.”

  Matt stared at the screen. “There. William Parkhurst.”

  Opening it, Ariel saw long listings of documents. “There’s a lot of folders and a lot of files in here, Matthew.”

  “That sounds like Bill. Redundancy. He kept copies of everything. Is there one for Genesis? Can you download it or them?”

  A flash of a grin. She fished a flash drive out of her backpack and downloaded everything to it, then presented it to him. She’d considered uploading it to the Cloud but that would have required her to access the internet through their access point. That would leave a record.

  Ariel looked at the display and then looked again.

  She went stiff and cold. Double-clicked the system listed.

  When she’d been in here before she hadn’t noticed it but then she hadn’t really been looking for it. After talking to Matthew, she was. She scanned through the folders.

  “What is it?” Matt asked, aware of her sudden tension.

  “I think I’ve found out why the stooges are concerned about me being nosy. This might be what they were afraid I’d see.”

  Ariel pointed to the screen and looked at him. “Here’s your link to Genesis, Matthew. They are a different company, right?”

  Matt nodded, frowning.

  “That’s their computer system.” Ariel pointed to the database. “It’s shared with Marathon and it shouldn’t be. While you can have two separate companies on the same server, those companies are supposed to be invisible to the others. Monies separate, everything. I can see what they’re afraid of, I would have raised a red flag on this, asked questions in case they’re sharing more than files. Which they’re undoubtedly doing or why have such a direct connection? If I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing then Marathon and Genesis are sharing everything. Everything Marathon does Genesis can see. I know enough to know this shouldn’t be.”

  He looked at her, sharing her concern.

  Those blue eyes met his. “You might want to take a look at their sweep accounts, and their payments to some of their investors.”

  Matt took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, understanding what she was telling him.

  Switching screens, Ariel said, “You can go wandering in the system, it won’t cause a problem for my install at this point.”

  He started poking around, poking being the correct word for it. He was at best a two finger typist until it came to figures then he was the match for any typist.

  Row after row of documents appeared on the screen.

  Ariel saw him reach to double-click and caught him before he completed the action. She shook her head.

  “Look at the date,” she cautioned. “If you open that now and change the size of a column or anything, the date will change to today’s date. They’ll be able to track who opened it and when. Admin, today at seven fourteen. The only one on the system at that time is me.”

  A chill went through him at the thought.

  With a couple of mouse clicks, she showed him how to change the date and time of the computer to correspond to the document.

  “That’s a neat trick,” he said, admiringly.

  He’d have to remember that for future cases when he was back on the job. Thinking back to one or two in the past, he wondered if that was how some of them had managed to slip through his fingers.

  “It’s how a lot of people cover their tracks if they think about it. There are lots of neat tricks you can pull with computers if you know how to do more than use the start menu. Most don’t. Don’t forget to change it back or it will cause problems with the system.”

  He opened the document and scanned the contents.

  Ariel swore softly as an error screen came up, frowning in concentration. This she knew how to fix, if the file existed on the system. It was an older version of a system file. She went searching. Her fingers danced over the keyboard and
mouse.

  It was fascinating for Matt to watch as Ariel’s mouse clicked rapidly, her fingers tapped the keys while folders opened and closed as she copied files from one place to another. Her blue eyes were intent on the screen, as sharp as crystal in the monitor’s pale blue light, scanning one list after another.

  She clearly knew what she was doing. Calm and competent.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She flashed him a wry grin. “A glitch. The story of my life. I’d love to go into an office and have a trouble free install for once.”

  Pointing, Matt said, “Can we copy this to something? It’s going to take me days to go through all of it, tracking the money, what’s being done with it and where it’s going.”

  Looking at the size of the file, she frowned. “It’s too big for a flash drive.”

  She looked at her laptop – already connected to the network – and sighed. If she was caught with those files it wouldn’t be just her job in jeopardy.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought.

  “Since my laptop’s already hooked into the network, I’ll just download the files to it.”

  While she was at it she copied the entire Marathon folder and did a search on the network for anything related to Genesis. That was copied as well while Matt brought up the spreadsheets from the Financial division and looked them over. Those were copied also, for good measure.

  With the installation complete and the files copied, this would be the most dangerous time.

  Matt couldn’t go with her.

  Security expected her to exit alone.

  Instead, she would go to the basement for a fresh drink to take back to the hotel, leaving him in the basement before she returned to the main floor to exit as usual. They would be apart for as long as it took for Matt to bring the car around.

  He kissed her fingers before the elevator doors closed and she began her journey to the first floor.

  He went via the stairs and out a side entrance. That let him out into a corner of the parking deck.

  Ariel stepped out of the elevator, holding the can of juice high as a salute to any watchers on the security cameras there and to show why she’d gone to the basement.