After a moment, the analyst at headquarters confirmed, “Yes, but they aren’t downloading anything. If they’re still using the same terminal, they’re surfing the ‘net.”
Jeff and Mitch watched the patrons for the next fifteen minutes before the analyst said the culprit had logged off. At that time, two people left the coffee shop, Gary took one, Mitch took the other. Getting license plate numbers for both of them.
Six hours later, Mitch was still just as frustrated as he’d been the previous night but he had the added irritation of having that woman’s face and figure float through his mind constantly. Every time he tried to think of something, concentrate on a problem, her face interfered. He wasn’t amused and wished she would just get out of his head.
By seven o’clock that night, he gave up for the day. No sleep for thirty six hours was making him crazy he thought. That was probably why he was thinking about her and couldn’t focus. But his lack of control was unacceptable.
After driving home, he put himself through a grueling workout, then he and his dog went for a ten mile run through the woods and mountain roads. Duke was up for the run, enjoying it almost as much as Mitch. Both man and dog were out of breath when they arrived back at the house. Mitch put a large bowl of dog food into Duke’s bowl and pulled out from the oven the dinner his housekeeper had prepared for him. While listening to the evening news, he ate the pasta dish and worked on his computer, then took Duke out into the backyard to throw the ball around. The ritual had served both of them well for the past several years and relaxed Mitch’s mind before going to bed.
That night however, he couldn’t get the blond woman’s face or figure out of his mind.
Chapter 4
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing! Could it be possible?
Impossible!
She punched a few more keys on her keyboard and stared. The words on the keyboard didn’t make any sense at all.
The names she’d downloaded earlier this afternoon obviously had nothing to do with employees of Titus Securities. Instead, and it was obviously someone’s idea of a very poor joke, were the names of every cartoon character she could name, including Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig.
She bit the tip of her thumb, chewing absently at the tender flesh as her other hand slid across the keyboard, electronically sifting through the rest of the data. They were onto her!
Sitting back in her chair, she looked around at the bright colors she’d painted on the walls, but tonight, the colors didn’t do anything to help her. At this particular moment, she was just a bit too stunned by someone’s creativity and software ingenuity to think straight.
Tapping her pen against her upper lip gently, she considered the alternatives. She’d obviously been caught and moving forward was not the brightest idea. Hacking into this company’s database was dangerous but Gary needed her help. His employment at Titus Securities was the only clue she had to go on in order to find him.
Should she abandon the search? Wait for Gary to return and hope for the best?
Or could she come up with a way to be more subtle?
If the company wasn’t so damn big she would have had the information by now. Or if they’d simply replied to her inquiry about Gary’s employment, this would all be over. If Gary wasn’t working for Titus Securities, couldn’t they just say so? And if he was, Gary was probably doing something dangerous, which was why they couldn’t say he was working for them.
Quite a conundrum, she thought to herself as she stood and walked barefoot to her kitchen. Looking into the refrigerator, half her mind contemplated what she might have for dinner, while the other half of her brain started developing the code that might take her below the radar once again, and get in undetected. She wasn’t going to give up on a guy that made her feel so secure just because a silly programmer thought she or he could out do her. Nope, this was one guy in a million!
Claire poured herself a glass of milk, tucked a stray curl behind her ear, then went back to her computer. She could do it, she thought to herself, feeling the now familiar energizing sense of excitement and danger as she considered the possible code that would make her idea work. It would be slower, but it might just work, she thought.
With the exhilaration of doing something new, something dangerous and outside the rules, Claire let her mind take over. She wanted to do this, not only for Gary anymore, but also for herself. Her job was boring and she definitely wanted to outmaneuver the prankster who had corrupted her code last time. Cartoon characters indeed! She’d show him!
It was late at night, or more appropriately, early in the morning, when she finally finished. She still hadn’t tested her new code, but she could do that later in the morning and see if it would work on her test data. Smiling to herself, she fell into her bed, not even bothering to pull down the purple and red silk comforter.
The following night, she was comfortable with the idea that her code would work. After yet another horribly boring day at work, she was up for an adventure. Claire testing her code one more time through her office computer, ran the results against her samples and knew that she’d be able to get through. As the tingle of excitement raced through her system, she grabbed her keys and headed out. She had an idea.
It was ten o’clock in the evening and she parked far enough away that she wouldn’t be noticed. And if someone actually thought about her car parked in this particular place, there was a trail to the left she could walk down to get a closer look, and no one would question her Jeep in this wooded area. Maybe this late at night, perhaps, she chuckled to herself. But that was just more of the fun.
Taking her backpack out of the back seat, she stepped out of her car and locked it, then started down the trail. Only a short distance away, she found the perfect spot. It was a nice outcropping of rocks set back from the trees, but with a perfect view of the house. At least she hoped it was his house. The man was pretty private, but her superior investigative skills as well as her tenacity and curiosity, had served her well once more. She would know in a little while if this was the place.
What she was doing here, she had no idea. The CEO of Titus Securities most likely wouldn’t know if Gary was working at his company. With so many employees, it was doubtful that he had any information about anyone other than his executive staff, but the man had made himself into a challenge and now she was going to find out more.
About thirty minutes later, she lucked out by seeing the man come back from a run. “Hmm,” she thought, impressed that he actually worked out. That was a point in his favor, even if his IT team had blocked her out with their ridiculous counter code which had given her bogus data.