The Value of Vulnerability (35 page)

Seeing him sent the usual thrill through her, and she crossed the herringbone floor—

He raised his hand, palm out, stopping her.

“It’s a PR disaster is what it is,” he said coolly into the receiver while his heated gaze travelled over her. A slight gesture indicated that she remove her coat.

She did so slowly. Deliberately teasing. Casting her filmy scarf aside and striking a pose.

He rocked back in his chair. Another gesture to her, this time to spin. “Section 21C of the study was conclusive.”

She spun slowly, peeking over a naked shoulder at him, smoothing her hands over the snug strapless bodice, the beadwork cool under her palms. The black fit-and-flare’s skirt—a short mille-feuille of organza—swirled. And swirled again as she spun again, faster this time. And again. Faster still.

“I made notes on the PDF.” His voice was husky now. “Hm? . . . Soon. Having trouble retrieving the file.” He hanged up the phone. “Come here.”

She didn’t move. “No ‘Goodbye. Thanks for calling?’”

“It’s understood.”

“Doesn’t mean people don’t like to hear it. And, honey, it’s,” she looked at her watch, “pushing eight. People like being thanked for going above and beyond.”

“He is thanked by way of his exorbitant salary. Come here.”

“Say ‘please.’”

He stood, holding her gaze. Stepped around the desk.

She held her ground, though she bit her lip in not entirely mocked terror.

He invaded her space, separated from her by mere centimetres. “Please.”

She stepped into him, her arms going around his neck. “Hi,” she grinned.

“Hello.” He captured her lips in his, tongue probing, and she let him in gladly.

But apparently the office atmosphere did not lend itself to seduction, for he retreated from the kiss far too soon.

“You look exceptionally lovely tonight,” he said.

“So do you.
” She smoothed back his hair. “All fixed. What’s going on?”

“Technical problems. My EA lost an important file.”

“The PDF with your notes?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you have a copy?”

“It was saved to a secure server.”

“But your EA lost it.”

“It’s the only explanation.”

“Right,” she agreed. “Naturally.”

“I sense sarcasm.”

“You’re the smartest man I’ve ever met.”

The phone console rang, preventing any immediate response from him, though she was certain the exaggerated wryness of his grimace was meant to suppress a smile. As he took the call, she moved to the main door and stepped into the executive assistant’s area.

“Hi,” she greeted, recognising the woman at the desk. “It’s Ms. Leung, isn’t it?”

Ms. Leung reacted with the shocked startle-response of someone under extreme stress, gasping and jerking in her chair.

“Oh, hello, Ms. Russell! I wasn’t aware you were here.” Calmer, the EA stood. “May I get you coffee? Tea? A glass of wine, perhaps?”

“I’m fine, thanks. And just Erin. Apparently you’re missing a file?”

“Yes.” The woman swallowed. “Quite inconvenient.”

Latching onto a chair from the waiting area, Erin dragged it behind the desk beside Ms. Leung’s, plunking herself into it. “Let’s see what’s what.”

When Ms. Leung hesitated, she assured:

“I work for Xcess. Signed all the appropriate NDAs and everything
.”

“So you know servers?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Ms. Leung sat again, pushing the keyboard in Erin’s direction. “Help yourself.”

“Server IP?”

The address given, along with the file name, Erin searched.

“How long have you worked for Ford?”

“
Just more than four years. Since the beginning.”

“Is he a good boss?”

“Oh, yes. Of course.”

Erin grinned. “You can tell me. I imagine he’s a real pain in the ass.”

“No, really. I’ve worked for asses,” Ms. Leung assured. “Mr. Howard is the epitome of professionalism.”

Still, he should have called IT rather than stressing you out.
“When was the file created? Do you remember?”

“This morning. Before noon. But I believe Mr. Howard made some changes to it this afternoon. Just before I was to email it.”

Erin peripherally noted that Ms. Leung’s hands were trembling. “We’ll find the file, Ms. Leung. Or at least find out what happened to it.”

“I hope so. Call me Tai. Please.”

“Beautiful name. It’s not Chinese, though, is it?”

“No, Vietnamese. My grandmother was French-Vietnamese.”

“Very cool.”

The light conversation had the desired effect of de-stressing Tai—or at least relaxing her a bit.

Erin did a simple DOS search, frowning in concentration at the results. “Odd.”
Click, click.
A PDF opened. “Is this it?”

Tai heaved a relieved breath. “Oh. Oh, yes! Where was it?”

“Mm. Just a system glitch. Renamed and moved. Not your fault at all.” She saved it to the desktop under its original name. “There you go.”

“Erin.”

She looked up to see Ford leaning on the doorjamb. “Hey! We found it.”

“Excellent. Ms. Leung, email the file to Barnes.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else for tonight?”

“That will be all.”

“Thank you, Erin,” Tai said, smiling a slight, cool, and professional smile, but her dark eyes glowed appreciation.

“Anytime,”
Erin assured, and rose to drag her chair back to its proper place. “You should go out for some celebratory drinks and dinner after such a long, tough day. I’m sure Ford will honour the receipt for you and a couple friends.”

Ford held out his hand and she grasped it, winking at him.

“Yes, do that, Ms. Leung.”

“Thank you, sir. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Tai,” Erin called as Ford pulled her into his office and closed the door behind them. “I need to look at your PC,” she said.

“Why did you put me on the spot like that?”

“Because you’ve kept her here late, stressed to the hilt, essentially blaming her for something that wasn’t her fault. You should have had IT on it right away.”

“Whose fault was it, if not hers?”

“Yours. You have a virus on the PC you use to access the server. I assume this one?” She pointed to the PC on the short ell off the credenza.

“That
is not possible.”

“It was an upload. At 3:41 this afternoon. What were you doing?” She had already seated herself in his chair, settling into its depths with the wireless keyboard on her lap.

“That is not possible,” he repeated.

“I think you should look up the definition of that. Both. ‘Not’ and ‘possible.’ Because it happened.”

“I fell victim to some sort of email virus?” An offended tone underscored his incredulity.

“Nope. As I said, it was an upload, not a download. Came from an external. Did you plug in a jump drive?”

A beat. “Yes.”

“Where is it?”

He withdrew a jump drive from his suit-jacket pocket. “It isn’t possible this has a virus.”

“Why not? Because
unless you plugged another one into this terminal, it does.”

“Two people use this drive. It’s to transfer sensitive materials without the possible compromise of email hacking.”

“Good idea,” she said, looking at the monitor as she scrolled and clicked. “But it got compromised.”

“I trust the other person.”

“I thought you didn’t trust anyone,” she mused absently. “In any case, the trust isn’t necessarily misplaced. Is anyone still in IT tonight?”

“Probably.”

She reached for the phone and dialled the extension when he gave it.

A man answered after the second ring. “IT.”

“Hi, who’s this?”

*

Hands shoved in trouser pockets, Ford listened to her half of the conversation.

“Manny,” she smiled widely in that friendly way she had, and Ford thought of how the smile sounded in her voice over the phone, the many times he had heard it. “Well, Manny, I’m Erin from Xcess. I think we met a few weeks back . . . Right! Anyway, I’m in Ford’s office with a virus on his PC that’s affected—infected,” she chuckled, “a server. IP,” she hesitated, then recited the address. Listened. “It’s a kernel rootkit . . . I know! Right? I’m guessing it’s MitM, but it’s glitchy. Had an unexpected behaviour—”

Ford concentrated, getting the gist without understanding the nuance. Like most Millennials, he had an excellent grasp of using technology without knowing how it actually worked. Erin could have been speaking in code for all it made sense to him.

How confident she was. Sitting in his chair in her beautiful dress, long tresses confined in an elegant twist, talking in a mystery language riddled with casual idioms. As comfortable as if she were in jeans and a ponytail, as he had seen her many times.

So lucky he had been, meeting her. She gave herself, of herself, to everything, and made it seem so effortless. Being with her effortless. No hints for more. No demands. Just encouraging gentler behaviours from him and opening his world to something new.

Soothing and exciting all at once. A world of possibilities.

The now-familiar panic rose. Ebbed.

“I can walk the drive down to you . . . Sure? Okay. You have Ford’s IP? . . . Of course. Silly me. I’ll reboot. Let me know when you’re ready.” She clicked a few times and the machine powered down.

She looked up at him, winking.

He frowned. “This is a serious situation.”

“Would be. If we hadn’t caught it. Or if it were a better-written virus. Manny’s on it.”

The tech obviously said something to her, because she laughed and made a responding quip about IT rock stars.

“How was it badly written?” Ford asked.

“I think it was supposed to have a double-edged payload. An eavesdropping thing. Man-in-the-middle. With a backdoor access.”

“English, please.”

“That was English
.” She winked. “Hold on. Yeah, Manny? . . . Okay.” To Ford, “Drive, please!”

He handed her the jump drive and she slotted it into a USB port. A moment later, eyes on the monitor: “I see. Crap. Can you clean it?” She listened. “Great. Thanks. Let me give you my cell number.” Another recitation, and then, “Thanks again. You’re the bomb. Talk soon.”

She hanged up the receiver and stood. “Still taking me to dinner?”

He blinked. “That’s it?”

“Sure. Manny’s got this. Nothing we can do. He’ll call if there’s a problem. It’ll take quite a while, though, getting it out of the system, and he’ll check the other servers as well, just in case.”

“You were saying? About it being badly written.”

“Viruses aren’t really my thing. I specialised in forensics. But the payload—that’s the thing the virus delivers—had two purposes, as far as I can tell, and one interfered with the other. My best guess is that it was supposed to—Um. How to explain best? Create a hidden space that could be accessed by remote backdoor access, copy and send files there, all while eavesdropping on communiques. But it partly failed. Rather than copying the file, it renamed and deleted it after you updated it. Good thing IT hadn’t run the daily backups yet. Would have been gone forever.”

“I know you think that explains everything, but
—No. No more explaining.” He chuckled as she made to speak again. “But wouldn’t the writer of the virus test it properly?”

She shrugged. “Might have been a time issue. Limited access to that jump drive, and had to leap at a window of opportunity. So it’s someone other than you and the other handler of it.” She approached him, straightening and tightening the knot on his tie. “Manny and his team will try to find the author. Hackers are notoriously ego-centric. There may be a signature of sorts.”

“Why didn’t you tell my EA that it was my fault? A virus?”

“Aside from the fact that belittling one’s lover—especially publicly—is mean and petty, it might have caused huge problems for you. What if she got mad at you? Quit in a fit of fury? She wouldn’t have stayed on as your EA for
over four years if you weren’t a good team.”

He had never thought of Ms. Leung—or any of his long-standing staff—in that way before.

“You are very beautiful and very smart,” he said quietly.

“Thank you,” she chuckled. “And very hungry. I did ask her what sort of boss you are.”

“What did she say?”

“That you were the, um, epitome of professional.” She grinned, stroking a hand through his hair. “Made me feel all warm and fuzzy.”

“Did it?” he demanded, tugging her against him, liking the way she relaxed against him.

“Uh huh.”