“Jackie North?”
“Yes, can I help you?” She rose from her desk and padded in her bare feet toward the door.
The man turned back out, his foot propping the door open. He rolled in a cart laden with flowers, at least a dozen vases chock-full of perfectly formed and fragrant long-stemmed red roses. He lined them up on Marilyn’s desk.
Overwhelmed by the scent and the abundance, Jackie interrupted his work. “There must be a mistake. Surely not all of these are for me.”
“Look, I just deliver. Your name is on all of these and the other twelve in my truck.” He continued to line up the vases in a tidy field.
“Who are they from?” Jackie poked around the flowers for a card.
The deliveryman shrugged one shoulder. “Delivery guy, not psychic.”
A tiny card stuck up through the green foliage. Jackie slid her finger along the miniature envelope and pulled out the card, her heart pumping. It read:
Let me explain. My boat at 7:00 p.m. Brandon.
Eyes narrowed against the sea of red, she ripped the card into confetti and tossed it over her shoulder. Before she could make it back into her office, the outer door opened again.
Between gritted teeth, she mumbled, “What is this, a freaking convention?”
“Whoa, somebody’s got a boyfriend who’s a lot more romantic, and richer, than I could ever hope to be.” Max Lauffer sauntered into her office. He stopped at the threshold. “Jesus, you look bad.”
“Love you too, Max.”
The tall, lanky man threw his frizzy, mouse-brown hair back and let go a deep laugh. “My guy Jared said you needed help. I came over as soon as possible. I may be an unromantic asshole, but I don’t see anyone else around here helping you, and you look like you could use a friend right now.”
Over coffee, Jackie explained the disappearing data and provided only enough background on the Ashe case to paint the full picture. Max nodded patiently as she laid out her various theories.
He put his hands up. “Stop, will you? This is more drama than I can take.”
Jackie slapped her hands on her desk. “Max, how do you think I feel? This is all ridiculous.”
He got up, moved around the desk, and gave Jackie a nudge. “Up. Go plug everything in. Let me take a look.”
Jackie worked her way around the office, inserting plugs into sockets and turning on computers and surge protectors. By the time she got back to her office, Max was furiously tapping away at the keyboard.
She peeked over his shoulder. Incomprehensible lines spooled on the screen. “How’d you get into the system?”
Max leaned back in her chair and held up a yellow sticky note.
He gave her an eye roll. “I thought you were a legal genius? Who writes their passwords down and leaves them in her desk drawer?”
Her admin password. Shit. Jesus, she was a fuckup. “Can we skip the lecture?”
“No problem. Looks like your firewall was tampered with. There’s remote-access software on your hard drive.”
Jackie leaned over his shoulder. The stuff on the screen might as well have been hieroglyphics. “Could Marilyn have put it there?”
“Marilyn had administrator access. It would be a little superfluous for her to go this route. Does anyone else have access to your office suite?”
“I don’t know, the cleaning people, the building owner.” Jackie’s mind ticked back in time. “Wait, we had a phone guy come in a few weeks ago after our service went out.”
“Bingo.” Max rolled the chair back, his lanky arms and legs flailing. “Well, bottom line is that you are good to go now. I can probably retrieve your missing data, but it’s going to take time. Whoever did this was pretty sophisticated.”
“It would seem that way.”
Max got up and gave Jackie a chaste kiss on the top of her head. “Gotta roll.”
Jackie grabbed his arm. “The data. How soon can you recover it?”
“A week. Maybe two.”
“Two weeks! Max, I don’t have two weeks.”
He shrugged. “Sorry, babe. I suspect the hacker is known as Leprechaun. Known to work with blue-blood financial people. He’s good, and I’m swamped. Later. Karaoke tonight.”
He winked and left with a gangly saunter.
The field of red roses crowded Jackie’s vision and filled her head with an overwhelming sweet scent. Blue-blood financial types, eh? Like Washington financial whizzes?
She ran to her desk and punched in a number without need of looking it up in her contacts. “Please be there,” she prayed.
“Semper Fi Security. Stanley here,” the voice barked from the receiver, a slight quiver at the end, detectable only to those who’d heard that greeting a million times.
“Stan, it’s Jackie. I need your help.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jackie checked her watch and then looked out the window of her loft. Dusk descended on Baltimore. The sun’s red glow cut through the evening’s haze. Her plan risked everything. Her career. Her reputation. Her life?
Her stomach tightened. She regretted withdrawing from the case. If she succeeded tonight, she’d redeem herself. Maybe Judge Brownley would let her back on the case.
She sifted through her closet and dresser and then moved on to the three overflowing clothesbaskets on her couch. “What does one wear to break into a law office,” she asked herself with a nervous giggle.
She’d want to appear inconspicuous, just another attorney working late. Black stretchy slacks, dress Mary Janes, and a dark pewter silk sweater with three-quarter length sleeves. Comfortable, movable, professional, yet nothing flashy enough to attract attention.
Her phone was fully charged, set to vibrate, and stowed on her waistband in the dorky holster clip she’d picked up at the electronics store on the way home. A black messenger bag with her laptop and flash drive completed her ensemble.
Her phone buzzed, alerting her to a text message:
Are you coming? B.
Her thumb hovered above the Reply button for a few seconds before she triumphed over the urge and hit Delete.
Another text message came in:
Ready. Foxy.
That was Stan’s signal that everyone had left from Fenton & Stone for the day. The cleaning crew was not scheduled until early morning, so she’d have plenty of time. Max’s number was on speed dial in case she had any technical questions. Hopefully, his karaoke date wouldn’t be hot and heavy.
She paused before sending her reply to Stan. What she planned was insane. If caught, she’d lose everything. Headlines popped into her mind. Police. Criminal charges. Disbarment. Prison.
Her stomach did a flip-flop. She tensed. Those material things were pointless. She’d once told Brandon about why she’d started her own firm and taken the underdogs’ cases—because it was the right thing. She’d abandoned the Kovels and the other plaintiffs over her idiotic belief that some guy loved her. She owed it to them to get the key evidence back into the hands of Simon. By the time the police investigated, Stone or Ashe would have destroyed the data. Who knew when Max might be able to retrieve it either? She had to strike while she had the chance.
She gave Stan the go-ahead in a text.
The walk to Fenton & Stone’s building was peaceful. Jackie put out of her head the fact that she was about to break-and-enter a building. Was it technically breaking and entering if she still had a key? She wished she’d paid more attention to criminal law back in law school. She reminded herself that the truth was more important. Besides, in about two days, she’d be officially broke.
With a deep breath, she counted to ten and walked up the steps to the building like she belonged there. She slid the magnetic card into the building’s lock. The door clicked, and she pushed it open to step into the sterile air-conditioning. She made a note to herself to track employees’ card keys. Before resigning from Fenton & Stone, she’d lost this one. It turned up a few weeks later, and she never threw it out.
Although her Mary Janes were quiet on the granite floor, the guard looked up as she entered. She stopped at his desk. “Good evening, Stan, just working a little late. Here, I brought you some pastries.”
Jackie pulled out a brown bag from her messenger bag and set it down in front of Stan behind the ledge of his podium. He opened it, pulled out a pastry, and slid a key card into the bag. “Thanks, sweetheart. I left you one. You might get hungry. Don’t work too hard. I’ll make my rounds at midnight.”
“Okie dokie,” she said with a perky smile. Her heart pounded and sweat trickled from her armpits down her sides. The building was full of cameras, all of which Stan controlled from his booth. He’d assured her he’d turned off the video, but she still felt the eye of the lobby’s camera on the back of her head.
The elevator opened immediately. She slid the key card into the slot and pushed the button for Fenton & Stone’s floor. The ride was fast and smooth, the elevator softly dinging as it passed each floor. Her ascent stopped unexpectedly on the twentieth floor.
Her breath caught as the doors opened. A pudgy young man stared at her. His tie hung loose around his neck and sweat ringed dark under the arms of his blue button-down shirt.
“Going up?” Jackie squeaked.
“Down. Sorry.” He took one step back, his head hung between rounded shoulders. Had she looked like that when she’d worked late nights at Fenton & Stone?
Her floor arrived, and the doors parted to reveal Fenton & Stone’s austere foyer. She stepped out like she owned the place even though the key card slipped in her sweaty hands. The door’s lock buzzed and blinked red when she inserted the card. Her heart pounded up to her throat. She wiped her hand on her pants and turned the card around.
A green light and soft
click
responded to her prayer. She opened the door and moved past the receptionist’s desk toward Kevin’s office, where she guessed most of the documents would be stored. Luckily, Kevin suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder to a high degree and the boxes of documents lining his wall bore neat labels with their production dates.
The last production wasn’t there. Shit.
She walked down the hall to Gary’s office. Her footsteps were silent on the plush carpet. The cleaning people would vacuum up any signs of her presence too. His office was locked. He had never locked his door before. She sat down at his secretary’s cube and searched through drawers.
Nothing.
Who had replaced Marilyn?
She snapped her fingers. Kevin’s former secretary got the promotion. Jackie remembered her well. She typically hid keys in binders.
Jackie pulled binders out one by one from the shelf above the desk. A set of keys was taped in the spine of the third pick. She crossed her fingers and stepped across the hall to Gary’s office. The second key on the ring slid in easily and turned in the lock.
“You people suck at security,” she said aloud, then slapped her hand over her mouth. No one is here, she reminded herself.
She closed and locked the door behind her, then flipped on the light. No boxes of documents adorned the floor of Gary’s office. It was a complete mess, though. Papers uncharacteristically cluttered his desk. Dirty shirts lay crumpled on the floor. Microwave food containers and bags from fast-food joints were piled in a mountain on the coffee table. It looked like he was living here.
Starting on her left, Jackie searched through the bookshelves for CDs or other forms of data storage. The third shelf held a box like a big Rolodex, full of CDs labeled with
Kovel v. Ashe.
She flipped to the end and pulled out the one she needed. Jackpot. She’d need to make a copy, which should take a few minutes at most. She sat down on one of the guest chairs in front of his desk and pulled her laptop out of her bag and inserted the CD.
Password protected.
She typed in lawdog1, which Gary used for all of his passwords. Denied. She tried the names of his pets. Denied. She jumped at the rumble of the air-conditioner starting up. The cool breeze tickled the back of her neck where sweat had run down.
Even her miniscule IT prowess surpassed Gary’s. Maybe he had a list of passwords in his desk. She put her laptop down and walked around to his desk, where she sank into his oversize leather chair. None of his drawers was locked. She rummaged through the mess of papers.
The lock in the door clicked as loud as a cherry bomb. Frozen, she watched the door open slowly. The barrel of a gun protruded through the crack. On the other side of the desk, from the floor, her phone vibrated.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jackie ducked underneath the desk and held her breath. The closing and locking of the door echoed in the empty office. A shadow flickered across the gap under the desk. Someone was walking toward her laptop. They stopped in front of the desk.
“Jackie, get out from under the desk, for heaven’s sake,” a familiar voice hissed.
Jackie slammed her head into the desk. “Ow!”
“Shhhhhhh.”
Jackie backed out from underneath the desk on all fours and looked up at a perfectly coifed Marilyn Morris in a black tracksuit, holding a very big revolver in one hand and a Chanel handbag in the other.
“What are you doing here?” Jackie hurried to the front of the desk to huddle with Marilyn.
“Isn’t that obvious? I’m here to help you. Not to mention salvage my own reputation.” She glanced at the laptop lying on the floor at her feet. “Locked out by a password-protected file?”
Jackie slumped. “I’m sorry. I was horrible, I—”
Marilyn put her hand up to silence Jackie, the gold chain of the purse falling down to the crook in her elbow. “Enough. I know how your paranoia functions. Once you thought about it, you’d come to the conclusion that I would never betray you. Let’s get to work.” She set the gun down on the desk.
Jackie prodded the gun with her forefinger. “Is that a real gun? Is it loaded? Where’d you get it?”
“Of course it’s real, and yes, it’s loaded. I’ve carried concealed for years.” Marilyn gave her a swat on the wrist. “Stop playing. We need to hurry.”
Marilyn tapped on the keyboard, entering passwords. “Got it! Do you have a jump drive, or do you want me to burn this to your hard drive?”
“How did you know the password? And how did you know I was here?”