2 Executive Retention Page 22

  "Is he still breathing?" I screamed back at Becky. I don't know if she heard me, but she gave a thumbs up. She wasn't scrambling to get away from a dead body so I figured it was probably okay. At least it was as good as could be expected for a guy that had just had a heart attack and then had food plastered on him from his bald head all the way down his pants.

  Closing in, the helicopter descended rapidly. I didn't like the way the hospital loomed out more suddenly than I expected. My stomach rolled again. I made the mistake of looking over at Radar. Uh-oh.

  He had a funny look on his face and one hand was near his cell phone for a scant moment.

  "It's the snow, isn't it?" The flakes were only drifting lightly, but our motion caused them to swirl like crazy impeding our vision as we tried to land. The closer we got to the pad, the more snow the rotor pushed into the air around us. With the ground lights, it was blinding. There were colors and reflections all directions. I was positive we were about to die.

  "Can you do this?" The old adage about more people dying in the hospital than anywhere else chose that moment to pop into my worried brain.

  Radar grunted. He didn't have time for questions. He put all his concentration into the task at hand. The front panel was an engineering dream; two six-inch screens presented everything digitally, but now that we were landing, Radar seemed to trust his eyes more than anything.

  We touched down solidly without bouncing. He flicked buttons and spoke into the headphones again. Hospital personnel with a gurney made their way through the drifting snow, keeping their heads down against the slowing rotor wind. Radar finished shutting things down, and opened his door. Cold air swirled.

  My legs shook, but I managed to get out and make my way around the chopper.

  Radar snagged my arm. "When we were landing," he reached down and detached his cell phone from his waist. "I got paged." He showed me the panel, but the message meant nothing to me so he explained, "I had it set up to send a particular message if someone accessed those laid off employee files we're watching."

  "You're saying…you just got paged now?" Jacques had been in the helicopter with us. He couldn't have been checking on those files. That would mean my pet theory, that Jacques was guilty, was wrong.

  My shoulders slumped. In my heart I had known Jacques lacked the raw ability to be a hacker, but he had such other, obvious, criminal qualities. I sighed. "Why now? What were they accessing?"

  But Radar trotted off to talk to a guy waving fluorescent batons.

  Maybe Jacques had people that worked for him. Maybe someone had panicked when Jacques had his heart attack and…and…something.

  Becky came out of the back and dusted off her hands. "Can we fly back?" she asked as we watched Jacques get rolled into the building.

  I looked at her dubiously and wondered how much she had had to drink at the party.

  She patted my shoulder. "It wasn't that bad, was it? He kept breathing the entire time and geez, I guess my hubby is going to have to drive back all by himself. Do you think he'll know to pick me up here?"

  "If he remembers to get your purse, you could call your cell phone." Radar appeared to be taking care of details. I decided to get myself out of this mess and find some other way home.

  On my way by, Radar flagged me down. "We'll need to leave the chopper here overnight. I'm not going to fly it back out tonight. You two want to join me in the morning?"

  "No, I'm sure my husband will find me." Becky waved and scurried towards the building. "I'm gonna go call the cell phone. Can you guys believe this?"

  I couldn't tell if she was yelling because the noise of the helicopter had damaged her eardrums or if she was just wound up from the events.

  I shook my head at Radar's offer. "I'll find some way back over there tomorrow."

  "Wasn't it sweet?" He didn't seem to need my confirmation, so I let the question go.

  Shaking my head, I followed Becky into the warm air of the hospital. I had no idea where they had taken Jacques. Since he would be undergoing tests anyway, there was nothing more I could do. I checked my watch. It was quite early. I had managed to leave the party before it even got started. It was barely six o'clock.

  Had the party been on Thursday, Brenda would have been getting off work and could have taken me home. Oh well. I didn't really want to be seen with a Mrs. Santa Claus. My reputation for oddness was bad enough without me adding fuel to the fire.

  Sean would be getting home from work shortly. He was gonna be mad at having to leave right away to come and get me.

  I called him anyway. That's what brothers were for.

  Chapter 33

  Apparently Radar had failed to notice my reluctance to fly again. He called at six-thirty in the morning, thinking I wanted to fly back in the helicopter.

  "Are you crazed?" I had fully planned on using the excuse that I didn't have a car so that I could take the morning off.

  "Be there in ten."

  The fuzzy cotton robe that I had owned since I was fifteen was definitely not appropriate for answering the door. I hung up and stomped into the shower.

  Radar showed up before I finished drying my hair. The marathon shower and rushed blow dry was the perfect recipe for a bad hair day. I settled for not looking too closely in the mirror.

  Radar followed me through the living room into the kitchen. "The wind is supposed to pick up later this morning, but right now it's clear, cold and beautiful. It's an awesome day to fly."

  "Hmph." I nuked some frozen kolaches. "I'm not flying on an empty stomach."

  I handed him one. He eyed the other one in my hand as if he was going to take it. I had forgotten about his appetite. "Forget it bud. Nothing gets between me and my food." I grabbed my backpack and locked the place up.

  He was driving a brown Ford. "The rental place gave me another car for the day when I explained I left the first one up in the mountains. I guess if Acetel can afford to pay for that little bird, it can pay for an extra car rental for a couple of days."

  Radar was right about the morning. It was blindingly bright out with a dusting of white covering everything. The snow had been light enough that the roads were clear, albeit a bit wet.

  The hospital landing pad had either been swept or never had much snow settle, because it was pristine. I was still glad Radar didn't need a runway to take off.

  My stomach wasn't really all that nervous until we were strapped in. In the light of day and with the mountains of Colorado all around us, Radar was right, I could enjoy myself a lot more than the previous evening. After we were cleared and in the air, he said, "I checked the computer last night after that page. The layoff list has been deleted. Completely erased."

  My nerves were suddenly back. "Oh no!"

  He nodded. The evil grin was nowhere to be found. Now that I wanted it, he had to be serious.

  "Even the people that really existed?"

  "Gone. The legal agreements were also gone. Any record of the severance package, gone."

  "For San Jose and Denton?" My heart sank to my toes, and it wasn't the flight this time.

  "I have no idea if the guy has gotten to the backup tapes yet, but my guess is if he hasn't, he will. That guy, Patel, that I told you about--he and Art are supposed to run nightly partial backups and weekly full backups. It's hard to say if either of them are really on schedule. I don't pay that much attention. There are probably some tapes somewhere that have those lists, but it's a good thing your buddy Huntington had me make copies of some things."

  My stomach came back online. "You did? Everything is okay then?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. How did you get hooked up with that guy anyway?"

  "Huntington? Sheer accident."

  "He hired me to protect a few areas, as he called it."

  "He has a way with assignments."

  Radar grinned. "He didn't think it was a bad idea for me to try some electronic tracking of whoever is nosing around, but unless we find the computer that was used to do the damage, and
that computer happens to be accessible to only one person, it's going to be impossible to prove who did it. In addition to the administrator's account, I found two other accounts being used that don't belong to real employees. I should have found them faster; they stick out like a sore thumb. I assumed the guy would be more clever so I outsmarted myself trying to follow email messages instead of looking through the login names for anything unusual."

  We circled the lake and came down over the water. "Are the fake accounts the ones that were collecting the emails when we were snooping?"

  As the helicopter descended, it looked as though we were going to land in the water, but sure enough, Radar brought us through an opening in the trees. As we climbed out of the helicopter Radar gave me more details. "I traced the emails back to the accounts all right, but it isn't going to do us any good. The guy can pick up his email from any machine, anytime. Although from now on, I did make sure any unopened mail doesn't make it to him." He shrugged. "It's a little late though. Obviously if he started deleting evidence, he knows we were there."

  "No clues in the fake login names?"

  Radar gave the helicopter a last pat. "What a nice bird."

  We walked toward our cars and he answered my question. "I tracked two accounts that obviously weren't real. You know anyone named Thoth?"

  "Gosh, I'll have to look through my Rolodex."

  "Two or three times just to be sure," he said sarcastically. "How about Silvanus? That was the other one."

  I stopped walking. All I managed was a squeak. "Silvanus?"

  Radar continued talking. "The names are from ancient gods, one is Egyptian and the other is…Roman I think. Anyway both names are common enough, so that doesn't mean much."

  Roman! That's exactly what Ben had said! "Did you tell Huntington?" Ben hadn't mentioned Thoth, but whoever was accessing the accounts illegally was probably the same person who had created a lot of the accounting files that Ben requested. Not that the connection would do any good since we still had no idea who was using Thoth or Silvanus.

  Radar finally noticed my expression. "No, I didn't mention it. Why? Do you think he knows them?"

  It still seemed like a good idea to tell him. "Lemme borrow your cell."

  He raised an eyebrow, but unclipped it and watched me dial. The condo phone rang and rang. I sent Huntington a page and then dug through my backpack until I found Mark's cell number.

  He answered. "Yeah?"

  "Hi Mark, it's me. Listen, uh, you know about Silvanus appearing on some of the file attributes as the author of certain accounting documents? And the one we saw in the lab?"

  Radar looked at me in surprise.

  "Of course. Why?" Mark asked.

  "Radar tracked the name of the user account that was watching certain files. One of the user accounts was Silvanus. The other was Thoth. Did Thoth happen to be on any of the files that went to Ben?"

  "Not a common name either, is it?" To my dismay he asked, "Are you absolutely sure it isn't Radar?"

  I glanced nervously at my companion. "Yes, I'm sure." I wasn't sure. How could I be? But why would he tell me the names, one of which happened to match the one already known, if it were his own user name?

  Mark didn't say anything for a while. "Look, we're meeting with A.J. this morning. I don't imagine he's going to know who is using those names, but maybe we can get some info out of him. Maybe he can pinpoint who in the company had responsibility for creating the files in question. That's when the files get assigned an author, right?"

  "Yes. It can be changed after that, but I doubt that the guy changed it to Silvanus on purpose. It's more likely that he is the one who authored the originals, and he never noticed he was logged in as that user. If we can find out who the likeliest person is to have created them, we might get somewhere."

  "It sounds a lot like a gamer name," Mark mentioned again.

  "Yeah," I swallowed, "Radar said something about both names being common."

  "It's a long shot that A.J. is going to know anyone on his staff that happens to be a gamer."

  I could tell he still didn't like Radar's involvement or his obvious skill set. "Thanks. Tell Huntington, will you?" Huntington would be jealous if I only told Mark. He was picky that way.

  "He'll be at the meeting. A.J. flies back to San Jose tonight."

  "Okay. See you." I hung up and handed the phone back to Radar. "Thanks."

  Radar looked at me in disgust. "You already knew the name that was being used?"

  I didn't really want to meet his eyes. If Mark had known Radar was standing in front of me while I reported those names, he wouldn't have thought me very bright. Radar could easily be guilty. He certainly had the talent to pull the whole thing off. "No, I didn't know both names. Huntington mentioned a long time ago that some files he saw had an author of Silvanus. I didn't think much of it until you said the name again just now."

  "But you didn't mention it to me." He added a couple of things up in his head and his smile brightened a notch. "Does Huntington think I'm guilty?"

  His amusement annoyed me. "Well, you are a gamer."

  Radar out-and-out laughed. "If I was pulling this scam, I'd be a hellava lot more careful, and I would have ditched the whole operation the minute I noticed someone on my tail."

  I looked him eye to eye, but I still wasn't absolutely positive. There were no cameras way out here. He looked like he was having an awful lot of fun. "Did you tell Pete we were bringing it in?" I looked back at the helicopter. In the cold morning every sound was magnified. The lake had bits of ice frozen near the edges and funny snow ledges all the way around. There was no reason for me to feel uneasy unless I counted the fact that I had been chased twice in the last two weeks and was standing with a suspect that if guilty, was a diabolical lunatic.

  "Pete said to make sure I got it here early because he needs it to get the airport so he can catch his plane back to San Jose." He looked back at the helicopter longingly. "I would have been waiting outside until that thing was home. No, I'd have gone and gotten it myself."

  His distraction seemed like a good time for me to get to my Civic, but as I turned, I spotted Pete waving from the porch. "Come on up," he called out. "Have a cup of coffee."

  I really wasn't in the mood to deal with Pete--or even Radar any longer, but it would have been rude to yell no. At least with Pete now on the scene, it wasn't likely Radar would conk me over the head and drag my body into the lake.

  I headed towards the house with Radar trailing slightly behind.

  "Come in, come in." Pete pulled the door open wide. "Great that you got the bird back!" He ushered us into a small study, complete with racks of books lined up like a professional library. "I had tea and coffee made and baked goods delivered before I let the staff off. I only have a skeleton crew come in and take care of the place when I'm not here." Pete moved a tray of cakes and donuts from his desk onto a round table. He seemed a bit at a loss as far as serving went, so we helped ourselves.

  "I called the hospital," he said.

  "How is Jacques doing?" I asked.

  "It doesn't look good. His heart hasn't been that healthy for a while, you know."

  "Becky mentioned it."

  "The last few months have been a God-awful nightmare. How is the investigation going?"

  The point-blank question caught me completely off guard. I glanced at Radar, but he had taken a seat on the plush leather couch and was quite busy with his second donut.

  "Uh, investigation?"

  Pete waved a hand at my hesitation. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm the CFO and on the board. Since you showed up right after A.J. gave the go ahead to hire investigators, it's pretty obvious you're on the team. A.J. mentioned you're making good progress."

  Apparently my being part of the team had been obvious to a lot of people. "Well, there are a lot of strange things going on at Acetel, but nothing completely concrete. It's hard to say who might be responsible for any real problems."

  "Strange things such as
what?"

  I shrugged meekly.

  He stared at me impatiently, his dark eyes drilling into me with that "coach" look--like he was about to tell me to run laps.

  Even Radar noticed the tension. He chewed slower and slower. I heard him gulp when he tried to wash the third donut down with a sip of coffee. He coughed.

  "I was hoping nothing strange, as you put it, would show up." Pete walked away from us and stared out a window. "We've given people a chance at something great. If someone is taking advantage of all the hard work we've put in let's either catch him at it or let's close this thing and move on." He might have been angry, but he sounded more inconvenienced than anything. He strode back to the middle of the room and loomed over us with his arms folded. "How hard can it be to sort through this mess and find out if someone is siphoning off business or money?"

  To my surprise, Radar said, "It's not that easy to figure out."

  I threw in my support. "None of the managers are squeaky clean."

  That didn't improve Pete's mood any. He kind of growled as he spun away from us and marched back to the window. "My managers have the right synergies. They're driven people. It's a matter of balancing the skills and having the vision to understand the future. You can replace engineers, but do you know how hard it is to replace a good manager?" He paced his way to the front of the desk. For the first time, I noticed a cat sprawled underneath the back edge. As Pete went by, little black paws swiped at the edge of his pants.

  I wished I had some nice, lethal claws. Where did Pete get off trying to convince two engineers that technical help was a dime a dozen while talking up his questionable management? "Jacques may be driven, but he's wasting a lot of resources. I know for a fact that he's trying to help Kronology to line his own pockets. He owns a large number of Kronology shares. Surely, you could do better."

  Pete didn't even have the grace to fake surprise. "I told Jacques a long time ago not to get too attached to the cases that came our way from those guys."