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Mark was clean shaven with neatly trimmed sandy brown hair. He was in his mid-forties and fairly thin. Every day he wore a long sleeved, white shirt and black or brown pants to work. On days when he expected to meet with someone he wore a tie, but today he didn’t have one. He always kept a spare in his desk drawer for unexpected company but he really hated wearing one, so the employees under him were never required to wear one either. He always told them to keep a spare on hand in case they were also required to meet with clients. This was for the male employees, the female employees were just instructed to dress tastefully. Since he had no idea what was considered tasteful for a woman he left that up to the women to decide.
Sarah came rushing up to Mark’s desk with an excited look on her face. “Mark! I found it! It’s not even our fault!” Sarah exclaimed loudly.
Sarah was Mark’s assistant, technically second in command. Whenever Mark was away, meeting with clients or just taking a day off, Sarah was in charge. Everyone in the office knew that Sarah was probably the most intelligent and gifted programmer in the whole office. Mark was only in charge because he was a better leader, he had a way of not only getting people to do their job efficiently but he could convince them to enjoy doing it.
Sarah was a short woman, five foot four, with long, somewhat curly, red hair which she always kept in a ponytail at work. Her green eyes were a sharp contrast to her hair and light complexion. Sarah was an athletic looking woman who looked like she could probably hold her own in a fight. She also happened to be quite beautiful. She liked to flirt with everyone, male and female alike, it was just the way she was. This, coupled with her stunning good looks, was very distracting to Mark but as he always told everyone ‘He was very married’, meaning he was still in love with his wife of twenty years, Jennifer.
Today Sarah wore a particularly bright, red dress that went to her knees. It was very tasteful in Marks opinion, except for the fact that Sarah had left the top two buttons undone. This meant that every time she bent over to speak to someone or if someone was standing above her, they would be unable to miss her ample cleavage. However, Sarah was allowed more latitude than anyone else in Mark’s office. Partly because she was Mark’s friend but mostly because everyone knew they would be lost without her.
Despite his attraction to Sarah, she was Mark’s best friend, both at work and outside of it. Sarah had been to Mark’s house several times for family get-togethers with whomever she was with at the time. Jennifer and Sarah actually got along very well, though Jennifer didn’t quite have the same friendship as Mark had with her, Jennifer considered Sarah one of her closest friends. Both of the women knew that Mark would never cheat on Jennifer, especially not with Sarah. They would often joke about it leaving Sarah’s current date feeling left out and uncomfortable.
“What did you find?” Mark asked calmly. It was never a good idea to act as excited as Sarah, it would only cause her to get louder.
“It wasn’t us!” Sarah exclaimed again with far more enthusiasm than most people had for source code but Mark was used to it. His friend was very excitable. This was one of the many things that made them such good friends. Mark had a hard time being in a bad mood whenever she was around.
“Hurry up, cutie! They need this by the end of the day!” Sarah looked at Mark with a silly smile, raised one eyebrow, and then rushed back to her office. Reluctantly Mark followed Sarah to her office. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, nor did he object to going to her office. He just knew that Sarah was going to make a big deal out of it and he would come out feeling like a fool for not seeing it as easily as she did.
Sarah’s office was right next to Mark’s, though you would not be able tell whose office you were walking into without the name tags. All the offices on this floor were positioned along a long hallway with each office laid out identically. Once inside it became clear that this was Sarah’s office. Unlike Mark’s bare, businesslike office, Sarah had many tiny figures on shelves as well as a TV with a gaming system hooked up to it. Everyone in the office knew that Sarah was what most people consider a geek. She loved her sci-fi books, movies and games almost as much as she loved her job. This was endearing to most of the other programmers in the office, they felt comfortable with her, more so than with Mark. Mark didn’t need them to feel comfortable with him, he was the boss. He needed them to respect him and trust him, and for the most part, everyone did. If their office was a family he would be like the father and Sarah the cool, older sister.
Sarah plopped down in her chair and spun it quickly toward the monitor. She slapped her hands down on the desk on either side of the keyboard to stop herself and then pointed to a window on the screen. “Look at this!”
“Wait, this isn’t ours,” Mark said curiously as he leaned toward the monitor.
Sarah had a session opened to the client’s computer and on the screen was what would look like garbage to most people. The window contained scrolling text that flew by quickly. Mostly, it was a bunch of names and numbers but Mark saw the pattern right away.
