“Has anything else arrived since the last time you looked?”
She leaned forward, typing quickly. “I don’t know…nope. The only thing that has arrived is a copy of a contract and an e-mail from a girlfriend in Geneva. Who has probably broken up with her boyfriend again.”
Silence. She could almost hear the men thinking.
“Do you have any military contracts for translation? Come to think of it, the military has dealings all over the world. They might outsource some translation stuff.”
“No. I’d have to apply for a security clearance for myself and my collaborators. I’ve thought about it, a lot, but have never gotten around to it. I will, though. There’s a lot of work with the military, it’s a big field.”
“State Department?”
“The State Department has its own internal translators, a really good service. They don’t outsource anything.”
“What about industrial espionage?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you get translations—texts—that someone could make money knowing? Some industrial secrets?”
Nicole was shaking her head. “We’re too young a company for that. We do good work, but any corporation that had industrial secrets someone would be willing to steal at the point of a gun—well, they wouldn’t send them to us. I guarantee a certain degree of confidentiality, there’s a non-disclosure clause in the contract, and my firewalls are pretty good. But any corporation that entrusted me with truly valuable secrets, well, they’d be so foolish that presumably just about anyone could access them. Someday I’m going to set up the company to guarantee a maximum degree of confidentiality, including encryption, but that kind of software costs a lot of money and I’d have to up my price considerably. Now is not the time to do that.”
Silence, male cogs whirring.
Finally the lieutenant stirred. “All this banking stuff. Is any of it—” his cell rang and he held up a finger. He listened, grunted, closed the cell. He looked at Nicole. “My men are in place, your father’s protected.”
Nicole slumped, letting out a long breath. “Thank you.”
Sam’s warm hand on her shoulder reminded her that she was protected, too.
“Hey.” The tech who’d been dusting for prints lifted something that looked like a thick plastic string. “Look what I found. Guy must have lost it off his utility belt.”
The men turned to look. Sam’s hand tightened on her shoulder.
“Jesus,” Harry breathed. It was the first word he’d spoken since coming into the room.
“What?” Nicole looked around at the grim male faces. “What is it?”
“A goddamned restraint,” Sam said, the words falling out of his mouth like stones.
“A what?”
“A restraint.” He turned, eyes burning into hers. “He was planning on handcuffing you.”
“Why would he—” Nicole began, then stopped. There were all sorts of reasons an intruder would be willing to handcuff her, none of them good.
Sam nodded. “Yeah. So let’s fucking figure out what the fucker wanted so fucking badly, so we can fucking go get him.”
Nicole sat back, a little shocked at the idea that Sam had foiled a plan that not only included guns but also included handcuffs. And, if they included handcuffs, it probably also included pain.
A part of her also noticed that Sam’s language deteriorated badly when he was stressed.
“You seem to do a lot of banking stuff,” the lieutenant said again, breaking the silence.
Nicole nodded. “Yes, we do have a great deal of economic expertise.”
“Could there be anything someone would be willing to kill for in those bank reports? Sometimes a lot of money can be involved in these things. Maybe someone was looking at losing millions.”
Nicole was shaking her head before he finished. “I can definitely rule that out. Most of the economic texts we translate are to fulfil legal requirements, for board meetings and such. In Europe, the record usually must be in the language of the meeting and English, so foreign shareholders can read it. No one would send us information that would involve a lot of money. We’re simply too small and too young for that kind of data. Our work is strictly routine.”
