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Sighing, I think to myself that I don’t want to be one of those kinds of women that get offended by anything and everything, so I accept his comment gracefully.
“Thank you,” I say and purposefully get back to work, leaving him no room for small talk.
Jeff stands there by my desk for a few more seconds, staring at me then he shuffles away. I breathe a sigh of relief and feel that I’m going to need a shower once I get home. To wash off the icky feeling.
Don’t know what it is, but that man gives me the willies. My body shudders involuntarily as the thought runs the forefront of my mind.
Finished for the day, I shut everything down and head to the kitchen to turn everything off. After asking both guys if they needed anything else before I take off for the day, I leave and get in my car to go home.
During the drive, I decide that I’ll get some pastries to take into work the next morning. Stopping by the local bakery, I step inside a wonderful world of dough and delight. Since I was a kid, I’ve always had a thing for donuts and Danish delights.
I ask for two dozen assorted and take leave with boxes in hand. Hopefully this will settle James and David down. I know the engineers will have a ball.
I get home and decide that I’m going to go for a walk this evening. Work out some of the stress of the day. Picking a pair of black leggings and a long-sleeve tee, I put them on and put my hair up into a ponytail.
Once my shoes are on, I grab my keys and step outside the door. Taking in a deep breath, I start to walk down the street but I don’t make it too far before my neighbor, Louis, stops me to talk.
Being polite, I shoot the breeze for a minute before waving goodbye and begin my walk again. While I’m walking at a good pace now, up ahead of me is a car with a familiar face. I stop dead in tracks and my mouth drops.
Is that Jeff? Here?
The car takes off before I can really get a good look at the person, but I would swear on a bible that it was Jeff in that car.
I quickly head back home and decide to get myself a can of bear spray.
Seventeen
David
Yawning as I walk into the office at this early hour, I curse James for wanting to talk about this breach before anyone came in today. Lucky for me, he chose four o’clock this morning, well before the rooster even thought about crowing.
I see only one light on in the entire place and it’s in my office. Great.
I hope he at least had the foresight to make a very large pot of coffee and am invigorated when I smell it from the hall. I lean in the doorway watching him lay out differing sets of papers across the top of my desk. “Tell me again why we are here before the vampires call it a night?”
He looks back at me, carefully eyeing me as I take the few steps to my desk and sit down. “What have we here?”
“Well, these are the various ways that we could close the breach and protect our information from being a target again,” he explains to me while I pour two cups of coffee, handing James one.
“Which do you think is the best and the least costly?” I ask him taking a swig of the steamy breakfast favorite.
“Thanks,” James takes the coffee and drinks it before setting it down and answering me. Ever since we were little, James has been a very serious person. Never into having much fun, he did then and still does, place all of his efforts into education and growing this business.
It’s his ‘baby’ of sorts and if something tries to hurt it, he’ll protect it at all costs. “I think that if we make copies of all the remaining files, moving them to a secure location, we then can send a virus through the rest of them.”
I look at him curiously with disbelief that he, of all people, would suggest something so incredulous. “You really think that this is the best course of action?” I ask James as he sits across from me in my office. The stone face staring back at me nods his affirmation.
“Yes. It would send a code through the files rendering them corrupt with false information. There is no way to recover the information that’s already taken. At least we could prevent any more from being stolen,” he explains his thought process to me and I admit it sounds logical. “And it barely costs anything.”
“As long as we keep it on the down low,” I say with half a smile. “Only giving access to the engineers that we trust one thousand percent.”
“Agreed,” James says as he drinks his cooled coffee. He gathers up the piles of papers
and sets them all into one. “I’ll shred the others and begin work on our plan this morning.” He begins to stand, but stops and sits down again, “By the way.”
“Yeah?” I say to him over the stack of papers.
“I’ve been monitoring Lily’s computer,” James lets out a sigh, “and so far, she hasn’t done a thing.” He looks up at me in earnest. “She hasn’t even tried to access that particular set of accounts, let alone any others.”
