Page 7 of Grave Peril

After a couple of minutes, Lela stepped into the hall. The place was empty, and only the sound of the ventilation fan pierced the silence. Once in a while, she’d stayed late to get some work done. Then the tomblike quiet had been welcomed, as a chance to think through some legal question without interruption.

But this was different.

Lela moved down the hallway and took the stairs up one level to the floor that housed the senator’s office. Ceiling lights illuminated the way, and she spotted his door. There were security cameras, but she’d inserted a view of the empty hallway, which would play on a continuous loop. That had been the most difficult to figure out, yet she’d seen it done in movies.

She was no whiz with technology. But she had gotten some tips on how to achieve the block on the cameras, and prayed that it worked as she hoped.

Quickly, Lela picked the lock to the senator’s office. That was the easier part. She’d been picking locks since she was a teen, just for fun. It had been a game. This wasn’t.

The door eased open, and she stepped inside, closing it behind her. The late-day light cast the office in a soft glow. She’d been in there before, but only in the senator’s company. His massive mahogany desk gleamed from its daily polish.

The carpet was thick, so her feet sank into it. Plenty of padded leather chairs, glass and chrome tables, plus an entire wall of built-in bookcases rounded out the décor. But Lela wasn’t here to admire the senator’s good taste.

She was here on a mission, and the sooner she got what she needed then got out, the better. His computer was set up at a separate station, so she went over and pushed the power button. It booted fast, but then blinked, asking for a password.

Having expected this, Lela had a list of ideas in mind. Now she’d have to test a few of them. She went through the most obvious ones first, but with no success. Her pulse quickened as the minutes ticked by.

She couldn’t have come this far only to fail.

A noise in the hall alarmed her, and she held her breath. If she was found in here, there would be no way to explain her way out of it. She’d accounted for every staff member and watched them leave. Could someone have returned, forgotten something?

She listened closely, but didn’t hear anything else. Buildings made noises, just like houses did. The best thing was to keep going. Wasting precious seconds wasn’t helping.

With her hands trembling, Lela tapped on the keyboard again. She wasn’t cut out for this. Then it came to her. The senator would use a password that meant something to him. After all, he was scooping funds from illegal activities, and likely prided himself on how smart he was.

He wouldn’t use the name of his favorite pet, or his ex-wife’s name. That was too pedestrian for a man like Ortiz. But his ego was his downfall. So Lela typed in: au fait.

And sure enough, entry was granted. She smiled. Arrogant bastard. The term au fait was one of the senator’s favorites. He liked to think he had the quality in abundance. Lela had looked it up, and it was a French term that meant having detailed knowledge of something.

Clicking around on the computer, Lela muttered, “Well, asshole, I’m about to have detailed knowledge of something. Au fait indeed.”

She couldn’t afford the luxury of reading any documents, but some memos flashed by. Snippets of sentences flitted over the screen: contributions to your campaign, what we expect in return. The name of the contributor wasn’t stated, but the message was clear. The senator had taken illegal campaign contributions funded by drug money, combined with everything else he’d done.

“You are so busted.” Lela took the flash drive from her pocket and fumbled with it before plugging it in. Then she copied the hard drive. Whatever there was to find, she’d be able to read through at her leisure.

She hadn’t been certain how much the senator kept on his computer. But going by what she’d seen already, there was plenty. It seemed to take forever to copy all the data. Hurry…hurry.

Finally, the copying finished and she slipped the drive into her pocket. She turned off the computer and pulled a rag from her other pocket. Then she wiped her prints off the keyboard and, as she exited, cleaned the door.

As an employee, she’d been in his office before. But not since it had been cleaned, which was often. It was smarter to get rid of any evidence that she’d recently visited. Any information she obtained from his hard drive would need to be documented from another source. Yet she had a lot more to follow up on now.

The hallway was empty, so she went back down the stairs to her office. She didn’t bother with the security loop. It was on a timer, and would roll past in another hour or so. It would blend in with the regular footage, and she doubted anyone would discover the tampering.

She picked up her purse and headed toward the elevator. The flash drive was secure in her pocket. In the lobby, the security guard nodded at her. He looked bored, and didn’t make any attempt to engage her in chitchat.

Lela had walked by that guard hundreds of times, on too many days to count. When she lifted her hand and said, “See you,” he didn’t bat an eyelash. The guy was already back to studying something on the computer screen, probably a sports show to pass the long hours of the night.

The automatic doors opened and Lela strode out, then turned toward her apartment. Her heart beat in a rapid staccato and her legs were a little wobbly. She put her hand inside her pocket to feel the tiny flash drive. She was anxious to get home, bolt the door, and examine her treasure.

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