Page 30 of Indecent Proposal

There were plenty of emails with Richard cc’d into them or as the sender or recipient, but they all appeared innocuous, at least from what I could see while the USB was downloading everything. I’d have to give it all a harder look later.

I finished with that computer and went onto the second one. I was still left alone—it wasn’t until I got to the fourth office that I heard the elevator ding open and then footsteps headed across the floor. Two sets of them, and probably looking for me.

Damn.Just one more office left, but they might not let me get to that one. It would depend on how much these guys valued their job and how convincing I could manage to be. There was a reason I was usually the guy called in for the hard knock jobs and not the confidence tricks.

I drummed my fingers on the desktop, willing the USB to download everything faster.C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…

The USB finished its download and I yanked it out, palming it and standing up as I saw two security guards walk past me, double take, and then stop.

I nodded casually at them and then grabbed my bag, exiting the office. Should I try for the CEO’s office? Or head for the elevators? I could really use whatever information would be on his computer… but it might arouse too much suspicion.

One of the security guards squinted at me. Ex-military, going by the stance. Not your average rent-a-cop security guys, then. Not that I’d expected average in a place like this, but it was surprising how often nobody bothered to really make sure their security guys could handle a serious crime. Everyone was worried about cybersecurity nowadays. As long as the security team could make patrols and watch the cameras, they were considered fit for duty. It was more about showing a presence to deter amateurs than it was actually having trained men on staff.

But these men were trained. I supposed I should’ve figured it but hey, I’d been disappointed by companies and their choices in security plenty of times before.

“Who are you, exactly?” the guy squinting at me asked.

I raised my eyebrows like I was surprised and little offended that he was asking. “I’m the IT guy checking on the reboot system?”

The two guards exchanged a glance and I sighed. “Really, does nobody communicate in this building? I finished up here, I’m going to check out the server room. Should only be a couple of minutes.”

“What exactly is the reboot system?” the second guy asked.

His tone was definitely suspicious.

“In the event of a company-wide security breach, the system will shut down,” I explained. “The system reboots to kick the hacker out and restore everything to what it was pre-hacking. However, the reboots can open us up to a lot more hackers, or bring everything back to factory settings—it’s a real pain in the ass, y’know what I mean? And we’d like to be able to do it all remotely—”

I could see their eyes glazing over a little. Perfect. I leaned further into the technobabble. “—but with generation five firewalls these days unfortunately leaning into cloud technology isn’t really what we consider to be a viable solution. See, cloud…” I paused, like I was just noticing their boredom. “Sorry, this isn’t really—you don’t need to know all this, do you?”

“We really don’t,” the second guy muttered.

“Great. I’ll just go take care of it then.” I rolled my eyes once more, like the guys were being idiots, and turned to head for the elevators.

I was almost there when I heard the sound of the walkie go off. If I strained my ears, I could just barely hear them whispering. I had the feeling that I hadn’t fooled the first guy as much as I’d hoped.

“Copy that,” I heard him say into the walkie. I didn’t know what he’d been told, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that there was no planned visit from IT.

If I was wrong, and it was nothing, then bolting would make me look guilty when they’d had no reason to think that. But if I was right, then I needed to get out ahead of them, and stat.

I reached the elevators, hit the ‘down’ button, then moved for the stairs instead. The direction to both was around a corner, so if I hurried and kept my footsteps silent, they couldn’t tell that I hadn’t taken the elevator.

Whether this was a simple sign of a good security team recognizing me as an intruder, or something more nefarious than that, I wasn’t gonna be able to tell until I got access to what had been downloaded on the USB. But for now, I just hurried down the steps and acted like it was nefarious if only because there was no way in hell I was going to waste time talking my way out of this mess.

I got to the bottom floor and went to push open the doorway that led into the lobby, only to find it wouldn’t budge.

Okay, that was a problem.

I pushed again, experimentally. Yeah, this thing was shut all right. Magnetized, if I wasn’t mistaken. It was a pretty simple way to keep a door locked but good, so that someone couldn’t easily bypass it. I knew half a dozen ways to just fucking shift a door so that it would pop right open, even if it was locked, but once you magnetized things you’d need to turn off the energy that was magnetizing them in order to get the damn thing open. Or, y’know, try and ply your muscles against physics.

Looked like this was going to go sideways.

I had to get out of here with this USB drive. Whatever was on here might be vital—and either way, these people thought I had something on them that was bad. Otherwise they wouldn’t have activated the magnets and locked me in. How to get out of the damn stairwell?

I couldn’t hear anything up above me, which meant either they’d locked me in here and were leaving me to sit for a moment, or they had just automatically activated some safety protocols and thought I might still be on the elevator.

Hey, no harm in taking a chance on the latter at this point.

If they figured out I was in the stairwell they’d figure I would go down, to the parking garage, to try and find a way out. I hurried back upstairs instead. It was counterintuitive, but sometimes you had to go against what your logic yelled at you, because it was the same logic that was yelling at your enemies.

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