Locked

It had all been going rather well, considering.

Since her office computer had overloaded itself yesterday for reasons unknown (but who Katherine strongly suspected to be a certain artificial teenager's fault) Katherine had been forced to look for alternative means of completing her work while a scruffy IT girl worked on bringing her computer back to working order. Luckily, it was Nick's day off today – he seemed to have an ever-increasing amount of those, come to think of it – and he had rather gallantly offered her the use of his laptop to finish off the reports that she had luckily already backed up on the Calimov mainframe. Ideal, really. Nick had briefly come in, unlocked his laptop for her then left, actually smiling as the doors slid smoothly shut behind him.

But, as so often happens when you're the boss, Katherine had been briefly called out to attend to a question from the finance department. When she finally got back nearly half an hour later, not in the best of moods, the laptop screen was blank and her half-finished work was locked away behind a password protected lock screen. Damn.

Nick's static face seems to look smugly at her from the screen as Katherine irritably wakes the dormant computer up with a brisk shake of the mouse – an image of him, Eve and Will grinning mindlessly at the camera as they gesture to a large moving wheel in the background. Katherine remembers Nick telling her that Eve had been eager to try out one of these 'funfairs', so he had taken the two teenagers along a couple of weeks ago. As normal, Eve had been captivated by everything. She had pulled the Clarkes along to go on the big wheel no less than four times, and now stood in the photo beaming as widely as ever.

"Oh – shut up," Katherine now tells her co-worker's face sulkily as the computer demands a password from her. "You should have told me your password before you left."

It's probably going to be something sappy, knowing Nick. His son's name, or his birthday, or something.

It's neither of those.

Nick's not answering his phone either. Katherine lets out a frustrated sigh, drumming her fingers on the surface of his desk as the third call slips to answerphone and she ends it. When he finally gets around to switching his phone on, he'll doubtlessly receive seven angry texts inquiring first as to what his password is and second as to why the stupid man never has his phone on.

So now what does she do?

With a lack of password cracking software on this rather primitive computer, that option is unfortunately out. Katherine suspects that he hasn't left his password as 'Rebecca' since the last time she forcibly tried to hack into his laptop. She tries it anyway, somewhat half-hearted. Nope.

If anyone had been listening from outside the empty room, they would have heard Katherine's frustrated intake of breath three minutes later as she hits the keyboard with her palm. She has tried everything. Birthdays. Eternity. Places. She's trying to think of any more names that Nick would possibly choose to lock his laptop with. All of this, of course, is just scraping the surface of possibilities. For all she knows, it could be a random collection of numbers and letters, like the computer always suggests first-off to make it more secure. There again, when has she or Nick ever taken orders from computers? Not always a good idea, in their line of work.

WillClarke.

EveClarke.

NickClarke.

RebeccaClarke.

Nope. Absently, Katherine finds herself typing her own name into the password bar, while discreetly wondering if she can fire Nick for having a password that she can't hack into. Doubtful. Even that's pretty trivial, even by her past standards.

Well, it was worth a try.

Katherine's eyebrows shoot up as the lock screen suddenly vanishes, replaced by the Word document which she had previously been working on and had been desperately trying to get back to for the last five minutes. At the same point, her phone buzzes under her listless hand: a text notification informing her that Nick has texted her 2.6 seconds ago, probably containing the elusive password that she had just unwittingly guessed.

Her colleague's password is her name. Um - okay.

A/N) Couldn't resist a 'when you're the boss' comment XD Poor Katherine.