we deal with some hacking

Fifty one

They parked right in front of the office and walked side by side to the door. They passed together through the electronic portals, getting a nervous nod from the security guard on duty.

"Evening, ma'am's."

"Evening." Jade greeted him briefly for them both. She followed Tori across the huge lobby to the elevators and they both went inside. "Jesus."

"Not how I wanted the night to end." Tori confirmed, punching the button for the tenth floor. "But at least you stopped them, Jade."

"By pure god damned luck."

"Honey, whatever works." Tori sighed. "I'm just glad you were there."

Jade stared morosely at the closed elevator doors until the conveyance stopped, and they were admitted to the tenth floor. She followed Tori out and to the right, heading for the operations center.

"Just goes to show you how much we need your program." Tori went on, with a touch of hesitance. "And you."

Jade paused with her hand on the door latch of the ops center, and cocked her head to one side. "You really mean that?"

Tori looked right back at her. "If you mean personally, I'm going to kick your ass for even asking."

An unexpected smile appeared on Jade's face. "I love it when you talk to me like that." She opened the door and indicated Tori should precede her, the wide open portal preventing the brunette from framing a suitable answer.

Tori stuck her tongue out instead, and walked into the room, where the console operator was already standing up to greet them. "Hi, Rosie."

Jade followed her inside, and gave the woman a nod as well. " Got the pc?"

"Right there, ma'am." Rosie pointed towards a worktable on one side of the operations desk. "I went right out and grabbed it after you called me."

Jade walked over to examine their prize. The operator had certainly taken her words literally, and the computer, it's mouse, keyboard, and assorted cables were neatly wrapped in enough plastic baggage to cover half the room they were presently standing in. Duct tape secured it, and she suspected it would take the sharp end of her leatherman tool to free the poor captive. "Okay."

"Did you see anyone around there when you were getting it, Rosie?" Tori asked. "Anyone in the hall or anything like that?"

"No, ma'am." Rosie shook her head. She was a twentysomething, a middling height, middling hair color kind of woman who often reminded Tori irresistibly of a cocker spaniel. "There shouldn't be anyone up there this time of night, and it was empty as a graveyard when I was there."

Jade checked her watch, and decided to leave the wrapped PC where it was. She limped over to the big console desk and picked up the phone, dialing Rob' extension. "You there?"

"I am here." Rob answered. "Are you here?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Now that this important piece of business is concluded, would you come to my office?"

"Right." Jade put the phone down. "Tor, let me go talk to Robbie. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Tori took a breath, then merely folded her arms. "Okay." She agreed. "I'm going to go upstairs and see what I can sniff out."

"Good idea." Jade winked at her, as she made her way to the door and bumped it open with an elbow. She limped out and the door closed behind her, leaving Tori by herself with the console operator.

"Ms. Vega?"

"Hm?" Tori had wandered over to examine the PC in it's wrapping.

"How come Ms. West is limping? Something happen to her?" Rosie asked.

Tori turned her head to regard the operator, whose round, innocent eyes gazed back at her with a marked lack of guile. "Matter of fact, she got that saving me from a barracuda, Rosie."

If possible, Rosie's eyes became a lot rounder and a lot bigger. "No kidding!?"

"No kidding. "Tori turned all the way around and faced her. "There we were, in the ocean, right?"

"Right."

Tori waved her hands, mimicking a swimming motion. "I was swimming with our dog, and we swam under the dock. I felt something brush against me, then all of a sudden Jade jumped in, picked me up out of the way, and kicked a barracuda that was about to bite me right in the mouth!"

"Wow!"

"Yeah, but she got bitten for her troubles, so you know." Tori went on blithely. "But it was very brave of her."

"Sure was!" Rosie agreed fervently. "Wow.. were you scared?"

Tori stuck her hands in her pockets. "Didn't have time to be."

"Wow." The operator repeated. "That's amazing."

"Jade usually is also." Tori went to the door. "Well, I'm going to go check out our offices. I'll be right back." She left the ops center and closed the door, pausing outside to grin, and grunt contentedly. "If you don't like the rumors about you, my father always said, start some you do like."

She walked down the hall towards the stairwell. "Bet you never thought you'd ever use any of his advice willingly, huh, Tor?" With a slight shake of her head, she pushed the door into the stairwell open and started up the four flights to their offices.

Jade entered Rob' outer office, crossing the soft carpet and opening his inner door to an office the pretty much mirrored hers. "Evening."

Rob was behind his desk, leaning back with folded arms. He watched Jade as she took a seat opposite him. "How is your fish bite?"

"Eh."

"I see that you are favoring it."

"Hurts like hell." Jade allowed. "I went and got an antibiotic shot, but I've been running around on it all night."

"And I have made it worse." Rob said.

Jade shrugged.

"We have narrowed this down to four possibilities, Jade." Rob dispensed with the chit chat. "Tomorrow, I will call all of those four in to this office, and we will find out which it is."

Jade cocked her head to one side. "You mean, none of the four were here when it happened?"

"No. The job was set to run at this time." The Finance VP said. "I am thinking someone imagined no one would be here to see it and remark on it." He laced his big fingers together and studied them. "It is hard to believe from any of these people. They have worked for me for many years."

Jade knew what he meant. You liked to trust the people who worked for you, but she'd found out the hard way over the years that loyalty really didn't generally exist. "That's rough." She said. "You sure it's one of them?"

He shrugged. "They are the only ones who know this login. It is the one we use to enable the reports to select from all four databases."

Hm. "Logins and passwords can be obtained." Jade reminded him.

"Jade, what can I say to that? Perhaps it was me, then!" He stood up and paced behind his desk. "Is it not bad enough I have to find my most trusted staff is possibly a thief!"

"Hey." Jade held up a hand. "I'm just bringing it up, because it's true." She said. "How many times have we been in Mari's office over one person giving someone else their password?"

Rob dropped into his seat with a disgusted sigh. Then he looked at Jade squarely. "And what of you? Have you done so, my friend?"

Jade didn't even hesitate. "Tori has all my logins, and I have hers." She replied easily. "Take it easy, Robbie. Wait until you talk to these guys, and go with your gut."

"Thank you, Dr. Ruth." Rob gave her a droll look. "It is just infuriating."

Yes, it was. Jade silently agreed. "Least we stopped it." She fell back on Tori's conclusion. "I'm not really…" She paused, as a far off yell penetrated the walls of the office. "Shit." Jade bolted from her seat and headed for the door at a dead run, no trace of a limp remaining.

Caught in shock for a brief moment, Rob closed his jaw on an exclamation and got up to run after her.

Jade tore through the empty hallways, circling the fourteenth floor around the central elevator stack. She could hear scuffling ahead of her and she sped up, hurtling around the last corner into the corridor that held her office.

Ahead of her, in the semi darkness, she could see two figures wrestling, only one of which was familiar. "Tori!" She let out a yell.

"Son of a bitch!" Tori barked back. "Get this piece…ow!"

Jade reached the fight and didn't even slow down. She plowed right into both struggling figures, gently shoving Tori back out of the way towards one wall as she took the person she was fighting with up against the other one.

"Let go of me!" The stranger yelped. "Hey!"

"Go to hell!" Jade said. "You're lucky I don't open the window and toss your ass out."

"Oh yeah, I'm scared."

The two had been evenly matched in size, but Jade used her size advantage to pin Tori's adversary against the paneling, resisting the urge to shake the woman like a terrier with a rat. "Hold still or I'll break your damn arm." She growled. "Tor, you okay?"

"Yeah." Tori closed in behind her and put a hand on Jade's back. "I found this little creep in your office."

"My office?" Jade pressed harder. "Get the lights on."

"Jade, they're controlled by computer." Tori reminded her.

"You're an IT professional." Jade gritted her teeth. "So go hack them."

"Yeesh. Okay." Tori ducked into Jade's office, disappearing from view.

Her captive began to struggle, attempting to throw Jade off her. "Let me go, or you'll be sorry!"

Jade wasn't sure what was more painful, the cliché or the ache in her foot. The woman got an arm free and swatted at her. Jade blocked the blow with her forearm, then she grabbed hold of the other woman's shirt and swung around, slamming her adversary against the opposite wall.

"Bitch! You're so going to regret this!" The woman growled, grappling with Jade and trying to kick her.

"Not as much as you're going to regret this, or I'm going to enjoy it." Jade wrenched her arm free and took a step back, setting her self before she let loose with a right cross. It smacked into the woman's jaw, bouncing her head against the wall and knocking her out.

Jade simply released her and allowed her to slid down the wall to the ground. She shook her hand and flexed the fingers, silence once again settling over the darkened hall. "Tor?" She called out, wanting very badly to have the lights come on so she could see if she knew the woman.

"Hang on." Tori's voice drifted in from her office. "I hacked into the wrong subroutine. Give me a minute."

"Hm." Jade glanced around. "What'd you hit, the music system?"

"Plumbing."

Jade winced. "Oh boy." She leaned against the opposite wall as Rob appeared from the darkness to stand next to her. "It's gonna be a long night."

"Ah." Tori rattled a few more keystrokes in, and was rewarded by a flood of light that made her wince. She straightened up from Mariela's desk and stepped around it, heading for the door to the hallway. Rounding it, she hastened to Jade's side and they stood together looking down at the intruder.

It was a woman, slightly taller than Tori, with a lithe build and short cropped dark hair, dressed in a nondescript Dickies shirt and trousers, with well worn work shoes.

"Know her?" Jade asked.

"Um... no." the brunette replied. "She's not the usual night gal on this floor."

"Considering the night gal is a night guy, no." Jade agreed. "I don't recognize her either."

"Hm." Tori rubbed her jaw. "That's a cleaning staff uniform."

"Uh huh." Jade agreed. "Please don't tell me she was cleaning my office."

Tori snorted. "Maybe, if she was cleaning your desk drawers from the inside, with a flashlight." She looked around. "Where did Rob go?"

"Calling the cleaning supervisor." Jade said. "They've got some explaining to do."

They certainly did. Tori folded her arms over her chest. "What do we do with her? She's going to come around any minute Jade."

"Call security, I guess." Her partner responded. "I don't want to tie her up… but we don't know what she's going to do when she comes around, either." She leaned against the wall with one hand, pondering their options. "You okay?" She asked suddenly, looking at Tori in some concern.

"More or less." Tori murmured. "You want to duct tape her?"

Jade grimaced. "I'm probably bucking a lawsuit as it is for clocking the little bastard. I'd rather not have cruel and unusual punishment added to it."

"Huh?"

"You ever had to remove duct tape from any part of your body?"

"No." Tori shook her head, then paused. "Have you?"

"Yes."

"Hmm. How about we lock her in the cleaning closet?" Tori suggested. "Seems appropriate, and it's close by." She pointed to one in a series of identical doorways. "I don't really want to wrestle any more tonight. I think I pulled something in my back."

"Huh." Jade tried the door and found it open. She pushed it inward, and flipped the lights on, finding nothing more exotic than a mop bucket and a stack of cleaning cloths. There was room in the closet for a cleaning cart, but the cart was missing, presumably elsewhere in the building performing it's intended function. "Good idea. Give me a hand."

They dragged the woman's limp body into the closet, laying her down on the tile floor and backing out, pulling the door shut behind them. Jade fished in her pocket and retrieved her keyset, trying the master key on the door and grunting when it turned to a locked position with a satisfying snick. "There."

"Ugh." Tori leaned against the wall, wincing as she stretched out her lower back muscles.

"Is that the less part of the more?" Jade limped over to her. "You scared me half to death."

Tori shifted and leaned against Jade instead. "My knight in shining armor." She said. "Boy, was I glad to hear you calling my name. I grabbed her, and she got away from me."

"Ah."

"I ran after her and got the back of her shirt in the hallway, and next thing I knew, I felt like I was in a wrestling exhibition."

Rob emerged from a side hallway and walked towards them. "Ah." He looked around. "Did our little friend escape?"

"We put her in the closet." Tori pointed. "Is the supervisor coming up?"

"He is, indeed." Rob reported. "Especially since he informed me that there should be no person on this floor at this time. I have been told they start cleaning on this floor, and work downwards."

Jade nodded. "Makes sense, since I usually see them before I leave."

"Yeah." Tori agreed.

A hammering from behind the closet door startled all of them. "Let me outta here!" A voice emerged, outraged. "You little bastards! You can't do this to me!"

"Shut up." Rob hammered back. "Or we shall leave you and go get ourselves a beer."

"Count me in." Tori added. "I was in the copy room when I heard a noise coming from your office. I went in, and there she was, rooting through everything. Who in the hell is this, Jade?"

Jade exchanged glances with Rob. "Should we call the cops?"

The Finance VP pondered this. "Let us wait to see what the cleaning supervisor has to say. He said he.. ah." Rob nodded, and looked past them. "Here he is now."

They all turned as a tall, slim man with salt and pepper hair joined them. "Ma'am's, sir." The newcomer said. "I do not understand what is going on here. I signed off on this floor two hours ago."

The hammering started on the inside of the door again. "Bastards!"

The cleaning supervisor started, and took a step back away from the door. "What is this in my closet?"

"Someone in one of your uniforms." Jade informed him. "A woman."

"I have no women on staff this evening." The supervisor protested. "Certainly, I do not keep them on this late. It is not safe. I take care of my girls. They go home no later than eight pm." He pointed down the hallway, where a cleaning cart was approaching, being pushed by an older man. "See? There is Carlos. He is my man here tonight."

Carlos spotted all of them outside the cleaning closet and stopped, looking puzzled. "Senor?" He asked hesitantly. "Hay un problema?"

Rob stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. "I think perhaps we need to call the police then." He admitted. "If this person is not part of your staff, then it is an intruder, and the authorities must be notified."

"You don't want to do that!" The woman's voice inside the closet was muffled. "I'm warning you!"

Tori put a hand on Jade's arm. "Maybe we should talk to her." She suggested. "The way she's acting is very strange, Jade. I'd expect someone to either be scared poopless, or else be asking for a lawyer."

Jade considered the thought, and had to concede her partner had a point. The woman's actions had been strange, and maybe there was something to be learned from her. "Okay." She addressed the cleaning supervisor. "I'm going to assume this person just stole one of your uniforms, and maybe someone's ID. I'll find out, and let you know."

The man nodded. "It is good." He motioned Carlos to move the cart in the other direction. "Vamanos."

"Senor?" The older man was sadly at sea. "Como?"

The supervisor took him by the arm and led him off, leaving Rob, Jade and Tori in the hallway facing the closet door. "Well?" Jade held her key up. "Do we?"

Rob shrugged his broad shoulders.

"Tor?"

Tori also shrugged, lifting her hands slightly.

"Hey, you in there." Jade banged on the door. "If I open this, so we can talk, you cool it or you're gonna hit the dirt again, got me?"

"Ah." Rob exhaled gently. "That is the Jade I know."

"You better open this door!" The woman replied through the wood. "Don't worry, I'll talk. I'm not into physical abuse like you are."

Jade shook her head and stuck the key in the lock, turning it and shoving the door open. She spread her arms out and flexed her knees a little, wondering if their erstwhile captive was going to come out swinging.

As it happened, she didn't. The woman walked warily out, giving Jade a dour, suspicious look. "Hope you've got a good lawyer."

"You too." Tori advised her. "Especially since you attacked me while trespassing."

"I didn't attack you." The woman scoffed.

"Yes, you did." Tori responded evenly. "After I surprised you in the act of burgling Jade's office. So if I were you, unless you want to have this discussion with a police officer, I would start cooperating."

The woman studied her, then flicked her eyes to the rest of them. "This isn't what you think." She remarked, reaching into her back pocket, halting when Jade reacted. "Take it easy." She cautioned, removing her wallet and opening it. "Here. See?"

She held out a card.

Jade took it, and glanced at it. "Military intelligence." She repeated slowly. "Interesting."

"My mother always claimed that was an oxymoron." Tori murmured.

It wasn't the reaction the woman had clearly been expecting. "I don't think you quite understand what's going on here." She said. "You're the subject of an investigation."

"Let's go inside." Jade indicated the outer door to her office. "Robbie, maybe we have an answer to your issue as well."

"Perhaps we do." Rob agreed. "Perhaps we do."

The woman looked from one of them to the other. "Do you understand that this is a serious situation?"

"Do you understand that we quite probably issued your paycheck on this very past Friday?" Rob retorted. "Do not threaten us with the government. We know as better. Now, please go inside, or else, as Jade says, we shall call the police."

"Yeah." Jade agreed. "Wait, let me ask you one thing." She addressed the woman. "Are you from the Army?"

The woman looked warily at her. "Yes."

Jade's eyes narrowed, and she snorted softly, as she closed the door behind them.