“Now that’s understandable,” he said. “So you’ve only been here in town a little while?”
“Three months,” she said.
“And this was the only job that you could get?”
“I didn’t have any business contacts locally, and I have rent to pay,” she said. “So I did try to get jobs that were more closely aligned to the work that I used to do, but I don’t exactly have that job title per se, just the experience.”
“No, it’s not like you have process engineer or something as a title, do you?” he said with a questioning glance. “Any training or certifications in that field?”
She shook her head. “No, I think I’m just observant,” she said quietly.
“Well, it’s obviously a good skill to have but a little hard to market.”
“Exactly.” By now she was relaxed enough to be curious as to why he was grilling her, but, at the same time, she didn’t know what the outcome of this was supposed to be. “Am I in trouble?” she asked boldly.
“No, not at all,” Barlow said. “I did want to ask you just what you were doing after I saw your application form,” he said, “because we do have some issues here in the company, as you are already aware. And I was contemplating using some of your skills to help us solve some of them.”
She stared at him in surprise. “Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say. She’d sounded like a nitwit the entire time.
“And I also took it upon myself to contact a couple of your references.”
She stared at him in shock. “Normally that’s done before somebody’s hired.”
He chuckled, the waves of his silver hair rippled smoothly along his head, but she couldn’t decide if he was too smooth or just somebody who saw an opportunity and wondered how he could take advantage of it.
“You should be happy to know that your references are sorry to have lost you.”
“I’ve had several calls, wanting me back,” she said.
“That’s a huge compliment,” he said in surprise.
She shot him a grin. “I told them they could fly me back and forth if they wanted to keep me, or they could open up satellite offices, but I was not interested in dealing with the Boston weather on a daily basis anymore.”
“Both of which are potential options,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, there were some discussions about it, but, as of yet, nobody had decided to take me up on it.”
“Well, that is to our advantage then,” he said smoothly. “So let me just think about this. I did want to ask you just what stuff you had dealt with before. I’m glad you told me,” he said, “and glad you’re not upset that I contacted your references.”
“Not at all,” she said. Seeing that the interview was almost at an end, she stood. “If you have any other questions, just let me know.”
“And I might,” he said. “It will depend on the outcome of the investigation that’s getting underway.”
She nodded in understanding, then walked to the door and said, “Thanks for not firing me.”
“No, just forgive me for giving you a heart attack, right?” And again he shot her a bright used-car-salesman smile.
She gave a small laugh. “Exactly.” And, with that, she slipped out and shut the door behind her.
She stood there for a long moment, letting her breath ease from her chest, not at all surprised when she heard him as he picked up the phone and called somebody. She couldn’t hear anything about the conversation, but, as she walked down the hallway, she wondered if Barlow was speaking with Edward or maybe even her section boss, James. She had no clue how her boss would handle her being here now. Would he be awkward, or would he be resentful? Or maybe he even would hate her for this. Whichever happened, not a whole lot she could do about it now. She’d lost the right to complain once she had called Kai and asked for help.
*
Johan looked at Galen. “Any luck?”
“Not yet,” he muttered. “I just took some updated training on IT stuff from Stone, not that I’m sure any of it stuck yet, but I can tell you that that guy’s magic when it comes to this shit.”
“He’s also at the end of a phone call,” Johan reminded him.
Galen looked up, surprised, then nodded. “I keep forgetting. Because we’re not back in Africa, I feel disconnected from the team somehow. And I forget that we have a team here.”
Johan nodded. “We do, indeed, and many of them are more into the techie stuff than we are, I think.”
“I am far more comfortable out in the field with a gun, but it seems like the weapons of today favor the electronic version,” Galen replied.
“I know,” he said. “So far I’m not seeing any irregularities with password log-ins or the timing when accessing files,” he said. “I’m just going through the basics at the moment.”
“Right. It’ll get a whole lot more complicated as we get further into it.”
“I know,” Johan muttered. “Because then we must consider who might have been working under somebody else’s access. Like Joy already warned us about with her computer.”
“And whoever might have put in a Trojan, so that it’s sitting there for them to access when they do log in, and they can worm their way into somebody else’s files under their names.”
“Yeah, so we gotta check out Joy’s computer for sure,” Johan said, staring at the computer in frustration. “I really want to blow apart our cover and the security by going in hot, delving like we normally do.”
“But we can only do that after the fact,” Galen said. “We can’t do it here and keep our footprints hidden.”
“I know. I know. But Stone could.” Hearing a phone dialing, he turned to look at Galen, who was calling somebody. Johan raised an eyebrow and asked, “Stone?”
Galen nodded. Johan grinned and went back to his work. With his phone, he sent an update to Levi, letting them know where they were, what they were doing, as well as their progress so far—which wasn’t a whole lot. They were hindered by the need to hide their real intent for being here. But Stone, going under the radar, could find a whole helluva lot more. Johan could hear Galen behind him, conversing with Stone over something that Galen had found. So far Johan hadn’t found much. When an internal chat window popped up, and the IT administrator, who turned out to be Pedro, asked if they needed anything, Johan wondered if something they had done had triggered that response. I don’t think so yet. Why?
The chat window came back up. Just checking in.
We’re doing fine.
He waited to see if the kid would come back with something else, but, when he didn’t, Johan figured that the kid had been watching them, tracking them in the system. Had the kid seen what they were looking at? Or that they were in incognito mode and had lots of ways of getting in and searching for stuff? Yet Johan didn’t know what kind of a hacker the kid might be, and that was always a bit of a disconcerting moment.
Just then a knock came at their door.
“Come in,” Johan called out.
Joy popped her head around the door. She smiled and said, “I was wondering if you guys wanted some coffee.”