“If there’s a wide pattern you know what that means, don’t you?”
Diane nodded. “A rumor. A rumor that SFI has troubles.”
Tam could only agree. She wanted in the worst way to tell Diane about the embezzlement—it even seemed likely there was a correlation, though at the moment she couldn’t see what it might be. But it was more important she tell Kip Barrett about the situation, because that would make the embezzlement possibly the part of a larger plan, and greed not the only motive.
As she and Diane discussed the reports and caseloads in the regional offices a part of Tam’s brain was spinning in overtime.
Who? Why? And how soon before some kind of rumor surfaced in business trades?
A cocktail party fundraiser was the last way she wanted to spend her evening, but incurring Nadia’s wrath was something she didn’t need to do right now. She really had no choice but to settle down to working on reports with Diane, going to the silly party and trusting that Kip Barrett was making headway.
62
Chapter SIX
It wasn’t humanly possible to label exhibits and work on another investigation at the same time, especially if every aspect of that investigation was secret. On Tuesday morning, Kip’s cubicle was still buried in paper files and she had until the end of the week to finish the last several hundred. Even if there had been room, spreading SFI bank statements and the personal histories of SFI directors out on top of that mess felt like setting off an everybody-come-have-a-look flare. Every time she made an attempt to read the reports someone showed up to talk.
By late afternoon all the jumping like a guilty child when the phone rang or someone walked by her cubicle was getting old. But even her cursory attempts to filter through all the paper she’d gathered had eliminated Morales and Langhorn of the capability of acting alone as the embezzler. As soon as she had a travel record for Sterling and a keycard use record for Innes she could clear them as well. From the personal dossiers, none 63
of the SFI directors appeared to have a monetary motive for embezzlement, either.
Two steps forward was also one step back. It was also true that all of the SFI directors had the means to hire a hacker of the highest caliber. Only Sterling and Innes had the access with their physical presence—Langhorn and Morales traveled far too much—to support the work of the hacker by doctoring the paper account records. Sterling had the skill to actually be the hacker. There were black holes in her personal history that meant she, or the Feds, had put some of her employment history behind a claim of national security. Her precise assignment with the government was blank, her security clearance—blank again.
There was nothing in Sterling’s dossier Kip couldn’t have learned from the annual report.
With one exception, she reminded herself. She had been very surprised to learn that Tamara had been born in what was then East Berlin. When she’d relocated to the United States, and with whom, even the names of her parents, wasn’t in the publicly accessible paperwork Kip had pulled. Not that the missing data was relevant. Still, she disliked blanks and either the Feds had seen to the computer version of redacting the data when she’d been in their employ, or Tamara Sterling had done it herself—
she had the skills for it.
She wanted the travel and keycard records in the worst way, because that would resolve the first level of the ETO. It really made no sense to go on suspecting Tamara, but every time she told herself she was certain, an inner voice would warn her she was acting without evidence. And there was another little voice that reminded her that Sterling made her anxious and scared in not entirely unwelcome ways.
She ignored both little voices and forged ahead with her other thoughts. One of the directors acting alone was a long shot, and colluding among themselves equally unlikely. No, she was most likely looking for a paid hacker and an accomplice within SFI—and that could be one of the directors, she accepted that.
The accomplice could also be just about anyone with a keycard, 64
it seemed, given how easily she’d walked into the records area.
She suspected security protocols had been tampered with.
Pinpointing when might be a helpful bit of information, but hardly her priority. She was faced with literally hundreds of suspects as accomplices.
Okay, so she could finish the highest level ETO with the keycard swipe records, so how was she going to get them without going through regular channels? Even Sterling couldn’t just ask for them without a number of people wondering why. She had no doubt that Sterling could get them by herself though. But that meant the list was worthless. She couldn’t accept as truthful any evidence supplied by someone who was technically still a suspect.
Two people paused near the entrance of her cube, talking about football. She quickly shoved some of her paperwork in a drawer, and cursed herself for being so jittery. She had looked forward to a tidy explanation, a neat report for Tamara Sterling.
But now she was going to have to admit she—they—might be in over their heads.
She went back to tagging exhibits until her cube neighbor, Michael, knocked on her cubicle frame.
“Just making the rounds. I’m going to miss working with you,” he said.
“Goodness! Is today the day?” Kip rose to hug him. “I want to hear how the other half lives.”
“It won’t be nearly as much fun, I’m sure.”
They chatted a bit more and she hugged him again when he moved on to the next person. Michael was a good member of the team, but he and another colleague had started dating. They’d been wise not to hide it for long—the last time someone had kept quiet and hoped not to be discovered both parties had been quickly fired. Once Michael and his girlfriend had disclosed their relationship they’d both been given the same choice. Michael was the one who had decided to resign. At first he’d been a little bitter about it, even though he knew he’d signed the same code of conduct agreement that everyone else had. She hoped his new job with First National’s Internet Fraud group worked out.
65
Nearly an hour later her desk phone shrilled, breaking Kip out of an exhibit-numbering focused zone. She let voice mail pick up the call. It was the very end of the workday and if it was Emilio he’d come looking for her if he really needed her.
The phone rang again, went to voice mail, then rang again.
Kip’s heart sank. She could think of only one person with that kind of persistence.
“I was just checking in.” Tamara was trying to sound relaxed, Kip thought, but her voice was strained. “I did manage to leave you alone for more than twenty-four hours.”
“I have made some progress,” she said, aware that her voice, too, was noticeably strained. She couldn’t help it. “But not as much as I had hoped, or as you would like, I’m sure.” It could be Tamara, she reminded herself. Don’t relax. Maybe she wants to know if you’ve figured out the method yet. Stay vigilant, Barrett.
“I think I’ll have everything in shape tomorrow night as we discussed,” she continued. “I can’t imagine it taking until Thursday.” She felt as if she were standing on quicksand. How could she play this out if Tamara was guilty? But it was so likely that she wasn’t... But what if...? Why did not knowing make her feel sick to her stomach? Maybe it was the flu, and if it was, someone else would have to ride this seesaw.
Way to go in the intestinal fortitude department, she scolded herself, wishing your problems on someone else.
“Why don’t we say tomorrow night—come on in, Di.”
Kip could hear a woman on the other end saying she’d come back, but Tamara told her to have a seat. Was that Diane Morales with her? Still?