Win some, lose some, she thought. Meanwhile, the solitude of the trees, the steady patter of the rain...it felt very, very good.
The cabin had no phone land line, and with a delicious sense of being bad, she switched off her cell phone and didn’t launch her e-mail program. There. Alone at last.
With a regretful sigh, she opened her electronic diary and made a few summary comments about the assignment, the times and places she’d met her client—Sterling was just another client—
29
and recorded the paperwork she’d received. Keeping such a log was an SFI requirement and she was making a concerted effort to treat this assignment like any other. Her summary made, she turned to the actual work. First she had to discern the scope of the problem. Then she’d work on ETO—eliminating the obvious.
She’d been at it only a half-hour when she found another account that was missing funds. Sixty thousand dollars and some change. The copy of the bank statement had been expertly doctored, but a ghost of ink betrayed the effort, and a close-up look at the staff auditor’s initials revealed that they, too, were likely forged. She munched away at a pile of carrot sticks while she methodically examined the staff auditor’s work. To her, it looked as if the staff auditors were comparing the print version of the bank statements to the online record, which verified that the printed version was in fact authentic. After they initialed the comparison, someone was substituting fake statements so that the reconciliation staff thought they had the real ones, and everything balanced.
It was actually a lot to keep track of—the embezzler was essentially running his or her own set of books to falsify the statements going back two months to avoid detection for as long as possible. Ultimately, the thief would miss something in the minutiae and alarm bells would sound. Sterling had found it early, and so far the thief had no clue. That meant they had a good shot at recovering the funds.
By late afternoon, she had found another four accounts and the total cash missing was taking an alarming turn. Sterling had found a half-million missing, and she had found at least six times that, and most of it from the SFI investment accounts and some from pension accounts.
Increasingly anxious, she turned to the largest of the trust accounts. Bad enough their own and their employees’ funds were missing—a client’s money would be the death knell for SFI’s unparalleled reputation.
As she worked, grateful to turn over page after page and finding nothing amiss, the rain stopped and watery sunlight 30
peeked in through the windows. Hunger made her leave the pile of paperwork for a northward drive to tiny Brinnon where a bona fide, greasy spoon, full fat with bacon burger was calling to her. She was a long way from the city, no reason to check her rearview mirror or worry about her billfold visible on the seat of the car. She ate at a splintery picnic table, watching the daylight fade on the other side of the Sound. Just to the north a cluster of lights marked the naval base where Trident submarines launched, but otherwise, this finger of Puget Sound was quiet as dark approached.
The evening was so peaceful she decided to drive further north to her favorite vista point at Seal Rock on Dabob Bay. She owed herself some fresh air and her work would be the better for it.
It was her favorite time of an autumn day. The ancient pines were falling into winter shadows of steel gray. The sun had dipped below the mountains of the Olympic National Forest. Streaks of pink- and orange-painted clouds stretched toward Seattle. If she’d had a whole day to herself she might have hiked on the Mount Baker glacier in the morning and spent the afternoon walking through the Hoh Rain Forest. Only the Olympic Peninsula offered such extremes in a single day’s drive.
She rolled down the windows to let the crisp air whip around her ears, inhaling the rich salt brine coming off Dabob Bay. She should spend her next vacation someplace where she could sail.
She’d loved sailing with her grandfather. Thrilled to the spray on her face, tugging against the sail, his voice insisting it didn’t matter how small she was, or that she was only nine, she could do anything. His voice was always there in her head, urging her on, telling her she could overcome anything if she tried hard enough.
If only that were true.
“Damn.” She rolled to a stop in the scenic overlook and switched off the engine. The wind in the high trees behind her combined with the shush of waves against the shore ahead of her, creating a quiet that breathed, slow and steady. She closed 31
her eyes to listen, and wished her heart could find that strong, unhurried rhythm.
She had no more success than usual. Dollar amounts and bank statements danced behind her eyelids. Swirling around all of it was the jarring memory of all her lost hopes—every time Tamara Sterling asked about it she felt an ache in that familiar, deep wound.
This is a waste of energy, she warned herself, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. From the time she was twelve she’d been filling out her Secret Service application in her head.
As the years went by she’d mentally added her degree, and on the actual day—so important—the names of her immediate family and their occupations. She’d been so proud to put in her grandfather’s name—Rudyard Kipling Barrett, twenty-six years service, deceased. She felt as if she was immortalizing him by following in his footsteps. For a while, she’d certainly appeared to be a chip off the old block.
There was just one thing she couldn’t do, one choice she couldn’t make. Every time it had come up in the simulation she’d hesitated. Her focus and aim had wavered.
Her supervisor had told her, over and over, “You’re not going to be in the field, Barrett, it’s just a machine. Shoot the suspect and get the heck out of training.”
She tried to tell herself it had no meaning. Just a computer game, like hundreds she’d played. A computer game with a real gun, real bullets—but the bad guys weren’t real and if she made a mistake, no one would get hurt.
She inhaled fresh sea air with the pungent tang of pine, trying to clear her memory of the sweltering warehouse with lung-choking clouds of gasoline fumes and electricity-tinged smoke.
Shoot, then ask. Just do it. It’s not real. Just a game. Just a test.
Pass the test. Just pull the trigger.
She pivoted on her heel, leaving the peaceful vista behind.
Some Xena, some superhero she was. She couldn’t do what needed to be done, plain and simple. So she could handle a drunk—big effing deal. She wasn’t capable of acting on instinct. Her brain 32
always wanted facts before taking action.
On her good days she told herself that the simulator had indeed served its purpose. She wasn’t fit to protect the President of the United States. Best to know that before a real situation erupted in her face.
“I’m not ashamed,” she told a fallen tree. “But what a way to find out.”
All her hopes and dreams gone, and a life rebuilt in spite of the disappointment. Plenty of bad guys to catch.
“You don’t always get what you want, Barrett.” She kicked a rock into the undergrowth and went back to the car, vexed that she was dwelling on a past she couldn’t change and, in honest moments, knew she wouldn’t even if she had that power.
When she got back to the cabin she lit the woodstove, and then settled down to continue her methodical work, more than halfway through the papers Tamara Sterling had given her.
She would find out who was stealing from SFI, and she would bring him, or her, or them to justice. It would be a challenge and if she was a little tired right now, that didn’t matter. SFI’s code of ethics was well-known and absolutely necessary to make sure that clients had full trust in the integrity and abilities of every SFI staff member. White-collar criminals who stole millions from everyday people so often went free, as if financial losses didn’t take a real toll or cause tremendous damage to every victim.