She sat down in Arnold’s chair, telling herself she’d better hurry and trying to figure out where he could hide something. And all the while she kept her ears tuned for someone coming down the hall to ask what the hell she was doing here.
She pushed that imagined confrontation out of her mind and tried to focus on what she’d come here for. If he’d hidden something, it would have to be in plain sight, because if anything was suspicious, someone would have examined it.
Hesitantly she started opening drawers. She found pencils, pens, paper clips, and an old-style cell phone in the middle drawer. He’d obviously gotten a new smartphone and left the old one here. She felt the underside of the drawer and also the underside of the desk above the drawer but found nothing of interest.
Another drawer had vertical files, and she riffled through them, even though her brother had said she wouldn’t be looking for paper.
On the bottom right was a small bottle of Scotch, which she hadn’t been expecting. She hadn’t known that Arnold drank at work. Under the bottle were some stacks of computer printouts that he’d just shoved in the drawer.
She kept searching, finding other things that made her pause—like a small stuffed bear with the logo of a software company on his chest. She felt over the fur and probed at the stuffing inside the body, but as far as she could tell, it was just a toy. When she found a program from his son’s school graduation, she felt her stomach knot. She remembered Blake talking about his son. The boy was going to Princeton, and his father was so proud of him. Had Blake needed extra money for school tuition? Was that why he’d stolen from the company? She wished she had understood him better.
She kept looking and found nothing that could be a storage place for information Arnold intended to take out of S&D. Getting up, she began pulling books out of the shelves and riffling through them.
But she kept thinking about the phone in the middle drawer, lying there in plain sight. And some of the things Blake had said in his emails kept circling in her head.
“If you have any doubts, phone me.” And what had he called his puzzles, “SIMon Sez”? Simon Says was the name of a game kids played in the States. She’d played it at some birthday parties when she was little. The person running the game would say, “Simon says, ‘Lift your hands.’” And you were supposed to do it. There would be several similar directions. Then the game leader would quickly say, “Lift your hands,” without adding the “Simon says” part first. And if you did it, you were out.
It was a good name for a game. But it didn’t exactly fit what Arnold was doing. Why had he used that name?
She’d thought it was odd—along with his direction to “phone me.”
Her mind made a leap to an idea, and her heart pounded as she opened the drawer again, pulled out the phone and flipped it open, looking at the blank screen.
SIMon Sez.
She pried off the back of the phone, looking inside at the tiny subscriber identity module card. It was an integrated circuit, designed to store information about the phone. Once SIM cards had been as big as credit cards, but now they were much smaller—about the size of a dime. But what if this one only looked like a regular SIM card? What if it didn’t have anything to do with the phone and was being used to store other data?
There was no sign on the phone saying, “This is it.” And on the face of it, the idea might seem unlikely, but the more she thought about it, the more she thought that it made sense. Particularly since Blake had given her two clues. SIMon Sez. Like for SIM card. And then he’d said to use the phone when he had no reason to do it.
But why her? Because he knew he was in danger, and he wanted someone to have the information?
She looked at her watch, seeing that she’d been in the office twenty minutes. She had to get out of here before anyone figured out what she was doing, and the phone seemed the best bet for a clandestine storage device.
She stood up and started to slip the instrument into her purse. No, maybe that wasn’t such a great idea. But where to put it? She finally tucked it into her bra, thinking that would be a dead giveaway that she was doing something shady if anyone found it.
She was about to leave when she remembered to take the folder she brought along. Snatching it up, she exited Blake’s office and headed back toward her own workstation. But as she rounded the corner, she saw the light come on over the elevator. Someone was coming up here, probably to find out what was wrong with the camera.
She looked around quickly, saw that the ladies’ room was only a few steps away, and sprinted inside. Then she crossed to one of the stalls and used the toilet, flushing the rubber gloves and praying they would go down. When they disappeared, she clicked the buttons on the device her brother had given her.
She thought about throwing the phone away. But then she wouldn’t have the information she’d come to get. If it was truly in the phone. But what about the thing that had turned off the camera? She shouldn’t keep that, should she?
Still unsure that she was doing the right thing, she kept the phone in her bra and wiped off the camera remote control before stuffing it in the bottom of the trash can. Then she took a deep breath and let it out before exiting the bathroom. As she stepped into the hall, she almost bumped into one of the security guards who was standing there, staring at the bathroom door. She stopped short, trying to look normal.
“Ms. Reyes?”
“Yes. Is something wrong?” she managed to say.
“We were having a problem with the security cameras up here.”
“Oh.”
“Did you notice anyone in the building who shouldn’t be here?”
“I’m sorry, no,” she said, managing to keep her voice even.
“Did you sign in when you came in?”
She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I should have done that.”
His walkie-talkie crackled, and he pulled out the device and put it to his ear.
“The cameras are operating properly now,” a voice said.
“Okay, thanks.” He continued to stare at her. “Let’s go through correct procedures. You need to come down and sign in, then sign out.”
“Fine,” she answered. What was she going to do now? The camera in the lobby would have recorded her time of arrival. Which meant that she’d better not lie about that.
“What do you have there?” the guard asked, looking at the folder tucked under her arm.
“It’s instructions for the new word-processing program, and there are things I don’t understand. I mean, the program should do all the same functions, but I can’t get some of them to work,” she said, thinking that she was babbling. She ended with, “I wanted to study them at home.”
“And that was an emergency?”
“No. I just wanted to get ahead of it,” she answered, wondering if that sounded lame.
They walked back to the lobby, and she signed the in-and-out sheet. While she did that, the guard picked up the folder and riffled through it, but he only found the word-processing instructions.
“Don’t these usually come with the program?” he asked.
“Yes, but I printed them out.” Which was the truth. “Sometimes it’s easier for me to deal with stuff on paper than on the computer screen.”
He gave her back the folder.
“Do you mind if I check your purse?”
“Of course not,” she said.
She put the purse on the counter and stood with her heart pounding as she watched him riffle through it, glad that the camera controller wasn’t inside. When he was finished, he handed her back the purse, and she exited the building, thankful to have escaped. But as she stood in the cold night air, she couldn’t stop herself from having second thoughts about what she’d done. She’d always been an open and honest person. Now she was breaking the law. Well, maybe not technically, but morally.