10

AMAZING. ALLIE SHOOK HER HEAD AND LEANED BACK IN THE CHAIR IN HER cubicle at Blue Sea. During her orientation, the HR director had bragged about how the company had grown from a little salvage and commercial diving outfit twenty years ago into a billion dollar company today. Maybe they were worth a billion dollars, but their accounting system wasn’t worth the week-old leftovers in the back of Allie’s fridge. She had literally seen gas stations with more financial sophistication.

Based on what her supervisor told her, five years ago the company had tried to modernize their records by computerizing everything. They bought an accounting software package that they didn’t really understand and hired some temps to convert all of their financial information to the new program. They left the job of keeping it current to secretaries—none of whom had any accounting training, naturally.

The result, of course, was a colossal mess. Now the company was a finalist for a $360 million government contract and, in the words of Allie’s supervisor, needed to “tidy up the books a little” before submitting their final bid. And that bid was due in just over two weeks.

This was all music to Allie’s ears. All the permanent employees around her would be distracted, so no one would have the time to pay close attention to what she was doing. Better yet, Blue Sea would need to have people working on this “tidying up” project around the clock, so no one would find anything suspicious about a temp poking around in the files after hours. And Allie didn’t mind working after hours. Not at all. Work was an easy way to keep her mind focused on the here and now—which was exactly what she wanted this week.

Allie scanned her computer’s directory and pulled up half a dozen project files at random. Each was supposed to contain an Excel spreadsheet showing every transaction and PDFs of all backup documents. Three of the spreadsheets featured at least one phantom entry with no accounting backup. Another spreadsheet was completely blank. Only one file held a spreadsheet that actually matched the supporting PDFs.

Then Allie pulled up the electronic general ledger to see whether the numbers in it matched what the spreadsheets showed. Surprisingly, they all did. Allie surmised that the IT staff had linked the spreadsheets directly to the general ledger to prevent errors. Not bad.

Having a good general ledger system wouldn’t save them, though. If all the files were as bad as the ones she’d seen, the general ledger was garbage. Blue Sea had no idea whether its invoices were accurate, which almost certainly meant they were overbilling some of the time. They’d be on the hook for triple the amount of each overcharge plus $10,000 for each inaccurate invoice they sent the government.

Allie grinned. This would be easier than a slow run on the bunny slopes. Almost as boring too, but she could live with boring if she was well paid for it.

The only potential problem was that none of the files she’d pulled were for government projects. She pulled up the directory again and scanned it for telltale words like “U.S.,” “State” or “base.” Nothing.

She decided to risk running a few searches. There was a chance that an alert IT staffer might spot what she was doing, but it was a small chance. Even if they did catch her, there wasn’t anything particularly suspicious about an accounting temp who had been hired to help the company get ready for a government contract running searches for government invoices in the company’s accounting database.

“Your search has located 0 records,” her computer informed her.

She frowned and did a little more digging in the directory. There was a secure server she couldn’t access. That must be where all the government files lived.

She drummed her fingers on her fake wood desk as she weighed her options. Ask someone to give her access to the secure server? No, the connection would be too obvious when the documents she found there later appeared in Devil to Pay’s court filings.

Try hacking into the secure server? Maybe. She’d helped configure security software for an accounting database during a previous assignment and had learned a couple of tricks in the process. At the very least, she could poke around and see whether the system administrator had left an unlocked “back door” in the security barriers. She’d be careful, and she doubted that they’d be on the lookout for internal hackers. After all, how many employees were likely to try to hack into a bunch of customer files? Still, it would be risky.

Was there time to take a quick trip into forbidden cyberspace, or was she done for the night? Allie glanced at the clock on her computer: 6:23 p.m. She hesitated, her fingers poised over the keyboard. She needed to call Mom and Sam tonight, and she really couldn’t put it off any longer. It was already 8:23 back home in Illinois, and Mom usually went to bed by 9:30.

Thinking about calling Mom got her thinking about Dad. She’d been trying not to think about him all day and most of yesterday, but she couldn’t hide from him anymore. His blood-spattered face filled her mind, repeating soothing lies over and over.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Worries about secure servers and dreams of easy money vanished, burned away by memories bursting out of a locked box buried in the back of her mind. Tonight was their night, and she couldn’t keep them away. Tomorrow she’d force them back in, close the lid, and lock the box again. But tonight was their night.

Yeah, she was done. She wiped her eyes and opened them. The computer screen glowed expectantly, showing a list of Blue Sea’s servers and their filepaths. Tomorrow. She sniffed and turned off her computer.