Wrong Place, Right Time(44)

“For example, in this case that we want to hire you for, we’re looking into this company’s financials because there’s something off. One of the owners suspects some sort of embezzlement. But Lucky’s not able to access everything on the computer. Or at least he thinks he’s not able to access it. He believes there are some hidden files somewhere, but he’s not the guy who can find them.”

Without knowing more than this, I already feel confident that I could help them. It’s the only ray of hope that has shined into my morning thus far, so I’m going to run with it. Reality can come and crash my party later if it must.

“I might be able to help. I wouldn’t know until I saw the files or the hard drive itself.”

“Okay. So you need to get to the actual hard drive? Is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s always the best way, but it might not be critical. It might depend on what kind of encryption they’ve used, if they’ve protected any work behind a firewall, if they’ve put things on the server or the local drives. It would be a lot easier if I could get my hands on the actual server itself and then the individual computers being used by the employees.”

“Okay. Awesome. I knew you could do this. So, here’s the plan . . .”

I’ve never heard May sound so sure of herself. It makes my crappy morning much less crappy. My baby sister is growing up.

“I’m going to go talk to Ozzie and share what you’ve told me. And you’re going to go get dressed and brush those hairy teeth of yours and un-knot that ’do, so that when you come over here to the warehouse, my coworkers won’t think you’re some crazy person standing on the edge of a cliff ready to end it all.”

“I can’t, remember? I have Sammy. I can’t send him to daycare like this.”

“Is he really sick, or is he just faking it?”

I turn around to look at my son. He’s happily munching away on animal cracker cookies. “I’m not sure. He’s probably not that bad off. I think he’s having a problem at daycare with another kid or something . . . maybe a teacher.”

“Fine. Bring him with you.”

I’m warring with myself over this plan. I’m capable of doing the work—I don’t have to worry about that part anymore—but I’m still not positive I should take the job. If I mess anything up, it won’t be just on me, but my sister too. I don’t want to let her down.

Then again, it’s not like I have a choice. I need to pay the bills, and this is the easiest avenue for me to take right now. I haven’t even had to put in a CV anywhere.

“What’s the matter?” May sounds annoyed.

I sigh, because I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“Need I remind you that the last time I was there, you had some sort of break-in attempt and I was locked in a panic room for an hour?”

“Jenny, we already told you, that was a mistake. Yes, somebody may have tried to break in, but that kind of thing happens at the port.”

“Exactly my point. Why would I bring Sammy there? And an even better question, why would you go there?”

“I’ve been working here for more than two months. I’ve been here every single day, and we haven’t had even one problem.” She pauses to huff out an annoyed breath. “I’ve talked to the guys and Toni . . . This has never happened before. It was a random, isolated event, and it probably doesn’t mean anything. The police are on it, and so is the team. Together, we’re going to figure out what went wrong. Even if whoever did it is stupid enough to try it again, it won’t matter, because now we’ve got cops outside watching our place, and we’ve got even more cameras up than we had before.”

“You have police officers out there?”

I can hear the smile in her voice. “Yes. Doing a lot of work for the police department has its perks. Bourbon Street Boys is a big asset to the city of New Orleans, so the police aren’t going to let somebody come in here and mess with us.”

“And the police have the money to pay salaries for that kind of surveillance?”

“Don’t worry about it, Jenny. You’re over-thinking things. We’ve helped them gain so much funding through the work we’ve done by increasing their case-closure rate, they’re very happy to help us when we need it.”

I’m both pleased and sad that my sister lumps herself in with this group and says us whenever she’s talking about them. I might actually be kind of jealous. I’ve never been part of an us before at work. I was always working alone in my own cubicle, on my own little projects, living my own life, because the people around me didn’t have the same issues or motivations that I had. In my line of work, or at least in the places where I worked, there weren’t a lot of married people with kids. I always felt like the old lady in the room. And I never understood what was so fun about photocopying butts at parties.