Wrong Place, Right Time(88)

“And he’s awesome in bed. Don’t forget that part.” She can’t stop grinning.

“You and I both know that’s not the reason you’re with him. But it is a nice side benefit.”

May gets a far-off, misty look in her eye that I’m almost jealous of. I quickly move the conversation forward to keep from dwelling on anything negative. I’m thrilled she’s so happy.

“Anyway, it’s been nice having Dev to talk to, and I think I could really have fun with him as a friend, so even if that’s all that’s going on between us, I’m happy.”

“I’m happy for you too.” May smiles. “You guys could make a cute couple, though.”

I shake my head. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We just met each other last week.”

“So? Love at first sight is a real thing. Trust me, I know.”

I laugh. “You told me, when you met Ozzie, you thought he was a hideous beast-man with that beard of his. You said he was completely and totally ugly. That was no love-at-first-sight situation, no way.”

May frowns at me. “That impression lasted only about ten minutes. Once he shaved, and I saw how amazing he was, I was done. I fell for him like a rock.”

I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”

May crumples up her muffin paper. “So, did you find anything good on those computer files or whatever you went after the other night?”

“Well, I should probably save this for the briefing later today, but I did find some stuff on the clone drives last night after the kids fell asleep.”

May sits up really straight in her chair. “Really? Tell me.”

I lean in, excited about what I found after working into the wee hours of the morning. “There’s somebody there at Blue Marine who sits at station number three, named Anita, who’s been messing around with the accounts. I haven’t shared everything with Lucky yet about it.”

“So? Tell me anyway.”

I’m too excited about my results to wait. “I think I can prove the existence of at least two fake companies that this woman has set up to divert funds into an account she owns.”

May’s jaw drops open, and it takes visible effort for her to start talking. “Oh . . . my god. That is . . . incredible. How did you find it?”

I shrug. “Well, she had some pretty high-level computer skills going for her, I’ll give her that much.”

“But not as much as my sister does,” May says, squeezing my arm.

I smile. “You know it.” I use this opportunity with my sister to explain what I did in a way that a non-geek could understand, knowing she’ll cross her eyes if I say anything too technical. “She was using file-hiding software that had a pretty difficult AES 256 encryption matrix . . .”

May’s eyes cross almost on cue with my description. “Oh my god, you are such a nerd.”

“I’m a geek, not a nerd. Big difference.” I try again to explain. “Let’s just say she had a super-hard password on the system, but I figured it out. And I might have accessed some legal documents online that I wasn’t supposed to see that allowed me to track the companies back to her. I think she paid a lot of money to some lawyer to keep that all secret, but she should have budgeted for a computer engineer too.” I grin like the Cheshire Cat.

May leans over for a spontaneous hug. “You are so awesome. I knew you could do it. But do me a favor. Don’t tell them like you told me. Use all the fancy words.”

I laugh. “Why?”

She suddenly sounds desperate. “Because! I want them to offer you the job! If you act like it’s no big deal, they’ll think they can just hire some doofus off the street to do it.”

I’m a little surprised by that. “Do they want to hire some doofus off the street?”

May shakes her head. “No, of course not. They want to hire you. But Toni tends to be very negative about people coming on board, so I’m afraid she’s going to make the team worry that you don’t really want to be there. But if you can show them that what you do is very special and that not any doofus off the street can do it, I think they’ll be more inclined to ignore her.”

“Wow. I didn’t realize she disliked me so much.”

May shakes her head vigorously. “It’s not that she doesn’t like you. I promise. She’s just really prickly, like, all the time. Even when she’s being nice to me, I’m suspicious she’s just messing around. So don’t take it personally.” She looks like she’s about to say something else, but she stops herself.

I’m instantly suspicious. “What were you going to say?”