A Matter of Trust (18 page)

“Sloan? It’s Jason.”

“Jason? What’s going on? What’s the matter?” She fought a surge of anxiety. Something wasn’t right, and she had a feeling it was Michael. Her heart was racing just at the thought. It was Thursday—well, technically Friday morning, now—and she hadn’t heard anything from her since the worried call on Monday evening. She had told herself that meant everything was fine—except she didn’t really believe it and had been on edge ever since.

“I’m on my way to Innova.” He waited a beat, as if deliberating, then added, “Michael asked me not to call you, but all hell is breaking loose in her office, and I figured you’d want to know.”

By now, Sloan was standing, flipping on lights and tossing her suitcase with one hand onto the bottom of her hotel bed. As she spoke, she pulled open drawers and dumped her clothing into the open bag. “Is she all right?”

For a moment, Jason didn’t understand. Hadn’t he just told her that there was a major problem? Then he realized she meant was Michael
physically
all right, and he hurried to answer.

“She’s fine. I mean, she’s not
fine,
she’s practically going out of her mind, but she’s not hurt or anything.”

“Jason, just tell me what the fuck is wrong and stop beating around the bush.”

Sloan swore, tugging off the sweats she had been sleeping in and reaching for the jeans she had tossed over a chair earlier that evening. She cradled the phone between her shoulder and chin as she pulled up the jeans, forsaking underwear, and donned a clean white T-shirt. She slid her feet sockless into her loafers and looked around the room for her leather jacket.

“Michael was apparently working late on some big project of hers when out of the blue everything started crashing. From what I can make out, she lost data, can’t open programs, and her hard drive has crashed totally.”

Sloan stood still for a second, an uneasy feeling starting in her chest. “Did you try to talk her through it over the phone and get her back on-line?”

“Of course. No go,” he said, clearly frustrated. “It was just by luck that I happened to get her message. Since you were out of town, I had office calls forwarded to my home number, and I checked my answering machine when I got back from a...date. I called Michael right away, but I can’t seem to get things up and running again. I have a bad feeling about this.”

“No foolin’.” Sloan slammed the suitcase shut, tucked her wallet into her right rear pocket, and grabbed the plastic room cardkey off the desk. She scanned quickly around the room for anything she might have left behind. “I’ve got the same bad feeling you do. I don’t believe in coincidences. I’ll be there in two hours. You need to be at Michael’s office so we can get started as soon as I get in.”

Suitcase in one hand and the phone tucked under her chin, she reached for the door. “And, Jason? Pack a bag. I have a feeling we’re going to be sleeping over.”

*

At 12:30 a.m., there wasn’t a lot of traffic on I-95 South. In a Porsche Carrera, a hundred miles was a ride around the block, and in less than two hours, Sloan was waved through by what passed for night security in the lobby of Innova’s building. When she knocked on the executive officer’s door, the CEO herself answered.

“Hi,” Sloan said, rooted to the spot. Somehow she’d forgotten how beautiful the woman was.

“Hi,” Michael stood holding the door open, watching the other woman walk in. It was the middle of the night, and J. T. Sloan should have looked like hell, but she was the best thing Michael had laid eyes on in days. Six very long days, to be exact. Mixed with her intense relief was a pulse of visceral pleasure that she couldn’t quite explain. And it wasn’t something she wanted to examine too closely at the moment. “I’m so sorry to have to drag you back like this.”

“Forget it.” Sloan dropped her briefcase onto the sofa, shrugged out of her leather jacket and dropped it, too, and turned automatically toward the computer workstation. She wasn’t aware of Michael’s appraising glance gliding over the tight T-shirt and then moving slowly down her jean-clad thighs. “You’re not troubling me. This is my job and what you’ve been paying me to do. Obviously, I missed something, and it’s my responsibility to straighten things out.” She glanced at her watch and saw that it was 2:10 a.m. “Where’s Jason?”

“He’s down the hall in Mayfield’s office checking something on the main system. He got here about an hour ago. The last time I saw him, he was mumbling colorfully under his breath.” Michael crossed to the computer center and stared at the blue screens of death. “I intend to join in on that front soon.”

Sloan appreciated Michael’s attempt at levity. It was clear how stressed she was. The fine lines around her eyes were deeper, and there was a gaunt pallor to her face that signaled her fatigue. She had shed her suit jacket and was wearing only a light silk blouse tucked into casual slacks. Despite Michael’s air of weariness, Sloan couldn’t think of anyone more attractive.

Michael turned from the screens to find Sloan staring at her. For a second, she forgot about the disaster threatening to sabotage the critical work she needed to finish and saw only the appreciative glow in Sloan’s eyes.

She colored slightly, but smiled back. “I think you had better let him know you’re here, because he looked about as frazzled as I feel.”

“I’ll do that.” Sloan took several steps forward to the coffee urn and poured two cups, handing one to Michael. “Here, you’re going to need this. After I see what he’s doing, I’ll take a look at your machines.” She took a swallow of coffee, grateful for the caffeine infusion. “Until I see what’s down, there’s no way to analyze what’s going on. Can you tell me what programs were running and exactly what happened—in sequence?”

With a sigh, Michael sat on one of the sofas and propped her stocking feet up on the edge of the glass coffee table. She ran a hand through her hair, smoothing the golden strands back from her cheeks. Her voice was flat, defeated, as she spoke.

“I was working on the proposals I need for the research and development division meeting next week—one of the major projects I told you about?”

“Uh-huh,” Sloan said with a nod.
One of the projects you’re counting on to solidify your position at the helm of Innova
.

“Anyhow, I was entering data into one of the graphics programs, finalizing some details for Tuesday’s meeting. Let’s see—I’d also checked e-mail from several of my techs earlier, too, so that was still open. Uh...Word was running...God, I don’t know what else. A Web page or two? I wasn’t paying attention.”

“And then...?”

“First the screen display flickered, like pixels were dropping out, and next the color faded. It corrected after I rebooted, but then the graphics program froze up. That’s not common, but it happens.” She laughed humorlessly. “Mostly when I’m in the middle of something crucial like tonight. I tried the usual things, but I couldn’t get it up again. Then other files simply disappeared. Finally, the hard drive crashed. When I had exhausted the few tricks I knew, and it became obvious something major had happened, I called your office and left a message.”

“Why didn’t you call me in New York?” Sloan asked gently. “You had the number.”

Michael looked away. “Because you were in New York.”

She didn’t add that she’d already turned to Sloan once that week when she’d needed help, and she was afraid of what that meant. Because she knew, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself, that she thought of Sloan nearly all the time. And it wasn’t because she needed advice. Sometimes, it was because she wanted to hear Sloan’s voice, and sometimes, it was simply because she couldn’t forget the feel of Sloan’s hands on her. She bit her lip and remained silent.

Sloan let it go. She could see how upset Michael was, and it was no time for interrogations. “Has anything seemed strange the last few weeks with your system?”

Businesslike once again, Michael gave it some thought and recounted a few things that in retrospect seemed odd. While she talked, Sloan took a seat on the adjoining couch and crossed one bare ankle over the opposite knee. Leaning forward intently, she quickly assessed, considered, and discarded possibilities.

Eventually, Michael halted, shrugging helplessly. “I just don’t know enough to tell the difference between the normal glitches and something really wrong.”

She was exhausted, and worried, and emotionally stretched to breaking. And she was angry. Angry at herself for not realizing years before that her life was founded on a lie—an illusion of stability that now put everything she cared about in jeopardy.

“I’m not going to tell you not to worry,” Sloan said quietly. “You’re much too intelligent to believe that. In fact, I’m worried, too, but meltdowns like this happen, and sometimes the solution can be relatively simple. The problem is going to be narrowing down exactly where the system has failed. Once we’ve identified the cause, hopefully we’ll be able to resurrect and reconstruct your hard drive and retrieve your critical files.”

“What about the automatic backups? Isn’t the system set to do that?” Michael asked hopefully.

“For the network—yes. Weekly.” At Michael’s desperate expression, Sloan asked, “How much have you transferred to your hard drive that
isn’t
saved to the network?”

“Everything I’ve been working on the last few days. I’ve been pulling it together from everywhere.”

“It’s possible that the local backup files are not contaminated, but that’s unlikely.”

“How long before you can tell?”

“I don’t know. I need to see what Jason’s found so far.” As Michael slumped with defeat, Sloan added, “Look, at least
some
of what you’ve lost must be copied to other people or included in company documents—proposals, meeting notes—that kind of thing.”

“Probably,” Michael agreed glumly. “But digging it out and getting it all back in one piece could literally take weeks.” She remembered the look on Nicholas’s face—the cold disdain and resolute anger.
And I don’t have weeks. Probably not even days.

“With any luck, the encryption program we installed for your personal design portfolio will have protected the information. It may still be there intact and only temporarily inaccessible.”

“How can I help?” Michael asked, drawing some hope from the confidence and certainty in Sloan’s voice. “I don’t want to put any more pressure on you than there already is, but I have critical deadlines in five days. I might be able to postpone them for a short time, twelve to twenty-four hours maybe, but after that, people are going to know there’s a problem. If I miss these deadlines, I’m sure that Nicholas will take advantage of that and attempt a major takeover. If he pushes for that now, and can point to my failure to complete essential projects, I will very likely lose.”

Sloan nodded grimly, her intense dislike of Nicholas escalating. The timing was too suspicious to discount the idea that he had something to do with what was happening. He couldn’t have done more damage to Michael unless he had physically assaulted her. Unfortunately, proving corporate sabotage was difficult, time consuming, and rarely prosecutable. Plus, it wouldn’t help Michael. At the moment, she had little recourse but to attempt to identify and undo the damage.

“Michael, you’re not pressuring me. My business is deadlines,” she said with absolute confidence. “The most important thing you can do is keep working. Jason and I aren’t leaving until the problem is solved, and if I need specific info, you’ll be here to fill me in. I can’t give you a time estimate, but if I need to, I’ll call in some favors and bring in additional techs to help. Worst-case scenario, we’ll have to initiate major data retrieval or even reprogram parts of the BIOS chip—whatever we have to do, it will get done. I promise.”

“I trust you, Sloan.” Michael leaned forward and took Sloan’s hand. She squeezed lightly, and when Sloan slipped her fingers between Michael’s, it felt as right as anything she had ever experienced.

Looking into Sloan’s eyes, she found the welcoming warmth she was coming to count on, and for the first time in days, she felt safe. There was more than just her career in Sloan’s hands. She was slowly losing her heart to the fiercely secretive woman with the tender touch.

*

Sloan found Jason in the network administrator’s office, sitting in a swivel chair staring at a monitor, a legal pad next to him covered in shorthand notes to himself.

“Do you think it’s a virus?” she asked as soon as she walked in.

“Don’t you?” He looked up at her over his shoulder, his blue eyes dark with worry. “Every damn thing I try to open gives me a corrupted file message. Christ, until we can be sure of the extent of the damage, we have to assume that even the off-site backup files are contaminated.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure, too,” she commented, studying him carefully. Despite the fact that he had not even gotten the few hours’ sleep that she had managed before driving back from New York, he looked fresh and immaculately groomed as always. He wore casual pants and a polo shirt. The dark blue shirt was tight enough to show off his nicely muscled arms and shoulders.

“I can tell you right now it’s probably armored, because the TSR you loaded should have picked up most known and in-the-wild species,” he added.

“I hope it’s
only
a virus.” She edged a hip up onto the corner of the long counter and said grimly, “If it is, I’m willing to bet it’s a polymorphic virus that’s been hanging around for a while, slowly infiltrating everything on the network. What I’m really worried about, though, is that it’s some kind of stealth virus or Trojan horse that was dropped sometime earlier and remotely triggered recently. With the network running all the time and God knows how many people with access, it could be anywhere by now. We’re going to have to look at all the backup copies, clean the system thoroughly, and hope there’s no permanent damage to critical files. We’re looking at days.”