"Yes!" Karn Borden concentrated on the screen of the computer. The passwords from JP had worked, but the outmoded machine was taking forever. She glanced at her watch. Less than five minutes before the secretary would walk in.
"Come on. Come on," she whispered. She stretched out her fingers to relax them. What if the relic was too slow? She had no recourse but to continue. She had to download her program.
Her fingers poised over the keyboard, she listened to the welcomed silence behind her in the hall of the Manhattan offices of the engineering design firm, Berg & Son. Karn glanced over her shoulder at the two closed doors opposite the secretary's desk where she sat.
Director Vincent Graves, whose office was on the left, had the afternoon off. No potential problem there. The other door led to space formerly dedicated to public-relations, but now awaited the arrival of James Berg, Jr., due back next week after heading the company's San Francisco branch for six years.
Karn quickly tamped down the anxiety she felt from merely thinking about seeing James again. She had several more days yet to steel herself, but just thinking about him brought a familiar heat and tingling between her legs. She inhaled deeply and tried to refocus on the empty office and not on James. But it wasn't easy.
She'd heard that Morrison wasn't happy about losing his PR staff area, but there hadn't been much he could do. JP, James P. Berg, Sr., the owner of Berg & Son, needed the area for his returning son's new office.
The computer drive hummed and the screen finally changed, drawing Karn's attention. She rapidly keyed in another short directive. Her hands remained steady over the keyboard with a confidence born of several years of professional investigative experience, preceded by years of hacking while a computer-major at college. The screen changed and she inserted a floppy disk to facilitate installing her program.
"That's the way," she whispered as she absently wiped a little stream of perspiration running down her temple from under her wig. Time was running out, but as she watched the screen, she smiled. She loved this kind of work. Never a dull moment. Her heart beat faster as she waited.
She pressed her damp palms against her wildly-patterned miniskirt. She'd picked this particular one because it was too short and way too tight. The black heart-shaped beauty mark below her lip tickled, but she couldn't remove it yet. Both were to draw any observer's gaze to something that she could easily alter. Then the witness would not be likely to identify her as the woman they saw.
An echoing ding from the arriving elevator sounded from down the hall. "There's the bell. End of round one," she announced in muted tones as she keyed in the last command. Her task completed, she jumped up from the chair and pushed it back under the desk. After dropping the ejected floppy disk into her enormous cloth shoulder bag, she pulled out a hand-written note specifically prepared for this eventuality. She darted around the tall silk-leafed plant to the visitor's side of the L-shaped desk and posed bent over to appear as if she'd just written the note. If someone came in the office, she hoped her exposed thighs would take their attention off her face.
She couldn't hear anyone in the carpeted hall, but sensed someone was coming when the door to the hall opened and the secretary, Madeline Cory, walked in. She viewed Karn with open-mouthed alarm. Her hand flew to her chest as if to steady her heart beat.
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