Chapter 51

Sally met Lenny, David and Andrea at the door and took them into the kitchen, which had a table big enough to work on. Ken was already there waiting for them.

"David, Len, good to see you," he said shaking their hands.

"Hey Ken," said Lenny. "This is Andrea, the contracts person I was telling you about."

"Andrea," smiled Ken, "nice to meet you."

Andrea smiled almost absently and shook his hand, but it was clear her mind was elsewhere.

"Mr. Whitestone," she said. "A pleasure. I understand you have a contract you'd like me to review?"

"Sure," he replied, "it's on the table. Can I offer anyone something to eat or drink?"

"Sally," said Lenny, "you wouldn't happen to have any of those wonderful muffins around, would you?"

Sally laughed. "I baked them this morning, knowing you were coming over. Coffee too?"

"Oh, you are a doll," said Lenny.

David also asked for a muffin and some coffee, so Sally just put the platter on the table. She already had coffee made, knowing the two men had a fondness for it. And her muffins.

"Andrea, is there anything I could get you?" asked Sally.

"No thank you," replied the woman with a nervous smile. "Would it be okay if I got started?"

Lenny and Andrea sat down at the table, and David pulled Ken aside.

"She's good with paper," he said. "Seriously good. Not so good with people. Lenny said that's what's holding her back at the firm."

Ken glanced over at the woman. He could read her -- slightly -- because she wasn't hostile to him. But she was already so wrapped up in reading the contract that her thoughts were only on that. In fact, her level of concentration was quite impressive.

"I'm sure she'll be fine," replied Ken. He walked back over to the table and sat down. "Hey Len, there is something I need added to the contract."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," said Ken. "They want to examine Jane before they agree to take us on. I want to ensure complete confidentiality on the results of that examination."

"Ah," said Len. "Do they know you're adding that?"

"Yeah, I mentioned it."

"Okay," he replied, opening up a folder on his computer and scrolling through it, "shouldn't be a problem then. Who did you meet with when you saw these guys?"

"Angelo Costa," replied Ken.

Lenny looked up sharply.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah," said Ken. "Dr. Levy was there too, but it was clear Costa was calling the shots."

"He would be," mused Len.

"You going to share?"

"Costa is one of their heavies," said Len. "Very slick, very smart. Nothing's ever been proven against him -- hell, he's never even been brought to trial -- but word is you don't want to get on his bad side."

"Well, I thought the meeting went very well," said Ken. "He didn't seem put out or anything."

Len nodded, his face serious.

"Just ... well Ken, if this guy ever needs a favor, if you can, I'd seriously consider refusing. This is not a person you want to get mixed up with."

Ken nodded.

"Something to keep in mind then."

It took Andrea until two thirty to be sure there were no pitfalls in the contract.

"It's pretty boiler-plate stuff -- at least for the Barrow Group," she said. Now that she was talking about a contract, she was animated and not shy at all. "They have several types, but this one is just for medical. A lot of celebrities use it. Well, not a lot, but enough, anyway. We added in the confidentiality agreement you asked for and you should be good to go."

"Thanks," said Ken, smiling at her. Immediately, the young woman blushed and looked down.

She wasn't a bad looking woman, Ken thought. Very mousy though. Brown hair, brown eyes, slight frame and dressed to blend in with any neutral colored wall she might lean against. If she made the effort, she could be quite attractive. He decided to take a look into her sexual past, and found that she didn't have much of one. Well, unless one counted her fingers and the occasional vegetable. There had been a few, very unsatisfying, attempts at sex when she was younger, but they had left her unfulfilled and embarrassed. She reserved most of her passion for work, having never really learned how to relate to people.

If she'd been happy with how her life was going, Ken would have been fine with her choices. But she wasn't. She really wanted friends, wanted a relationship. She wanted to have great sex with something that hadn't come from the refrigerator.

"You can sign it and I'll notarize it," said Lenny, "or you can wait and do it with their people."

"I think I'll wait and do it with them," said Ken. "It would be nice if I could have you there with me though."

"I'm sure we can arrange that."

"Now," said Ken, "people will start arriving for dinner in a couple of hours. I assume you are still going to stay?"

"Oh hell yeah," smiled David.

"Andrea, I'm sure Lenny and David extended the invitation to the party this evening?"

"Um ... ye ... yes," said Andrea, actually stammering. "Bbbut I wouldn't want to impose."

"You won't be," said Ken. "We'd love to have you. I can promise that dinner will be spectacular. After that, there will be live music, you can swim in the pool or soak in the hot tub and, if you're into it, we'll have a room or two where you can watch the ball drop TV."

Andrea always spent her New Years evenings alone, except back when she was a child and had spent it with family. She'd never been to a New Years Eve party as an adult (except the occasional work thing), and even though Ken seemed very nice, she rather doubted this was going to be the year that she'd break her streak. Ken was nice, but he wasn't her type. Too intimidating.

About that time Fionna and Cindy wandered into the kitchen.

"Fionna, I don't know about this," Cindy was saying. "I'm just not good enough to be up there with you guys."

"Oh yer a foolish girl," came the lilting reply. "There's no reason why you can't play with us. Ye already know most of th' pieces for Lady's sake, an' yer a damn sight better than most who play out. We're ... Oh, Ken. I'm sorry. Dinna know that you were havin' guests."

"Fionna," smiled Ken, happy that it was Fionna and Cindy that hadn't known about the guests. Fionna tended to stay mostly clothed, and Cindy was being careful because her dad (who was still sleeping off his poker game) was in the house. Any of the other women might have been unclothed. "You know Lenny and David. They're helping me out with some paperwork. This is Andrea, a contracts expert that they brought along."

"Ah, 'tis nice to meet you," said Fionna with a smile.

Andrea was speechless.

"Are you okay Andrea?" asked Lenny with some concern. The girl was terminally shy, but this was just ridiculous.

"Are ... are you Fionna Ashland?" Andrea finally asked in an awed voice. It wasn't that she hadn't recognized her. It was more that seeing her here, in a client's house, was beyond unexpected.

"Aye," smiled Fionna.

"I, well I love your music," said Andrea. "I have all your CDs."

Lenny and David looked at each other in surprise. Ken looked at them and they just shrugged.

"Thank you, lass," smiled Fionna. "It's always nice to know people are listenin'."

Sensing an opportunity to pull Andrea a bit out of her shell, Ken inserted himself into the conversation.

"Fionna's going to be playing here tonight with some of her band," he said.

"Fionna's your live music?" asked Andrea in astonishment.

"She's a close friend of ours," smiled Ken. "Are you sure you won't consider staying? Plenty of food, great music? It'll be fun."

Andrea swallowed. She loved music in general, and Irish music in particular. Fionna was one of the artists she admired most and the chance to see her live was just too much to pass up.

"I'd love to."

Nikki looked around the room. There were a lot of people at the party, but it was very tame compared to many of the other parties they'd had here. Probably because there were a bunch of people here who Nikki rather doubted were into the scene. She spotted the elder Solbergs and Cindy's father, but also David and Len with some other woman Nikki hadn't seen before. Oddly, Karen's mother and her boyfriend had shown up -- probably because Karen's mom wanted to see where her daughter spent so much time. Fionna's band mates had also shown up and were getting ready to play in the ballroom.

Nikki wandered over to where Bill was talking with Ken, David and Lenny.

"Hey, Nikki," smiled Ken, pulling her in for a quick kiss, "everything okay?"

"Yeah," she said with a bright smile. Ken's eyes narrowed for just a second, but Nikki attributed that to the fact that she was a cop, and cops were responsible for his current legal difficulties.

They all chatted for a little while, and when Bill excused himself to get something to drink, Nikki went with him.

"So," she smiled after Bill poured her some wine. He was drinking ginger ale himself. "I have a question for you."

"Okay, shoot," he said.

"Suppose, hypothetically of course, I needed to get information from a computer. How would I do that?"

"They keyboard is always a good place to start," he said with a grin.

She sighed and shook her head. Bill was such a geek. Unbelievably cute, amazing in bed, but a serious geek. Of course, so was Genie who was a math geek, but she hid it better.

"Okay wise guy," she smiled, "I meant if I was locked out of it or something."

Bill was a geek, but not a clueless one.

"So, hypothetically, you wanna know how to break into a computer," he said. "With or without a warrant?"

Nikki blushed. It was bad enough that she thought she needed to spy on other cops, but worse that she was asking an outsider for help. Bill seemed to sense her discomfort.

"Look," he said, "there are a lot of ways to get into a computer. But that's usually the easy part. If you're trying to hack a computer owned by someone who knows what they're doing, finding what you're looking for won't be easy. There are tons of ways to hide or encrypt information."

"I thought encryption was something that the NSA did, or the CIA or something. You mean normal people use it too?"

Bill snorted. He and Genie had recently written some encryption code that they planned to release for free to the public -- anonymously of course. He remembered what had happened to the guy who'd written PGP. Currently, the program was making the rounds of some seriously hard core hackers to see if they could break it. He'd offered a hundred thousand dollar reward for the person who broke it, and was giving them six months to do it. It had been three and no one had gotten even close.

"As the government gets more intrusive, people are gonna want to protect themselves," he replied. "The Patriot Act is anything but."

He said nothing about the wire tapping he knew was going on -- illegally. Once the public got wind of it, things weren't gonna go well for the president.

"Hey if it helps us catch the bad guys..."

"It doesn't," replied Bill. "We already have laws in place that cover everything, but are less intrusive to our citizens. I mean really, library records? But back to your question. What is it you want to get into?"

"A computer that I don't have the password to," she said with a sigh.

"Windows, I assume."

"Windows? No, I can just walk into the..."

"No, no, the operating system."

"Oh," Nikki blushed. She was coming off like a complete idiot. "Yeah, sorry. It's a windows machine."

Bill nodded.

"I might know of a few ways to get into a computer," he said. "If I come across something, I'll let you know."

He smiled at her and wandered off, leaving Nikki feeling very uneasy. For the first time since she'd been introduced to these people, she felt like an outsider and it was upsetting.

"Think about it Nikki," said Sensei, appearing at her side. "You're a policewoman. You just asked someone for something that's illegal right at a time when they feel they're being unfairly attacked by the legal system."

She should have known her lover would appear just at the wrong time. She only hoped that he wouldn't ask her why she wanted the information. She nodded.

"I know," she said. "But it hurts. They've never treated me like an outsider before."

"And I don't think they are now," said Sensei. "I think Bill is just a little nervous at the moment. Surely you know that if you weren't trusted, we wouldn't be here."

Nikki shrugged.

"You were, after all, the one who went against the other police to make sure Jane got help," he reminded her. "I'm sure that Bill will remember that."

"I guess," said the blonde. "It still hurts."

Sensei nodded.

"Still," he said, "it is worth noting that the time might come where you will have to choose between what is lawful and what is right."

Nikki knew that she'd already made that choice.

"How do you know we can trust her, Ken?" asked Bill. "Do you have any idea just how many Unconstitutional things are being done by the government right now?"