Chapter 1: The Door

"Well, at long last it went down" Tony said as he turned his back to the window, where the sky was painted purple by the setting sun.

Elizabeth smiled at him as his body blocked most of the view out, only allowing her to see the broad silhouette of his body.

"Long day, uh?" she said, trying to stop her smile from turning to an outright amused grin, "Did the servers misbehave that much today?".

Tony glared at her for a moment, until her smile turned into a beaming grin. He turned back towards the darkening window as he grumbled, thinking, as he often had to do in days like this, that it was a real shame that he could never really get angry with her when she was happy, even if her grin came from amusement at his own bad temper.

"Not the servers... computers are logical and obedient, I can deal with them very well... it's those damn users and the problems they bring on themselves because of their lack of brain!", he said, the last of his frustration coming out in a loud sigh.

"Come on, Tony, it could have been worse, much worse, and you know it" Elizabeth said, that beaming grin still on her face, "it could have been pay day, you know?", her grin turning into outright laughter as she saw Tony's face twist at the thought.

"Well, the day is over at last and there's a 4 day weekend ahead of us" he said, rubbing his big hands together, a smile appearing on his face for the first time in hours, "the cabin should be ready, Jamie called me at noon and told me that she and Angie would be leaving for the mountains at noon to get everything set."

Hearing his words, Elizabeth's eyes seemed to glow, the mere thought of the long weekend ahead of themselves lightening her soul with the warmth that she hoped would warm her body before the end of the day.

Tony walked back to his desk, covered with two 21" LCD screens, each of them sporting several virtual terminals open, monitoring the operation of the many servers housed in the site located on the top 3 floors, where most companies would put the executive offices. But not this one. The institutional paranoia that had made "Vox Information Security" the number one company in its field, protecting information for all kinds of businesses, both on the client's site and off site, on VIS' own servers.

As Elizabeth saw Tony sit at his desk and look at his monitors, she couldn't help it but smile "He's too much of a damn geek at times" she thought, "at least Angie will be screening his email during the weekend, so hopefully he won't get stuck dealing with something or other of his geek pursuits and forgetting that he's supposed to be relaxing and taking advantage of the three of us!".

"Soooo..." she said, masking her voice with fake annoyance, "how many hours will I have to get ready? Or will I have to go on my own, so you can stay and look at your blinking lights and rolling lines of logs?"

"Uh?" Tony looked up, his eyes slightly wide with the look she recognized as his famous Tony-forgot-humans-were-around.

"I asked if you are going to stay there looking at blinking lights and rolling lines of logs or if we are going to get moving so you can use and abuse your three slaves" she said with a smile on her face.

"Oh, yes, sorry" he said with one of those smiles of embarrassment that he saved for when he was caught lost in his computer when he should have been doing something else, "let's go, Steve should have my laptop downstairs, so we'll just pick it up and get on the car" he said as he stood up, pulling his security card from the side of his keyboard before hitting a short sequence of keys on the keyboard to tell the computer to lock up in I'm-out-of-here mode.

Elizabeth laughed out loud as she heard him, making him look up at her, an eyebrow going up as his head tilted slightly to his right.

"Sorry about that, Tony, but... your laptop is already in the mountains, and Steve got it set on weekend mode already, so..." she concluded, a big smile lighting up her face, "that means you won't be using it at all!"

He threw up his hands grumbling and mumbling under his breath as he started walking around his desk, then his typical tirade of days like this came out "I should have never accepted that 'weekend mode' crap!" he said as he picked Elizabeth up and threw her across his right shoulder, slapping her leather-covered ass twice hard with his left hand as she shrieked loudly, "As usual, you get to pay for it with 20 strokes of whatever comes to mind whenever I want to check my email and remember you have me locked out, slavegirl"

Tony walked out the door of his office, passing in front of Kate, his Personal Assistant, still carrying Elizabeth over his shoulder.

"Ready for the long weekend, I can see" Kate said with a laugh.

"Yup, we are ready" Tony answered her with a smile, thinking about the big change between Kate's amused reaction and her reaction the first time she had seen Tony come out of his office with a shrieking Angie a year ago. Only Angie's impassionate pleading has stopped her from calling 911 right then and there. It still took a long day of talk between Kate, Angie, Jamie and Elizabeth for Kate not to resign, which was one of the million and one things that Tony had to thank his loved slaves for. Kate was the best Personal Assistant he had ever met.

"We are driving directly to the cabin right now, and should be there all weekend. If anything at level 4 or 5 comes up, please call, ok? Don't let these brats" he said slapping Elizabeth's skirt covered ass again, "stop you if it's important" he continued, "I'm hoping that the long weekend will remind them who's the boss" he finished with a smile.

"I'll call if anything 4 or 5 comes up, don't worry, boss" she answered, "now, shoo, or your girls are probably going to want to hang me next to Elizabeth from one of those damn contraptions of yours!" she added laughing as she waved at them.

"You'd love it!" Elizabeth said as Tony walked pass the desk and she was almost face to face, tho upside down, with Kate, "we'll convince you one of these days, and you'll never go vanilla again!".

Elizabeth waved bye at the still smiling Kate shook her head at her until the elevator doors closed between them when Tony called out "Lobby" once the elevator beeped its recognition of his security card which it had read as he passed the door.

As the elevator started moving down from the 11th floor (where his office was one of the only 2, since it was the floor right under the site), he put the still laughing Elizabeth on her feet between himself and the door, and pulled out his secure ID as the door opened on the 10th floor. The only elevator that could move past the 9th floor, it still made a stop at the 10th on its way up and down, and IDs were religiously checked, as were fingerprints and retina scans. Nobody but Tony, Elizabeth and Kate could go beyond the 9th floor, under no circumstances. "Paranoia is our lifestyle" was often said by Tony.