Chapter 2

Tom sat down in the slightly undersized chairs directly across from Adam. They looked at each other both seemingly trying to read the other's mind. Finally, Adam broke into a wide grin.

"OK, I give." he said.

"What?"

"I give." Adam stated once again. "I'm not going to ask why you didn't tell me you needed your backups, but had to quietly sneak what little you had available to you out over the past few days. I'm sure it's hard to know who you can trust here."

Tom was starting to sweat now, had Adam spoiled the surprise? He hoped not. But regardless, he had the prick by the short hairs and that thought calmed him.

"I have friends, and I have family. I knew that my earlier stuff was archived somewhere off the main servers, somewhere I couldn't get to easily. I'd have asked, but I didn't want to get labeled a thief." Tom thought that the better part of valor here would be to see if he could convince Adam that he was still his friend, at least for a while longer. "Besides, it wouldn't do for you to get caught helping me."

"Well, just so you know, I run this department; the tricks of the trade are with me alone. Do you think that son of a bitch would really know how you got your projects? I mean, you should have kept a copy yourself anyway, but since I know you didn't, I took the liberty." He handed Tom a couple of burned DVD's. "Here, it's labeled, categorized by date and project number, there's a table of contents in web document form, so you just have to open one file and click on what you want. I took a few 'extra' liberties while I was copying data from the servers. You now have everything on the servers even if it wasn't your work, if it was remotely related to your work, you've got it. I also backed up your hard drive data here." He handed Tom another pile of disks.

"I don't know what to say." Tom sat unbelieving, wondering just what Adam was up to...

Adam broke into his reflection by standing. He chuckled. "Well, now unless I'm mistaken, there'll be some kind of party this evening?"

Tom was thinking that Adam was ok now, but just to be sure, he said, "Yeah, I'm meeting a couple of people for drinks later. You want to stop by? It's the usual place." Tom had not mentioned the name of the place, Adam had been out with him before, and knew where the party would be. He agreed to meet after work so they could all get a belly laugh at the company's expense.

"Thanks for the disks. Are we ok? I mean, I'm leaving today. Victor - he doesn't know does he?" Tom asked, referring to the boss. "I've been trying to get this stuff for a while, but having it all here at once, I don't even have to go back to my desk."

"Nah, he doesn't know anything's up." said Adam. "He's about as sharp as a well used sponge. I haven't talked to anyone. Actually, I found all this out by snooping on what you've been up to since day one. I've pretty much had your back. If anyone had tried to get something incriminating on you, I've wiped all trace of anything they 'thought' they had. I actually made you out to be a saint with your project work times... Not a single web search, not a single minute of logged time on that damn card game everyone has on their pc that they don't think I know about." Adam grumbled that last part under his breath slightly.