“Ok, ladies.” Hannah looked across the table at Sacha and Abbey, or as she preferred to call them, her protégés. “Are you both ready?”
Sacha was watching her intently, but Abbey was leaning off her chair at a forty-five-degree angle, with a pained expression on her face.
“For goodness sake, Abbey! What the hell are you doing, sitting like that?” Hannah sighed. “If you fall off that damn chair, I am not taking the blame!”
“Sorry.” Abbey panted. “The baby has his foot stuck up under my ribs, and he’s making it hard for me to breathe.”
“Try standing up and walking around.” Sacha suggested. “Maybe do a few squats until he starts feeling sea-sick. If he’s anything like my Rocco, he’ll wind that foot back in fast, you see if he doesn’t!”
“Ladies!” Hannah sighed. “We have a very time-sensitive job to do here! Can we leave the pregnancy advice until later? Work first, hmm?”
Sacha stared at Hannah as though she’d grown a second head. She leaned towards Abbey and covered her mouth with her hand.
“Is she trying to make out like she’s a grown-up?” She whispered very loudly. “She’s acting all bossy and parental and shit!”
Abbey leaned towards Sacha, mirroring her movement with her hand.
“I’m not sure.” She whispered. “Do you think we need to start calling her ‘mom’?”
Hannah jumped up.
“I am not that much older than you two!” She scowled. “And just because I’m using up my daily ten minutes of being sensible to show you two muppets how to use this new satellite imaging unit, does NOT mean that I am anywhere near being a GROWN-UP!”
Hannah could see Sacha biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself laughing.
Abbey’s face was frozen in a half smirk, but her cheeks were becoming redder by the second.
“Y’all know you two can be super-bitches, doncha?” Hannah growled.
“Oh, yeah!” Sacha burst out laughing.
“Learned it from an expert.” Abbey nodded, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes. “Oh, hey…! I think Junior’s finally moved his foot, bless him!”
“Do you even know if you’re having a boy, again?” Hannah scowled at Abbey’s huge baby bump. “And please tell me you’re not planning on going into labour anytime soon. I need your photographic memory in good form this week.”
“First of all, apart from Aisha, who’s not due until March, all the Alpha-Stalwart babies are due in early December. Bella, Sara, and I are due the first week, and Suzy is due the week after. Secondly, there’s nothing to say she can’t be an Abbey Junior, rather than a Jordan Junior. So, I use the term Junior in a purely non-gender-specific way.” Abbey smiled. “Plus, it keeps Jordan happy, as he thinks it’s another boy and that I agree with him.”
“Jeez, you have got to be the most non-confrontational person I ever met.” Hannah shook her head. “If it was me having that conversation with Danny? I’d deliberately tell him I thought it was a girl, just to yank his chain. Life is so much more fun when I get my man wound up!”
“And I’m sure that works for you, sister.” Abbey laughed. “But, my man is the sweetest, most loving guy you can imagine. So, why would I want to rile him up, when keeping him sweet means I get all that man-candy to myself, loving up on me, and spoiling me like crazy?”
“She’s got a point. Sweet and loving has its place, too. Although, with Zach, I get the best of both worlds.” Sacha noted smugly, glancing at Hannah. “During the day, he’s the serious, sexy as sin, hard-working executive, giving the job his full attention, and pretending we’re just business associates. Then he comes home and winds down, playing with Rocco for a few hours before his bedtime. So, by the time Rocco is finally asleep, and we’re ready for a little ‘alone time,’ Zach’s all mellow and romantic, and happy to give me his undivided attention.”
Hannah stared at her friends.
“Danny can be mellow and romantic, too!” She insisted, noting the doubtful looks on the women’s faces. “He can!”
After a few seconds, both Sacha and Abbey burst out laughing, and Hannah broke into a grin.
“Ok, he’s mostly just randy!” She snorted. “But he’s romantically randy, too!”
The three women giggled until Abbey groaned that ‘the foot was back’, and they finally settled down to concentrate on the task at hand.
“Ok, sisters, here comes the serious shit.” Hannah groaned. “We have an idea of the timeline for the woman who was murdered in LA, and then we have a log of all the flights coming out of LAX and smaller airfields within four hours of that. Anything that flew out heading for an airfield within a hundred-mile radius of Philly.”
“That’s gonna be a pretty big number, right?” Sacha guessed.
“Yeah, big enough.” Hannah admitted. “So, we’re looking to crossmatch data from all different sources, to see if we can find any matches. Hotel bookings, car rental, flight passenger lists, cell-phone data, ATM’s, even credit card usage. Anything we can find that will come up with multiple matches.”
“I’m guessing we’re not searching for Lucky Vega’s name? Too easy, right?” Abbey winced, as Junior obviously adjusted him/herself.
“Considering she’s not even supposed to be in the country, and her name would be known to all the law enforcement agencies, she’s not going to be using her own passport as ID, no.” Hannah agreed. “We’ve also red-flagged all her known associates, and no surprise we haven’t had any hits there, either.”
“So, the idea is to come up with a list of possible names that have hits in LA and the east coast, and that may have appeared on a flight log, sometime since last night?” Sacha clarified.
“Don’t get too hung up on the flight logs. Private planes won’t necessarily have passenger details, and if they do, they won’t always be correct.” Hannah clarified. “No, I think we need to find some other way of connecting the dots between individuals who were in LA last night, and are close to Philly this morning.”
“And how exactly are we supposed to do that?” Abbey grimaced in discomfort.
Hannah reached across the table and grabbed a laptop.
“Meet my new baby!” She smiled, clicking on an icon on the screen. “This programme will crunch the data faster than you can enter it, and start spitting out results before you’ve finished typing.”
Sacha looked at the screen, which, she suspected, despite being decorated around the edges with pretty scrolling, had some seriously complicated coding behind it. She glanced at the top bar to see the programme name.
“Forensic Analytical Research Tool?” She read out. “Seriously Hannah? You called your new system FART?”
Hannah grinned even as she shrugged.
“The kids picked it out.” She snorted. “Gotta love them Munchkins and their poo humour. They’re their daddy’s kids after all.”
“Oh, my goodness, that means every time we find anything on the system, we have to say… ‘According to FART…!” Abbey grinned.
“Yeah, that’s never gonna get old!” Hannah chuckled. “Now come on… I’ll show you what data you need to add, and how to link the various systems, and then you just let the FART do its job.”
“Is what it’s doing even legal?” Abbey asked.
“Not for the general public, no.” Hannah admitted. “But I have everything licensed for government use, with full permissions, which includes my own personal use whenever I want to use it, as long as I don’t share my findings with other governments.”
“Which government gave you the license?” Sacha wondered.
Hannah snorted.
“Now that would be breaking the ‘confidentiality agreement’ I signed with them, if I told you.” She said, cagily. “And I keep my sources and secrets to myself.”
Abbey chuckled.
“I bet Danny can get your secrets out of you.” She muttered.
“Danny can get me to tell him anything he wants to know.” Hannah smiled. “But then again, he’s got a very powerful secret weapon, which you ladies do not possess. So, get to work!”
Sacha groaned and turned to Abbey.
“How do they say, ‘bossy bitch’ in Britain?” She mused.
“Bossy bitch!” Abbey replied, her face deadpan. “It’s just the accent that gives it that extra something when it’s said by a Brit.”
“Would you tell her for me, then? Make it good!” Sacha smiled.
Abbey turned to pass on the message only to find Hannah had moved right into her personal space. All five-feet-nothing of her.
“Oh, hey Hannah.” Abbey grinned. “Sacha wanted me to tell you we’re just gonna get started now, and if you want one, she’ll send out for a coffee and a bagel for you from downstairs.”
Sacha burst out laughing.
“You pussy!” She gasped.
Abbey chuckled.
“What can I say? You wouldn’t call Yoda a bossy bitch, would you?” She asked. “Hanna’s my Yoda.”
Sacha snorted, laughing louder.
“The first one of you that references the similarity in height between Yoda and myself will find their face photoshopped onto every porn video I can find on the web!” Hannah warned. “That ‘Deepfake’ shit will be nothing to what I can and will do to you!”
Abbey and Sacha sat straighter and stopped laughing so hard, instantly.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” Abbey whispered.
When Hannah just grinned at them, Sacha leaned forward and grabbed the other two laptops, sliding one over to Abbey.
“I think it’s her time of the month!” She whispered loudly to Abbey.
Abbey nodded in agreement.
“Bossy bitch!” She grinned, giving her baby bump another rub.
Hannah rolled her eyes.
She didn’t really mind being called a bossy bitch. It actually made a nice change from being the Queen of Badass!