Her boss, Mr. Andre, had barely said a word to her after the AIDA presentation.

At first, she was glad.

But now, with the two of them sitting alone together in the back of a limo, the silence felt worse than any of the awkward pauses during her botched presentation. While at first she would have rather not heard his criticism, now she just wanted to hear something. Anything.

If nothing else, the drive across town provided her with ample time to think over AIDA in the context of Abe Hudson’s confession. And while her suspicions were raised going into the event, she hadn’t seen anything incriminating. They had taken her on a quick tour of their offices, with particular emphasis on the communications room. She met with their in-house cybersecurity chief, who was really not much more than a glorified IT slave. His lack of skills were immediately apparent, and then there was that glazed-over look on his face, his eyes like two little marbles whenever she’d explain something to him about Sentry’s new encryption. She was used to seeing that glazed-over look, but never from fellow analysts. She even doubted that he was IT at all, but someone’s nephew who was into gaming and knew how to set up a few routers around the office. That was probably the limit of his skill set, far below the ability to notice whether anything shady had been going on with “them boys at AIDA,” as Abe would say.

Laurel, fed up with the silence, finally turned to her boss and said, “So what did you think of their IT guy?”

“I think he’s about as competent with cybersecurity as you are with presenting.”

She almost choked, finally swallowing and saying, “I told you that presenting isn’t my strong suit.”

“You told me you didn’t like it. Now who the fuck likes it?”

Laurel stayed silent as the car rumbled over a double row of train tracks. She wasn’t used to Mr. Andre speaking to her like that. She looked at him, hoping to read his expression, but his face pointed straight ahead. She tried speaking more softly, more reasonably. “Can you maybe find someone else who doesn’t dislike presenting as strongly as I do?”

“Sure,” he said. “You’re right. Maybe I should shuffle the deck.”

Shuffle the deck. That sent a stabbing pain to her stomach, the thought of getting shuffled out of a job on her second week as Assistant Project Manager.

“Speaking of which,” said Mr. Andre. “Have you been able to hack their original encryption yet?”

It was part of the Sentry process, to attack and circumvent the client’s original security while developing a new one. It would help Sentry’s internal developers fix any existing holes, while also making a big impression on the client. Evidence of their system’s current weakness. Problem and solution. She remembered Mr. Andre talking about it, how sales were all about fear. As was his leadership style, apparently.

“I’ll take from your silence,” said Andre. “That you’ve been unsuccessful.”

Goddammit . . . It wasn’t that she’d been unsuccessful, she just—

“You know that’s part of the process, Laurel. Just because you’re the assistant project manager, it doesn’t mean you get to call your own shots now.”

“I . . . haven’t hacked it yet.”

“Why not?”

“I assigned it to Caitlyn.”

The sigh from Mr. Andre was like an unraveled pressure-release valve.

“I thought . . .” Laurel was all jumbled up inside, her tongue thickening by the second as she searched for the right thing to say. “I thought that, that she would do a better—”

“Well has Caitlyn done it yet?”

The problem there was that Laurel hadn’t followed up on her status checks, especially with Caitlyn. There was a possibility that Caitlyn had completed the hack. But there was also the possibility that saying so would be a lie.

“You don’t even know?” said Andre.

“She hasn’t,” Laurel said. It was a guess. A safe guess. But a horrible confession to make to Mr. Andre.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe a shuffling might be necessary.”

“What kind of . . . shuffle?”

“Maybe we should pull you off managerial, and put you on the hack.”

“What?”

“You’re good at that.”

“No,” said Laurel.

“That way you can focus on it and do it right.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good move, sir.”

“You’re not supposed to. It’s a demotion.”

“Why?”

“And that way you won’t have to give any more presentations.”

“I can do the presentations, sir.”

“But it’s not your strong suit,” said Mr. Andre.

“I . . . I might be able to . . . get better.”

“Well, which is it?”

She didn’t know what to say.

“Your strong suit, Laurel, is sitting down, in one spot, and focusing on one extremely difficult problem, and just hammering it out. That’s the kind of resource we need working at the hack. Not Caitlyn. Caitlyn’s a flake.”

It was hard to believe, that he would talk like that about his own team. Laurel wondered what terrible things he was probably saying about her behind her back.

“Caitlyn’s good for some things,” he said, picking at the cuticle of his index finger. “But not that. No, that dog don’t hunt.”

“I’ll have her finish the hack by the weekend.”

“And the kind of resource we need as assistant PM, well, it’s someone whose talents are spread more evenly. Someone more even-keeled. Do you get what I mean?”

“No, sir.” she said. “I don’t.”

“And a leader doesn’t, I’m sorry, but a leader would never give the type of presentation that I just saw today.”

“Can we forget about the presentation?”

“It seems like you already did that, midway through it.” His index finger was now to his mouth, where the nail was getting savagely chewed on.

“Can you give me another chance?”

“For what?” he laughed through his finger “The presentation?”

“I’ll do the hack myself.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“As the assistant PM,” she said, staring at him, begging for Mr. Andre to just make eye contact with her.

“You want a leadership role while you bury yourself in the weeds? Does that make any sense to you?”

“I’ll get it done.”

“And what about all your other tasks?”

“That too,” she said.

“You need to hold your horses, Laurel. This sounds like a recipe for disaster.”

“I’ll get it done, sir.”

He shook his head. “Come on now, we’re not putting your career ahead of a state contract. We’re a business here.”

“And I’m a special talent. You know that.”

“You’ll be spreading yourself too thin. You’re already behind schedule.”

“I’ll make it up.”

“Do you realize how desperate you sound?” He finally made eye contact. “It isn’t good. It’s not believable.”

But now she couldn’t bear to look at him. Instead, she looked over the garish, outdated interior of the limo. Why did they always smell like cigarettes? “Why’d you get this fucking limo? It’s ridiculous.”

He chuckled a little bit. “Alright, Laurel, let’s say this. You finish all your tasks, as Assistant PM. All of them. And get that hack done by the weekend, and I’ll be happy. I don’t care who does the hack, if it’s you or Caitlyn. But it just needs to get done like everything else.”

“Deal,” she said, staring out the window, watching the passing scenery and how it changed from the skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta to the barbed wire and warehouses of a light industrial park near the airport.

Mr. Andre stuffed some papers into a briefcase. “Okay, then.”

The limo pulled into a driveway of the Sentry compound and then came to a rolling stop at the gate, rolling just slowly enough for the guard inside to press the open button.

“Well,” said Mr. Andre. “I guess it’s back to work.”

“Yeah.”

“Good talk.”

When the limo dropped them off at the main entrance, Laurel practically ran away from her boss, bolting out and into the double glass doors of Sentry Systems.

* * *

She found Caitlyn at her work terminal, a cubicle lined with horse photos and show ribbons. She was also a Harley Davidson fanatic and had small posters and torn-out magazine pages plastered everywhere. The decoration of her workspace shared the aesthetic quality of a sixteen-year old’s school locker. Not the usual adornments of a professional cybersecurity analyst.

The thirty-something inside the horse and chopper museum looked the part of an authentic Georgia country girl, a sun-bleached blonde with no makeup, hard-faced from the sun and wind of countless miles of riding. Although she spoke as hard as she looked, she had a natural, easy beauty about her, something Laurel had yet to master.

“Can we talk about the hack?” Laurel lacked the energy for a proper hello.

Caitlyn turned, gripping at a headset and peeling it off her face. “AIDA?”

“Have you gotten anywhere?”

“What’s wrong?” Caitlyn asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You just . . . sound like something’s wrong.”

Laurel laughed. “Is it because I’m asking about your work?”

“No. It looks like you’ve been crying some.”

“Allergies.” Laurel leaned her hand on a filing cabinet. “So I’m guessing you haven’t gained access to AIDA?”

“Not yet. But I will real soon. I promise.”

“You don’t have to. I’m going to take over that for you.”

Caitlyn’s chapped lips parted. “What?”

“I know, I don’t want this either. But Mr. Andre wants me to take over. Can you put everything you’ve done in my folder?”

Caitlyn looked a little crushed. But she’d survive. She was a tough county girl.

Laurel made a quick exit, grabbing a mug of burnt coffee, and made her way through the maze of cubicles to the back hallway. She couldn’t wait to be alone, to just flop down on the chair in her office, close her eyes, and just try to wish it all away. She even thought about going home, to regroup after such a miserable presentation at AIDA. And after Mr. Andre’s little pep talk.

Instead, she opened the door to her office and found the freakishly tall Mr. Geffen, the CEO of Sentry Systems, sitting at her desk.

Was it possible? Could her day get even worse?

The presence of the mighty Mr. Geffen at her workstation seemed to indicate the affirmative. It even looked like he was snooping around at her work terminal, the way his head snapped away from the screen and over to the surely hapless-looking Laurel.

“Hi, Laurel,” he said in a chipper, yet authoritarian voice, the kind of over-politeness that to Laurel had always sounded sneakily aggressive. He was also a Northerner, so his words always came out a little weird. “Come right in,” he said, waving his little employee into her little office. “And shut the door behind you, please.”

Her hand fumbled with the doorknob, and her attempt to dampen the sound ultimately made the whole thing so much louder than she’d expected.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Yeah, sure . . .”

“How was AIDA?” He asked in a similar chipper tone, like he’d already heard about the disaster, the dirty nuke she’d dropped this afternoon in downtown Atlanta.

Laurel stood frozen by the door. “What’s going on?”

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.” He sighed, his mouth almost forming into a pout. Feigned concern? “We’ve had a little problem with our last project,” Geffen said.

“H&L Houston? Were you looking through my work?”

“Was I?”

“You were snooping.”

He spun the chair around, facing her with an ugly grin. “Laurel, look around you. Look at this whole office. The whole place.”

“What about it?”

“It’s all my shit. Okay?”

Laurel looked around her office and sighed. He was technically right. All the equipment, computers, and random stacks of paper were all his. No matter how much work she’d put into her assigned tasks, and no matter how much that work ate into her personal life. The stress of it all, even the tight muscles in her back that came home with her every night. It was all his.

“All this crap here, even your time. It’s my property.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I want to go look around, if I want to snoop . . .”

She nodded, looking away. “I got it.”

“I don’t need your permission.”

“I know that, sir.” She felt herself slipping into autopilot, doing and saying as little as possible just to speed up the interaction, to get him the hell out of her office.

“Information technology. Security. Intellectual property worth billions. That means we have to be as open and transparent, internally, as possible. You know? We trade on privacy, Laurel. Which you, as an employee, should expect none of.”

She nodded at her shoes. “Yes, sir.”

“Got it?”

“Got it, sir. I know all that.”

“Then we can talk about H&L Houston?”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know why they think there’s been a security leak.” He stood up out of her chair. “Can you show me your last bit of work on it? For some reason, I wasn’t able to see your access logs remotely.” He stepped back and pointed to the open chair. “So, I just thought that was odd. But go ahead, take a seat.”

Laurel sat in her expensive mesh-back chair, which felt unusually warm and uncomfortable. She rolled up to her desk and reached for the mouse. Even that felt strange. Foreign. Mr. Geffen’s property. She barely managed to suppress an eye roll.

“Buck up,” Geffen said over her shoulder. “I’ve been talking to everyone.”

“You’ve been looking through everyone’s work?”

Bullshit. It would have taken him weeks . . .

“Sir? Have you been . . . unhappy with my work?”

He sighed hard. “Come on, Laurel. Don’t make a big stink about this, okay?”

“I’m just wondering if, uh . . .”

“Go ahead. Open up the H&L account.”

He’d already logged her on. She moved the mouse and clicked open a work folder.

“Sir? This doesn’t have anything to do with . . . the new contract, right?”

“AIDA?” he said. “What about it?”

“About, you know, my promotion . . .”

“No.”

“Does Mr. Andre know?”

He sighed again. “Does he know what?”

“About Abe Hudson?”

“I told you. No.”

Laurel showed the latest work, login stats, and file-transfer history for anything that had to do with H&L Houston. At least to her, there was nothing fishy about it.