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Mara

The door beeps as I swipe my keycard, opening the server room. Well, technically, it isn’t my keycard. Mr. Adley left in such a hurry the other day that he left his office unlocked, and after about half an hour with a lock picking kit, I finally got his desk drawer unlocked.

Keycard in hand, I finally get a chance to see what was in the “closet” that’s been locked and ignored for as long as I’ve worked here.

Lo-and-behold, I find a whole server room. It’s suspicious that he has this set up here when all the main servers and mainframes are downstairs. His main office is in Barnaby Falls, just outside of Boston, which is where he spends most of his time. That’s also where the IT department and most of the research and development is done.

His office here in Virginia Beach is just a satellite office. It’s only here because the headquarters for a competing pharmaceuticals company is nearby, one that The Adley Corporation has been looking into buying out for the last year. This office is occasionally used for a few meetings here and there, but otherwise, the building is mostly empty. There’s no reason for him to have a personal server of this size hidden in his office.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I flinch, fumbling with my phone as I slip through the door. Finally managing to answer it, I don’t even look to see who is calling.

“Mr. Jackson Adley’s office, this is Mara.”

“Hi Mara, it's Brenda. How are you?”

Brenda is the assistant to Bennet Adley, my boss's son. She calls a lot to inquire about Mr. Adley’s schedule, probably because the main office can’t be bothered. I don’t mind, though, and she seems nice enough. Since Mr. Adley is rarely in town, I’m a glorified virtual assistant. I have access to his schedule and set up his virtual meetings for him, because I’m good with computers and his regular secretary at the main campus isn’t, but other than that I don’t do much. It’s only a part-time position, with occasional extra hours if Mr. Adley comes to town.

I’m not here for the hours though, or the pay.

“I’m doing alright. Mr. Adley isn’t here though,” I tell her, assuming she’s calling about him. “He left in a hurry earlier this morning, didn’t tell me where he was going but told me to cancel the rest of his week.”

“That’s exactly why I was calling. Mr. Adley was expected to come back to the main office today and was insistent that Bennet meet him there, but now he isn’t answering. Loraine said he went out of town unexpectedly but didn’t know why.

“I wish I knew more to tell you,” I say, hurrying her off the phone. “He was really angry and seemed in such a rush. I assumed he had some emergency to attend to.”

Brenda makes a thoughtful sound, obviously hoping for any other hint about what could be happening with Mr. Adley.

I always got the impression that Bennet was avoiding his father, which I could understand. He’s kind of a dickhead.

“I could check the flight logs for the company jet and maybe get an idea of where he went,” I offer helpfully. I’m not technically supposed to have access to the logs, but I have access to a lot of things that I probably shouldn’t. “Just give me a little while to get back to my desk. I just stepped out.”

If she knows that I shouldn’t have access to that information, she says nothing about it. “That would be so helpful, thank you, Mara.”

Slipping the phone back into my pocket, I wipe my sweaty forehead with the bottom of my t-shirt. I can hear the fans running, but it is still quite warm in this little room. It might also be nerves, although the office is always fairly empty while Mr. Adley isn’t here.

Usually, when he’s out of town, I work remotely from home, but Adley’s quick exit afforded me an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. And I might have hit pay dirt with this server.

Pulling a small device out of my pocket, I open the server room control panel and plug it in. It’s a very small USB dongle that isn’t likely to get noticed even if someone were to access the controls. I doubt very many people know about this little room, though.

It won’t take much time at all for the information to copy over and send to an external hard drive for me to look through. After closing everything up the way I found it and returning to my desk, I pull up the flight logs for Mr. Adley’s personal jet.

Why is he in North Carolina?

He had me cancel all of his meetings for the next week, but nothing would suggest he’d be in that area.

Since I don’t normally look at the flight logs, I scroll through the last few weeks and then months of recordings. He’s been traveling to North Carolina a lot apparently, but none of his schedules suggest business there. His corporate card shows charges for what looks to be a fancy hotel and spa. Mr. Adley isn’t the type to take a spontaneous vacation. Interesting.

I check my watch. Almost time to go.

A little indicator light lets me know that the hard drive has finished uploading the files from the server room. Smiling, I unplug it and pack up all of my belongings to go home. If Adley is smart enough to store anything in a secret server room, I’m assuming these files are going to be encrypted. It’ll take me a while to break into the files themselves to actually look at the data, and I’m eager to get to it.

But first I have to meet the man that’s going to help me take Adley down.