Page 7 of The List

Marlene Rhoden made no secret of her affections for him.

She was a year older, a robust woman with curly crimson hair, ample breasts, and an unabashed personality to match them both.

She was company management, in charge of Southern Republic Pulp and Paper Company’s thirty-two data entry clerks.

Which gave her extraordinary access to an enormous amount of information.

They’d quietly dated off and on for the past few years.

She’d hinted often of her desire to formalize the relationship with a ring and a wedding.

He preferred the current arrangement, since his one and only experience with marriage had not ended well.

No more wives for him.

He parked in the paved lot behind one of the administrative buildings. She’d left the rear door wedged open with a folded magazine. He found Marlene in her office. No one else was around. She routinely worked late and alone. What was unusual was his presence.

She released her hold on the keyboard and stretched her long fingers, wiggling out the stiffness.

“No kiss for me?” she asked.

He knew the drill and stepped around the desk, pecking her on the lips.

“That it?” she asked.

“I’m tired, Marlene. Just had a long meeting. I want to go to bed.”

“Great idea. Let me finish up here and I’ll join you.”

“Alone.”

She smiled. “Can’t blame a girl for tryin’.”

No, he couldn’t. And try she did. Every chance she got. Which, if the truth be known, he liked.

Who didn’t want to be wanted?

“My right leg from knee to ass is dead asleep,” she said. “Ergonomic chair, angled keyboard. Right. None of it’s worth a damn.”

One thing loomed in her fault column—she was a bit of a hypochondriac.

What had he read about carpal tunnel syndrome?

Supposedly data entry clerks were in the high-risk category.

But what the hell. Every job had its problems. He routinely dealt with enough voltage and amps to fry the body to a crisp.

She stood and gathered up a stack of files.

A drawer across the room hung open and she squeezed the manila folders back inside.

He knew company policy. Hard copies were retained for six months then discarded to make room for new paper, all of which would eventually have to be entered into the computers too.

Southern Republic was not the most modernized when it came to record retention. Old school still prevailed.

She popped the joints in her back and worked her legs.

Beyond the lime-encrusted windows the night sky loomed dark and threatening.

Storms had been creeping in for the past hour.

Now the worst had arrived. Rain began to smear the panes.

Lightning crisscrossed the sky. The building vibrated from a roll of distant thunder.

It had been a dry spring, the usual late-afternoon thunderstorms few and far between.

A thorough soaking wouldn’t hurt a thing, and his tomatoes could use a good watering.

They engaged in this ritual from time to time.

He would come to her house and she would provide a tour through the company files, which she could remotely access.

She’d come to learn what interested him most. Sales reports.

Workers’ comp claims. Litigation. And anything and everything that had to do with the owners.

Was it corporate espionage? Probably. But he didn’t see it that way.

More a familiarization with the enemy. A gathering of intel.

Nations did it every day. You could learn a lot if you knew where to look.

And together they did. His thirty-six and her twenty-one years at the mill more than enough of an education.

She came close and wanted another kiss.

“Can we do that after?” he asked.

“Nope. You owe me a big one.”

He was curious about that debt, but he paid it anyway.

They were both divorced with grown children and grand-children.

Never had she stayed over at his house. But he had been known to spend a few nights at hers.

She could be a pain in the ass—pushy women came with that liability—but most times she was a jewel.

Even more important, she knew the company’s computer network like the grocery shelves at the Piggly Wiggly.

And there was nothing better, sex included, than good information.

The kiss ended and she handed him a flash drive. “All there. Lots of facts and figures. Some interesting emails. And a memo I think you’re going to love.”

Tonight’s bounty.

He smiled.

“Everything you might need to prepare for the upcoming contract negotiations,” she said.

“So what is the debt I owe you?”

“I made some progress… on that other matter.”

He caught the conspiratorial look in her eye.

For the past few months, ever since she’d first noticed the anomaly, they’d tried to gain access to a particular section of the company records.

But a thick firewall had been intentionally erected, one that could not be breached by her finely honed computer skills.

Not knowing something always irked him, particularly when it was being deliberately hidden.

So it had become a challenge for them. Now he realized why she’d wanted to meet here tonight.

“I’ve piddled with it some, off and on,” she said. “And I made it past the first security level. You want to see?”

He motioned to the computer. “Give it a whirl, baby.”

She grinned at his term of affection as she sat at the terminal. A few keystrokes gained her access into Southern Republic’s central banks. A few more and she found the main directory.

More lightning flashed outside.

The building’s power momentarily flickered.

“You better hurry up,” he said, “before the whole thing goes to backup generators. There are surge protectors that will shut things down.”

Which his electricians had installed. The company’s main servers sat just down the hall in a room kept at a perpetual fifty-five degrees.

She scrolled through a long list of folders and positioned the cursor over one nondescript entry titled PRIORITY . She pressed the VIEW key and requested an index be displayed. The cursor blinked ONE MOMENT PLEASE then announced in flashing letters, PASSWORD REQUIRED .

“We’ve never gotten that far before,” he said.

“I know. Any ideas what the password could be?”

“I assume you tried all the obvious ones?”

She nodded. “Names, dates, places. Anything I could think of. But that would be too simple. It’s surely a long, complicated mix of letters and numbers. Totally unique.”

He agreed.

More thunder and lightning came from outside. It sounded like the center of the storm was directly overhead.

She leaned back. “That’s a bugger bear. Nothing else in the system has that kind of heavy restriction. Especially from me. I know every password into the central files.” She pointed at the screen. “Except that one.”

“Maybe they don’t trust you?”

She chuckled. “Look at us, Hank. Are we trustworthy?”

He grinned. “Absolutely.”

He’d suggested a few months back that she ask the main office for more information, but she was told to leave it be. For owners only , had been the explanation. Which made him want into it even more.

“Somebody has to input data into that folder,” she said. “God knows the owners aren’t doing it themselves. But no one in my department, or anyone at the main office, has ever been inside there.”

He glanced at the wall clock.

10:44 P.M.

He should leave before plant security made their rounds at the top of the hour. Last thing he needed was to be seen here, with her, at this hour.

More lightning strobed the room, which caused a momentary break in the power. The overhead fluorescents flickered and the computer screen faded in and out.

Just as he predicted.

Marlene reached to shut off the terminal. “You’re right, we need to—”

Suddenly, the screen changed. The password request page had been replaced with a menu labeled PRIORITY .

“We’re in,” she said, astonishment in her voice.

Forgetting about the storm, they both scanned the index. Not much there. Which made its security even more puzzling. She opened the first file, scrolled through its contents, and printed a copy. Then did the same for the other three. None were long. He retrieved the hard copies from the printer.

“Get out of that file,” he said. “Now.”

She exited the central banks and switched off her terminal.

“Does that get me another kiss?” she asked.

“Honey, that gets you whatever you want.”

11:54 P.M.

T HE A SSOCIATE MADE SURE B RANDON P ABON DIED, THEN LEFT D IXIE Pond and drove north until finding Interstate 20. There, he started back the 130 miles west toward Atlanta. Halfway he exited, turned south, and entered Reeling, another tiny middle Georgia town.

One last appointment before the night ended.

The Priority, Tim Featherston, took an early retirement from Southern Republic at sixty-two and spent the last six years doing nothing but visiting doctors.

Five years ago it was his pancreas. A year after that his heart.

Then Featherston became convinced he’d contracted lung cancer, the end result of being a pack-a-day smoker.

But test after test revealed nothing. Just recently, stomach cancer had become his latest obsession, and Featherston spent days trying to convince various specialists he needed an operation.

Those doctors, though, were not privy to the fact that Tim Featherston learned an awful lot from the latest edition of the Concise Encyclopedia of Modern Disease .

So when he showed up at their offices and vividly described symptom after symptom, all consistent with known and identifiable afflictions, it was perfectly understandable why they covered themselves on a possible malpractice claim by performing test after test.