Chapter One

 

Claire examined herself carefully in the full-length mirror. It was extremely important to give just the right impression on her new 'boss'.

Nobody else mattered.

From what she'd read on him, admittedly a limited number of articles, he was a progressive, earnest, good natured, kind-hearted, charitable man who spoke of the need for inclusiveness and equality in the workplace.

In other words, he was a soft-hearted fool, which was just about perfect. There was a sucker born every minute, but not all of them were fools.

She'd been a sucker once herself. It had hardened her heart and made her determined to be the predator from then on, not the prey.

She was wearing a very nice, red sweater-dress in a form-fitting wool which hugged every curve of her body. It had a thick, tight belt around the midsection to divide the two, and her breasts, which she used these days mostly as tools, stood out proudly. The dress was, in a sense, both costume and armor.

It was too sexy for the office, but men were simplistic about such things. It was high necked, and came down below her knees. To a man, it was fine, if sexy. The black, stiletto heeled boots rose almost to the hem, allowing just a few inches of visible leg.

To counter the sexiness she pulled her hair straight back, though not too tightly, and had on a pair of dark framed glasses to provoke a more 'serious' image. She wanted Power to think her efficient and competent, but also wanted to appeal to his inner male, the man-slut who would fawn over a pretty girl and think wicked things which had no relation to her possibly being a spy.

Stealing secrets was highly profitable, given the short amount of time and effort she needed to invest, and she had very little sympathy for multimillion or even multibillion dollar companies which hardly gave a second thought to protecting their secrets, even after spending small fortunes on research.

Idiots. Fools. Suckers.

It had been childishly easy to get hired with her expertly doctored resume, and even easier to create a temporary opening by paying for Power's administrative assistant to 'win' a vacation in Spain.

That was merely the cost of doing business, and would be made back many, many times over by her profits on this venture.

She'd started her own company once. It was a consulting firm meant to design both physical and technological security for high tech firms. Most of them were run by hopelessly naïve technocrats who didn't realize how vulnerable their information was to people with the right skill-set, or how much those people could earn from others by stealing their data.

She'd been perfectly honest about it all, but she'd needed someone good at convincing those companies they needed help. And she was realistic enough to understand that they would pay more attention to a big, strong man with a law enforcement background than to a pretty girl of twenty two, however smart she was.

So she'd hired Robert Baxter, and he'd done a great job. He was thoroughly convincing, outgoing, personable, gregarious, and had managed to so ingratiate himself with her clients that he'd then taken almost all of them with him when he'd left to start his own company.

The fact he didn't know very much about protecting data was irrelevant. He was a former FBI agent, and the clients all had a lot of confidence in him, not some twenty three year old girl.

Which left her company bankrupt by the time she hit twenty four.

And left her angry, embittered, and determined to get even. She had all the files and records of those companies, and she used them and her own technological expertise to steal them blind and sell their secrets on the black market, often to the Chinese, but to the French, and competing American companies a lot, too.

Why spend a millions on research, after all, when you could steal someone else's' for a fraction of that?

She hadn't gotten rich - yet, but she had a Porsche in her condo's garage, a walk-in closet full of designer clothes, and a growing investment portfolio.

Power Central had not been one of her clients, but her new 'career' was set, and she'd heard they were designing a new chipset which would be even faster and more powerful than their existing ones. Well, of course. Companies like MP were always designing new products. But this one, she'd heard, was nearly ready for testing.

That was the perfect time to steal the information and sell it!

Her phony resume had stressed her experience working during the summers at college as a high level administrative assistant to vice presidents and managers, which made her a shoe-in when Power's own secretary had taken her sudden one month leave, especially since most of the people they hired were technicians and engineers.

She'd have to leave the Porsche in the garage for this job, she thought sourly. She loved driving it, but it wouldn't do. People would wonder how someone with her salary was driving such a vehicle. She was the earnest young woman just a year out of university, after all, at least, according to her resume.

The look would do. The other women at work, particularly the older ones, would look down their noses at her, but none of them mattered a damn. Only Power mattered.

***

I've seen her before. I know I've seen her before somewhere. But where?

"Hi," Jacob said, extending his hand politely.

He very carefully held his eyes to her face, which wouldn't normally be difficult, for she was a beautiful girl (woman, he corrected himself).

"How do you do, Mister Power?" she said with an earnest, open smile.

"So you'll be here for a month, eh?"

"That's what Mister Smithson has told me," she said, her face looking quite happy about the prospect. "I'm sure I'll learn a lot from you."

"Nothing good, I'm sure," he said with a self-deprecating smile.

"I've followed your career, Mister Power! I'm quite the admirer of your abilities. Very few technical people have had your knack for not only bringing new developments to light, but personally overseeing that development."

"And profiting from it," he added.

"That too," she said with a grin.

Rebecca Conway was tall, and, as the long red dress amply demonstrated, very nicely built. The skirt reached past her knees, and very little flesh showed between the hem and the high heeled boots she wore, but he had no doubt there were endlessly long legs there, should he only be able to see them.

She wore thick framed oval glasses and her dark brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and it reminded him of those second rate Hollywood movies where a beautiful woman tried to 'disguise' her beauty by simply pulling her hair back and wearing glasses. And it always worked so well - in the movies.

Not so well here. Her face was too lovely, her skin flawless, her lips full and her eyes bright behind those glasses. He wondered if they were just glass or if she really needed them. Perhaps she feared sexual harassment or being treated in a paternalistic fashion if she didn't 'hide' somewhat. But then, why that form fitting dress?

In red, yet.

"Mister Smithson assures me you're very good at organizing."

"I believe that a proper timetable makes for an efficient workday, Mister Power."

"Just call me Jacob," he said.

"Actually, sir, I prefer to call you Mister Power. It keeps our roles set properly in our minds. You, however, may call me Rebecca if you prefer."

"Uhm, okay."

Where had he heard that voice? It was very clear. She enunciated very well, her words clipped and precise. It was... distinctive.

As the owner and CEO of Power Central, he went to a lot of meetings and had seen an awful lot of presentations in the last few years, especially as he wanted to keep himself aware of developments in technology. His company was at the forefront of some of those developments, particularly in high speed data processing.

"Allison has briefed you?"

"Yes, sir. We've gone over your schedule and preferences," the girl (woman, he reminded himself) said.

She had a very ... firm posture. She stood straight, shoulders back, chest (ample chest) out, smiling attentively. But there was something oddly off about her.

Well, probably nervous about meeting the boss for the first time, he thought, dismissing the thought.

She went out into the outer office and closed the door, and he got to work on some technical specifications he was reading on a new microchip.

Over the following two days Rebecca proved to be quite efficient, effective, enthusiastic, and likeable. He had no complaints whatever about her work.

She always dressed very modestly, too, in long, high-necked dresses, and always behaved very professionally.

But those dresses were always form-fitting, and there was something phony about her professionalism that kept nagging him. He sent to HR and got her dossier, then, more because he still couldn't remember where he'd seen her, he called security and had them run a level two background check.

When you own the company, after all, satisfying your curiosity was all the excuse you needed for such things.

***

Claire sighed impatiently as she dealt with the inflow of correspondence from all the people who wanted Power's attention, response, and, mostly, permission, she thought, for things they should simply have gone ahead and done. It was all ass-covering, she thought cynically. These people were afraid of doing something on their own in case it didn't work and they got blamed.

Claire had no respect for cowards. Weaklings were there to be run over and left behind. She was very much a believer in the survival of the fittest, the smartest, fastest, and most ruthless in life.

And she believed she was one of them. She had a single-minded focus on her goal, and she would get there, by hook or by crook.

Right now it was more by crook, but she had few qualms about that. Ethics and morals were for rich people and suckers. She was neither. Not any more, at any rate.

Now if she could just fob off all these requests from Power's gutless underlings to focus on cracking the system to get access to that data!

She'd already tried the obvious. She'd searched his office when he was out, hoping he was one of those many, many people who wrote their password down and put it under the keyboard, or in a desk drawer or at the back of their calendar. But so far she'd failed to find anything that had worked.

She wasn't above seducing him, especially since he was a pretty good looking guy, but these weren't the kind of secrets he would let slip during pillow talk. She needed to crack the system, or his password, and get access to that stuff so she could download it and move on to her next job.

The systems' security software, unfortunately, was frustrating her, and all this administrative work she had to do was cutting into her time. She would have stayed over after he went home but the company had a policy of strictly enforcing work hours so as to maintain their employees' quality of life.

What garbage, she thought. You worked harder and longer to get ahead. That was how the world worked. She had little doubt their technical staff simply worked on stuff at home on their own computers instead. She certainly would have.

Power was just another of those naive people who wanted everyone to be happy, she thought, a sheep fit for sheering. Bright, perhaps, but not savvy enough to understand the danger of being so open and honest with everyone.

Well, he'd learn better. And she would teach him.

She smiled at the thought.

***

A Level One reference check merely contacted the organizations on the subject's job record, and their university or college to ensure they had the education they claimed, and checked for a police record.

A Level Two reference check was quite a bit more thorough. It avoided the phone numbers which had been given on the resume. Instead it first checked out the employers themselves, to make sure they were valid employers, then contacted them directly and spoke to both HR and their previous managers. It did the same with the educational institutions, speaking with former professors if possible.

It also validated the employee's credit, as well as any police record.

When it found discrepancies, it didn't merely list them, but attempted to fill them in, to find out what was missing on the resume. Employees were unlikely to list a former employer when fired for cause, for example, but that was vital information.

And information was always out there, always available, if you were willing to pay for it. A request from Jacob Power, however minor, took immediate precedence over anything and everything else Security was doing at the time, and, as such, there were no cost constraints at all.

***

Jacob found it very hard to keep his eyes off his new administrative assistant whenever she was in sight. It didn't help that she was his particular body type: tall, lithe, curvy but narrow hipped, and kind of stacked. That sexy librarian look with the glasses didn't help either, since he thought nerd girls were particularly hot.

And it most certainly didn't help that she wore form-fitting dresses which displayed just what a lovely form she had. At that moment she was wearing a knee-length outfit which was all white, save for thick black borders running along the collar and hem, and down both hips.

White hid very little, and Rebecca Conway had little need to hide what she had, from those high, firm breasts, to that flat belly and ample curves. But it was ... distracting. He kept imagining her doing the Hollywood thing, whipping off her glasses, undoing her hair, and shaking it out - probably in slow motion.

But she was such a hard-working, earnest young girl that his fantasies made him feel like a lech.

Girls were anyone his age or younger. Women, well, that was a category for mothers, aunts, and anyone else with gray hair. Allison was a woman. Rebecca was a girl. And she was, according to her resume, ten years younger than him. That was pushing things.

She certainly had poise and confidence for a girl her age, though. But then, also a certain innocence. He manfully smiled up at her as she pressed her hips into the far side of his desk and leaned forward to place his mail on the desk with a cheery smile.

The dress was form fitting, but as she leaned over, well, her form... and gravity, sought to draw his attention. She was far from flat-chested, after all. But he resisted.

Lech, he told himself. She certainly had no idea of what she looked like to a perverted guy!

She must go to the beach, he thought with a sigh. Would it be totally pathetic for him to hire someone to get pictures of her in a bikini? He supposed it would be, but he'd gladly have paid to see them!

What a fucking body, he thought to himself as she sashayed back to the door and out.