“Our computer’s been hacked,” Kent said, leaning back and stretching the fabric of his golf shirt over the bloat of his belly. “How do we know our phones aren’t tapped?”

The possibility startled Luc, especially in light of the uninvited guest at the test session. He told his two partners about it.

“Someone was spying on us?” Brad said, his lower lip jutting.

“I can’t say for sure,” Luc said. “He may simply have been some sort of squatter who thought the building was deserted. After all, we only use it once a month.”

Brad turned to Kent. “Do you think he’s connected to Gleason?”

“Gleason?” Luc said, alarm tugging at the inner wall of his chest. He knew only one Gleason. “You don’t mean our sales rep, do you? What about him?”

“He’s our hacker,” Kent said.

Luc slumped back in his chair. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah,” Kent said, his face reddening. “One of our own.”

“Whatever happened to loyalty?” Brad was saying, looking around as if the answer were going to pop out of the air. “First Macintosh, now Gleason. I can’t stand it.”

“Has he made any demands?” Luc said.

Kent shook his head. “Not yet. But he will.”

“How do we know that?”

“He broke the financial codes.”

“Damn it!” Luc said, anger burning through the alarm. “I thought the software people said they’d stop him!”

Brad fidgeted. “We told them to trace him, then stop him. They spent all night trying to trace him. The sysop in charge overnight said Gleason’s very good. The only way they managed to identify him was through a signature code transmitted by his computer.”

“I don’t understand,” Luc said.

“He was using a company laptop!” Kent shouted, hammering the table. “That’s how he got through the fire wall. He used the goddamn computer we gave him, the sonovabitch!”

“Why would he do such a thing?” Brad said.

Luc ignored him. “Then you think he knows about the repurposing of the R & D funds?”

Listen to me, Luc thought. Repurposing. What an inane euphemism.

“Who knows?” Kent said. “The sysop said he was in the middle of all the numbers. If that was what he was looking for, he found it.”

“What’ll we do?” Brad said.

“Same thing we did with Macintosh,” Kent said, fixing Luc with his gaze. “We hire your buddy Ozymandias Prather.”

“No,” Luc said. He wouldn’t be a party to another death. “You yourself said he hasn’t made any demands or any threats. He—”

“Only a matter of time,” Kent said.

Brad was nodding. “Why else would he be snooping around in our computer?”

Luc didn’t have an answer for that.

“I have a worse scenario,” Kent said. “Gleason and the spy in the warehouse could be working together—for Glaxo or Roche or who knows.”

“Aren’t we getting a little paranoid?”

“With good reason!” Brad said. “We’ve got that crazy Serb on one side and the DEA on the other. We’ve got nowhere to turn!”

Kent slapped his hand on the table. “Look. It doesn’t matter if Gleason’s an industrial spy, a greedy bastard, or a goody-two-shoes potential whistle blower, he’s got to go.”