“Excuse me, Dr. Monnet,” she said, “but Mr. Garrison’s on the phone.”

Dr. Monnet looked irritated. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”

“He says it’s urgent. ‘An emergency’ was how he put it.”

“Oh, very well.” He turned to Nadia. “I’ll be right back. Nothing is more important right now than this project.”

I guess not, she thought. A million dollars… a million dollars!

The words kept echoing through her head as she waited, fantasizing what she could do with that amount of cash. She and Doug could get married right away, put a down payment on a house, get his software company up and running, jump out of limbo, and start living.

When a good ten minutes had passed and Dr. Monnet didn’t return, Nadia stepped outside and signaled to Pat.

“Where’s Dr. Monnet?”

She pointed toward the door. “He got off the phone with Mr. Garrison and hurried upstairs.”

Nothing more important right now than this project, hmmm? she thought as she returned to the dry lab. Obviously something was. She hoped Mr. Garrison’s emergency wasn’t too serious or personal.

She stepped up to the imager and began rotating the 3-D Loki image back and forth, hoping the more she saw of it, the less discomfiting it would seem.

I’m going to beat you, she thought, staring at the molecule. Not for the bonus… this is the challenge of a lifetime, and I’m going to show I can do it.

But she wouldn’t turn down that bonus. No way.

5

“We’ve been hacked!” Kent Garrison said as soon as the soundproof door was pulled shut and latched.

Kent, flushed, suit coat off, crescents of perspiration darkening the armpits of his bulging blue shirt, stood at the end of the table.

“Not true,” Brad Edwards said. Dressed in a perfectly tailored blue blazer, he sat hunched forward in his chair across from Luc, twisting his delicate hands over the mahogany surface. “They said they think someone got past the fire wall, but they’re not sure.”

Stunned, Luc sank into a chair. “What? How? I thought we were supposed to have the best security available.”

“Well, apparently we don’t.” Kent directed a venomous stare at Brad who was responsible for the computer system. Kent tended to be full of bluster except when Dragovic was around.

“I was assured we had a state-of-the-art fire wall,” Brad said. His usually perfect hair was in disarray, as if he’d been pulling at it. “But that was last year. Hackers learn new tricks too.”

“Why aren’t they sure?” Luc asked.

“They found evidence of temporary alterations in codes that could have innocent causes.” Brad ran a hand across his mouth. “I don’t pretend to understand it all.”

Kent couldn’t seem to stand still. He paced in an arc at the end of the table. “If it was some fourteen-year-old with too much time on his hands, I don’t give a shit. He might have screwed up some data, but he’d never be able to make any sense of what he found.”