“Tempting…” she said slowly.

“One fifty,” he said. “That’s my final offer. And don’t forget: The answer to my question could have a big impact on your future as well.”

“I might have expenses, like travel and such.”

Hey, if you don’t ask…

“I’ll give Donny a credit card to charge what you need—within reason, of course.”

Okay, nice to know what she was worth to this guy, but time to be up front.

“I’d love to take your money, Art, but I don’t know if I can deliver. You’re in no position to get a court order to make this Septimus Foundation open its books to me, and they aren’t going to do it because of my good looks and scintillating personality. The only option is hacking their in-house system and that’s—”

“—illegal?” Art said with a smile. “Donny’s already done it.”

Just as she’d suspected. “Donny?”

“The kid’s an ace. We’ve been in for a while but it’s a messy maze in there. We need someone who knows what they’re looking at.”

Hari had a thing about privacy. An almost extinct concept now, but that didn’t diminish her reverence for it. Still, Art was talking about a group that had profited from the Internet outage—which might mean they’d been party to it. That put them on the Hari Tate shit list. A long list, to be sure, but always room for one more.

Her job was to study a pile of numbers and know what she was looking at when people didn’t want her to know what she was looking at.

She nodded slowly. “Might be worth a try.”

“Super!” Art said. “And since it’s our hack, you’ll be working from here.”

“Oh, no. I need my office staff to—”

Art shook his head. “In the course of trying to do this on our own, we’ve learned some stuff about Septimus. They’re not nice people.”

“‘Not nice’ how?”

Donny spoke up. “For one thing, they’ve become pretty cozy with the Kickers lately. They’ve got their own security people, but the Kickers seem to act as their Brown Shirts.”

Kickers…everyone knew the Kickers. Supposedly a self-realization group, but it seemed to Hari most of its members had a knack for embracing their inner thug. Rumor had it they’d contributed to the Internet outage by helping to damage its infrastructure, but nothing had been proven.

“For safety sake,” Art said, “everything’s got to stay under one roof—this one.”

Hari considered: her office was only a few blocks away…she’d be tied up for a week tops…she could have some of her associates service her other clients during that time.

She gestured around. “Doesn’t seem to be room enough here for the three of us.”

“You’ll be working with Donny in the basement.”

“All right.” She turned to Donny. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Along the way they stopped in the kitchen so Hari could get a coffee refill and she noted with approval that Donny used a French press.

“So…” she said. “You’re the in-house hacker?”