Robin Cook - Shock

Eager to see if she had been successful and also to take a quick look inside the folder even if Deborah was not with her, Joanna hurried back to her cubicle in administration. Since it was the middle of the lunch hour, the administration area was all but deserted, which was fine with Joanna. She dashed into her cubicle, tossed her purse on the desk, and sat down. She unlocked her workstation. With dexterity somewhat improved above what she'd had to deal with in the server room, Joanna quickly mapped a network drive to the donor folder. As she clicked for the command to take effect, she held her breath.

"Yes!" Joanna hissed loudly through clenched teeth. She was into the folder's directory. She felt like cheering, but held herself back, and it was a good thing.

"Yes, what?" a voice asked. It was halfway between a demand and a question. "What's going on?"

Feeling an iota of the same terror of discovery she'd experienced in the server room, Joanna raised her eyes and looked up and to the right. As she'd feared she would when she'd first heard the voice, she found herself gazing up into Gale Overlook's pinched face.

"What'd you do, win the lottery?" Gale asked. She had a way of speaking that made anything she said seem derogatory.

Joanna swallowed. She had another cruel instantaneous realization. Although she considered herself reasonably witty and as capable of repartee as any of her friends, feeling anxious and guilty, which she did at that moment, caused her mind to go blank. Instead of words, a kind of stuttering emerged from her mouth.

"What'd ya have on your screen?" Gale asked, becoming even more interested in the light of Joanna's apparent distress. Gale bobbed her head around trying to see the screen through the reflected glare.

Although Joanna was momentarily speechless, she did have the presence of mind to close the computer window, bringing her screen back to its desktop.

"Were you on the Net?" Gale asked accusingly.

"Yes,' Joanna said, finally finding her voice. "I was checking some stocks to see what they're doing."

"Christine's not going to like that," Gale said. "She frowns on people going on the Net for personal reasons during working hours."

"Thank you for telling me,' Joanna said. She stood, smiled stiffly, grabbed her purse, and left.

Joanna walked swiftly. Anger at herself for acting so suspiciously and irritation at Gale Overlook for being such a meddler had the beneficial effect of focusing her rampant anxieties. As she headed toward the dining room, she actually began to feel better. By the time she got to the fire door leading into the tower portion of the building, she had recovered enough even to feel mildly hungry.

Hesitating on the dining room's threshold, Joanna scanned the room for Deborah. It was significantly more crowded than the day before, when Helen Masterson had brought her and Deborah. Joanna's eyes stumbled onto Spencer Wingate. Quickly she moved them away. She was not in the mood to make eye contact with the man. She saw Paul Saunders and Sheila Donaldson at another table and looked away equally quickly. Then she saw Deborah sitting at a table for two with Randy Porter. They appeared deep in conversation.

Joanna made her way over to Deborah, attempting to keep her face away from Sheila Donaldson as much as possible. It wasn't until Joanna was standing at the table side before Deborah was au-are of her and looked up.

"Hello, Prudence, dear!" Deborah said lightly. "You remember Randy Porter, I'm sure."

Randy smiled shyly and shook hands but didn't stand. Joanna wasn't surprised. She'd long since become accustomed to the fact that a lot of men raised above the Mason-Dixon Line had little schooling in the social graces.

"Randy and I have been having an interesting discussion," Deborah said. "I didn't know the world of computer games was so intriguing. It seems we've been missing something, big time. Am I right, Randy?"

"Absolutely," Randy said. He leaned back with a self-satisfied smile.

"Well, listen, Randy," Deborah said. "I tell you what! I'll come by your workstation later and you can show me Unreal Tournament. How does that sound?"

"Sounds good to me," Randy said. He was rocking forward and backward slightly as if constantly agreeing with himself.

"I'm glad to have had this opportunity to talk with you, Randy," Deborah added. "It was fun." She nodded and grinned, hoping Randy would take the hint. But he didn't.

"I have a couple extra joysticks in my car," Randy said. "I can have you ladies set up to play in no time at all."

"I'm sure we'd appreciate that," Deborah said, losing patience. "But right now Prudence and I have some things we'd like to talk about."

"Hey, that's okay by me," Randy said. But he didn't budge.

"We'd like a little privacy," Deborah added.

"Oh!" Randy said. He looked back and forth between the two women as if confused, but then finally got the message. He then fumbled with his napkin before standing. "I'll see you guys around."

"Right!" Deborah said.

Randy left and Joanna took his seat.

"He's not well trained in his social cues," Joanna commented.

Deborah gave a short, mocking laugh. "And you probably believe you had the worst part of the deal going in the server room."

"Was it that bad?"

"He's a total computer nerd," Deborah complained. "He couldn't talk about anything else. Absolutely nothing! But that's water over the dam." She cleared her throat, leaned forward, and in an excited but lowered voice, asked: "Well, what happened? Did you do it or what?"

Joanna leaned forward as well. Their faces were only inches apart. "It's done."

"Fantastic! Congratulations! So what did you learn?"

"Nothing yet," Joanna said. "Other than I checked from my workstation, and what I did in the server room worked. I was into the proper folder. I even saw your name in the directory."

"So why didn't you learn anything?"

"Because my nosy neighbor interrupted me," Joanna said. "She's like a jack-in-the-box whenever I say or do anything out of the ordinary. I thought she'd be at lunch when I got back there, but unfortunately I was wrong."

One of the Nicaraguan waitresses came over and Joanna ordered a soup and salad. The food choice was Deborah's suggestion. She said it would be the fastest.

"I can't wait for us to get back to your workstation," Deborah said once the waitress had left. "I'm really psyched about all this. And strangely enough, at this point I'm as interested in finding out about the research around here as I am about our eggs."

"That's going to be a problem," Joanna said. "First of all we have to worry about my nosy neighbor. I think it might be best if we wait until she leaves her cubicle before we go back into the donor folder."

"Then let's do it over in the lab," Deborah said. "There're a lot of available workstations that will be private enough. We won't have to worry about someone looking over our shoulders."

"We can't use a workstation in the lab," Joanna said. "The access I created is via the office domain only."

"Good grief!" Deborah remarked. "Why does this all have to be so complicated? But, all right! So we use yours. But I think we should just ignore your neighbor. Hell, I can stand between her and the screen. As soon as you've eaten, let's go and do it."

"There's another problem," Joanna said. "The only access I created is into the donor folder. There were other folders in the same drive, such as Research Protocols and Research Results, but I didn't give myself access to them."

"Why the hell not?" Deborah questioned. She furrowed her brows.

"Because I was too afraid to take any more time," Joanna said.

"Oh! For chrissake!" Deborah complained. "I don't believe this! You were right there with the files staring you in the face. How could you pass it up?" Deborah shook her head in irritated amazement.