Ann Peterson - A Cop In Her Stocking

It took her three offices to find a computer linked to the internal server. Situated in the corner of the building, the room felt uncomfortably exposed. Windows stretched along two walls, one peering out on the parking lot, the other on the adjacent wooded park. Again that feeling that someone was watching prickled over her skin. She moved to the side of one window and peered out.

Darkness stared back at her punctuated by white flakes swirling in the streetlights along the parking area’s edge. She saw no vehicles, no movement. The forest side showed nothing but the skeletal shadows of trees barely visible through the snow.

The creepy feeling was probably caused by her guilty conscience. She shivered and closed both sets of blinds anyway. She had to keep herself together. Find what she needed fast and get out.

Pulling a dusting wand from her kit for cover, she sat down at the desk, turned on the computer and focused on the monitor.

Password. She needed a password.

Her heart thumped so loud at first she thought it was heavy footsteps coming down the hall. She opened the desk drawer. Whether the company liked it or not, employees often kept their passwords written down and in easily accessed areas. With so many passwords for work programs and websites accessed at home, no one could keep all of them locked in their memories.

Sure enough, a small card was taped to the drawer’s steel bottom, a collection of random letters and numbers printed on the card. She entered it onto the keyboard and a list of the company’s clients popped up on the screen. She was in.

So far, so good.

She pulled out of her pocket a flash drive she’d brought from home and plugged it into a USB port. Now all she had to do was download the files for each client. She read over the names as she copied the list onto the drive.

A low rumble seemed to shake the building.

Her pulse jumped. She thrust up from the chair and stepped to the window. Splitting the blinds slightly with her fingers, she peered outside.

The yellow lights of a snowplow stuttered through the falling snow. It grumbled down the street and around a corner.

She let the blinds fall back into place, closed her eyes for a moment and focused on calming her racing pulse.

She made a horrible crook.

She sucked in a shaky breath and sat back down in front of the monitor. She had to focus on Connor, on getting him home safe, protecting her son. That’s all she could let herself think about.

The client list was the easy part. She had no idea how long copying the actual specifications on each client’s security system would take. She was only cleared to be in the building for a window of four hours, and if she hoped to cover her tracks, she needed to do at least a passable job of cleaning before her time ran out.

Another rumble came from outside.

Glancing out the corner of her eye in hopes that the sound was nothing but another snowplow, she clicked on the first client on the list, a pharmaceutical company. She directed the file to download to her flash drive.

The monitor went dark.

A surge of panic slammed through her. She clicked again, and the loud buzz of an alarm split the air.

Ty had just stepped onto the snow-covered lawn of Keating Security when an alarm broke the white-blanketed stillness.

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