appeared in her in-box.
At the same moment, Eddie appeared back at the doorway of the office.
“Your Certificate of Good Standing is on the system now. You just have to upload it with the pro hac application,” he said.
“Good,” Caroline said. “I’ve got the signed application ready to go, too.”
With her fingers flying across the keyboard, Caroline brought up the district court’s e-filing page. While she waited for it to load, she met Eddie’s dark eyes.
“Once we file the pro hac vice application and Certificate of Good Standing, we can file the declaration and then the article,” she said. “We’ve got to do it in that order . . .”
Caroline stopped talking as the court’s e-filing page appeared.
A long list of detailed instructions disappeared down to the bottom of the screen. The Southern District of New York had imposed dozens of rules about how to perform an e-filing. The document had to be properly paginated and properly named. Exhibits had to be loaded separately, also named appropriately, and then linked in yet another field to the documents filed concurrently with them. And then everything had to be uploaded to one site, then disseminated to the service list, which also had to be uploaded separately.
Caroline froze. She had hacked the servers of major corporations yet couldn’t even begin to decipher the court’s e-filing protocol.
Before she could give voice to her distress, Eddie turned and ran from the office.
Caroline stared dumbfounded at the door. What a moment for him to bail.
Seconds later, he returned. Behind him, the bright-red hair of Silvia followed.
Without speaking, Caroline got out of Silvia’s way.
The assistant sat down, and, chewing gum in time to her finger strokes on the keyboard, she began uploading the pro hac vice application and Certificate of Good Standing. She named the document, placed it in the queue, and hit “Load.”
The e-filing server began to slowly absorb the first batch of materials. A white bar on the computer’s monitor showed the speed of the upload. It was slow. Possibly too slow.
Caroline checked the time. They had seven minutes to upload the pro hac vice application, the editor’s declaration, the seventeen-page article, and all 159 pages of backup data.
FILED, the screen read.
Even though the words were flat, unemotional text hovering on a page, Caroline thrilled at the sight of them. They were one step closer.
Without pause, Silvia moved on to the declaration. Named, formatted, and lined up in the queue, it too began the slow journey from Hale Stern’s computers to the server of the Southern District of New York.
Again, the bar on the screen inched along as the document uploaded, and Caroline’s awareness distilled down to the tiny movements of the pixels, willing them to move just a little bit faster.
She glanced at the clock. Five minutes left.
FILED, the court’s website confirmed.
“I’m going to get the data file set up first,” Silvia said. “It’s going to take time to upload. I’ll prep the article separately at the same time.”
“Whatever you think is best,” Caroline said. She wasn’t going to micromanage how her assistant did her job. Silvia seemed quite capable. No surprise that she’d survived as Louis’s assistant for so many years, even with grooming habits that the senior partner no doubt disapproved of. The woman was plenty competent.
Watching the upload of the backup data caused Caroline almost physical pain. She squirmed with impatience as the white bar crept at glacial speed. She glanced at the clock. They had two minutes. Two minutes before all of their efforts were for nothing. Two minutes before the gates came crashing down on Dr. Heller’s life’s work. Before the doors of the court slammed shut to litigants across the country.
As soon as the court’s website confirmed acceptance of the backup data, Silvia began the upload of the Heller article. The single object of Caroline’s quest. The singular achievement of her short legal career. And they had one minute, thirty-two seconds to load it.
The white bar began its slow progress across the screen. Caroline’s eyes kept moving back and forth between the bar and the time on Eddie’s clock. They’d come so far. And now they sat on the launch pad, ready to blast off into space or ready to explode.
Fifty-nine seconds left.
Forty-three seconds left.
Unable to watch, Caroline stepped outside Eddie’s office. The graceful hallways and the light- wood credenzas were discordant with the gnawing desperation coursing through Caroline’s gut. They had to be down to fifteen seconds by now. Maybe less.
She walked back into Eddie’s office just as