starved. You got any wine?”
“Uh…” I said. “We got some white in the fridge. Sauvignon blanc, I think.”
Joel made a face. “With chili? I’ll stick with the beer, thanks.” He glanced at Brian, who shrugged, as if to say “Hey, I’ve tried to teach her.”
We sat down and ate quickly.
“Do you have any bread?” Joel was sweating profusely now, the beads glistening on his pale skin more to do with the extras he’d dumped onto his chili than anything I had put into it. Red pepper flakes, Tabasco, and something scary-looking he poured from a bottle he kept in his briefcase.
“Yeah, but I made the rice to go with it…” I gestured to the bowl, but he’d already eaten it.
“Just to mop up.”
I got him the bread, and another beer for myself and Brian, who was more than usually chatty. Again, trying to prevent me from saying anything in front of Joel.
And then we got to work.
We all went from room to room—there was no way that I was going to be left out—and in each instance, Joel looked in the most likely places for a camera or bug. He told us why he was looking where, and we were able to give him the recent history of most of the rooms, having been intimately acquainted with the woodwork as its installers. After I told him about what had been in the room before the new molding, he looked approvingly at me.
“You really pay attention to details.”
“Brian did most of the finish work,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s good, you know when things happened and how. You know what cracks are old and new.” He struggled to find the words for what he meant. “You pay attention to your surroundings. Most people don’t.”
“I’m sure it’s the archaeology,” I said. “Or maybe the up-tightness. Maybe paranoia, these days.” I looked over at Brian.
My husband frowned and shook his head, wondering if I was going to start something.
Joel waved the comment aside. “You know, a lot of scientific types are a bit paranoid. It’s a part of being tuned into trends and paying attention to detail. It’s not always a bad thing.”
“No,” Brian and I both said quickly.
“Okay, that looks good, far as I can see,” he said when we finished the last room. We’d spent a long time looking at the new plumbing and electrical box. “Let’s see your office, Emma, then we’ll figure out where to put the cameras outside.”
“Cameras?” I asked.
“We can put some cameras up, keep an eye on the outside,” Joel said. “It was a good idea that Brian had.”
“Cameras?” I repeated at Brian, who pretended to be paying rapt attention to Joel.
“Sure,” Joel said. “I’ve got a couple that will do the trick—Freddie the Freak will have to watch other people’s porn for a while—”
“Dude, we don’t want to know your friends’ habits,” Brian said.
Joel laughed. “Seriously not my friend. Co-worker. And it’ll be good for Freddie to watch professional pornographers for a while. And these cameras are out of date for what he’s into anyway. As for your present problem…you know, most hacks are worked inside the company, not outside. So if the facility is secure…then that helps. You keep the place locked up, right? And you use your alarm system?”
Brian and I both nodded.
“Good. No one with keys you don’t trust? The guy doing the work on the house?”
“I haven’t given him a key,” I said, but suddenly, I wondered about Artie and his unreliable nature.
“Good to hear.”
“You said you weren’t an expert?” I asked.
“I’m not, I’m just a guy. But I know enough to be paranoid and I know plenty of security freaks and I know my way around a Radio Shack. I can fake it good enough for your purposes. So, lead me to your office.”
I hurried up ahead, and quickly cleared a path to my desk. This resulted in a new pile off to the side. The CD I’d left playing while checking my email before I’d started dinner was still cycling.
Joel cocked his head thoughtfully. “Beethoven?”
“Yep. You need me to turn it off?”
“No, turn it up.”
I obliged, he sat down, cracked his knuckles and got to work. After a glance at the router, he looked at the monitor and frowned. He tapped the keys, bringing up screens I’d never seen before and didn’t know existed.
Finally he looked up, wary disbelief on his face. “You don’t have your encryption enabled?”
“Oh, the router has a firewall,” Brian said. “Don’t worry about it. Kam