Do You Believe in Magic? Read Online Free PDF Page B

her enthusiasm. Finally, someone who understood and appreciated his work.
    “Give me a minute here. There’s something in his keystrokes . . .” She leaned closer to the screen and studied the displayed data.
    “You know,” she said with a hint of victory in her voice, “I’ll bet he’s trying to find sales and order information. Look here and here.” She pointed at three lines on the screen, scrolled it down, and pointed at two more. “If he’s working for Brazos’s competitor and could learn what we charged our customers, he could undercut our prices and steal them right out from under us. I think he hasn’t found the right database or application yet, although he’s come close.”
    “Damn,” Clay said. “Herb and I didn’t talk to someone like you who knows the applications from the user’s point of view. Are you sure?”
    “Yes, one of my areas is Order Entry. See, here and here,” she pointed at the screen again. “It looks like he’s trying to open the sales-order program. If you know how to display orders, you can see exactly what sort of deals the salespeople have made with each customer—volume discounts, rush orders, special shipping, all the rest.”
    “If I remember correctly from a conversation with one of their IT people at a conference, NatChem uses a different software package from Brazos. It’s obvious Brenner doesn’t know how to navigate in yours or where the data resides. Let’s go over this with Herb on Monday. There should be a way to set a trap for our hacker. Scroll back to the beginning.”
    He pointed to the display. “Each time Brenner tries to access Brazos, the program will create another file and put it in this folder. See, here’s the name, number, and date of the file. All you have to do is come to the file and open it to see what he’s been up to. Here’s the time of his access. If you’ll send me a copy by e-mail, I’ll study it for trapping possibilities.”
    “I’ll do it right now. How do you think he gained entry into our system?” she asked as she called up her e-mail program.
    “Offhand, it looks like he used a hacking program he found on the Internet. God knows they’re out there. Herb is going to upgrade his security and firewall as soon as we’re done.” He gave her his e-mail address, then rose and looked over her library while she sent the message.
    “About tomorrow,” he began, but stopped as he spied a title he knew.
    “Yes?” She turned to him.
    “Do you like this guy?” he asked, pointing to one of her favorite sci-fi authors. “So do I.”
    For some reason pleased by his approval, she watched him peruse her shelves for a minute before she shut down the computer. She was surprised to realize that he seemed to fit here in her office, as though it was a natural place for him to be. “Tomorrow? What about it?”
    “Yes, it’s Saturday.” He shot a glance her way. “Do you have any plans for the evening?”
    “Uh, no, I don’t think so.” She managed to keep her tone even, but she couldn’t help dropping her eyes. Her seemingly nonchalant answer didn’t fool him one bit, she knew, because of the way he smiled. He could probably read her like one of those books, see the emotions she was trying to hide: consternation that she had answered him truthfully and wariness about what he would say next. She tried to project a distant coolness to portray disinterest, but deep down lay an underlying excitement she couldn’t deny.
    “The musical Wicked is playing downtown. Let’s see it and have a late dinner afterward.”
    “I don’t know,” Francie said, sounding even to herself like a wimpy coward.
    “I’m supposed to be sweeping you off your feet, remember? We have to make our relationship look good. What will Tamara think if I don’t follow up on tonight?”
    “Oh, heavens, Tamara.” Francie’s shoulders slumped. Every time she turned around, she ran into the problem of deceiving her best friend. She knew exactly what