Love in the Midst of Chaos

Plan

Once we eat dinner, Chloe heads out, while she doesn't tell us why, we trust that it is for a good reason. I sit at the table, taking a deep breath as I lean my elbow on the table, propping up my head, having been trying to figure out how to get Jamie out of this mess. Mitch comes over and sits a glass of wine on the table, "come on, we're in Paris, might as well drink."

"I can't," I shake my head. 

"Why not?"

"Because there is a Reiden office right here in Paris. And if Ben Shaffer was on their payroll, like Jackson and Jaime say he was, there will be a paper trail, somewhere."

Mitch pushes the glass toward me, "relax. You need to take a deep breath."

"Kind of hard to."

Mitch reaches over and takes my hand, "you're over stressing yourself. Just breathe, take a sip of your wine and relax."

I take a deep breath and a sip of the wine, "happy?"

"A bit," Mitch nods and smiles. 

Soon Abe, Jamie and Jackson come in, "hey," Jackson walks up behind me, "you figure anything out yet?"

"Not yet. I mean, how do we get past the facial recognition?"

"No problem at all. All we need is an employee with top-level access."

"Right, because why would that be a problem?" I shake my head and look back to Jackson.

"Hey," Chloe calls out as she comes into the apartment, "how is it going?"

"Phoebe had an idea, a good one."

"About the bears?"

"No," I shake my head, "about Jamie. She can't spend the rest of her life running. We have to get her out of it by proving that Ben Shafer was on Reiden's payroll."

"Okay."

"Reiden has an office here in Paris," Jackson shrugs his shoulders, "we're breaking in."

"What?" Chloe crosses her arms. 

"Think about it," I stand up, "the Paris Reiden office only handles European contracts, but their computer network is linked to the central system back in Boston, which means, if we can hack into their systems, we can prove Ben Shafer was on their payroll."

"And how are we gonna do that?"

"What, the hacking-into-the-system part or the proving-it part?"

"Both."

Mitch hands Chloe a glass of wine, "it makes more sense if you drink this."

"Okay," Jamie nods, "uh, second part first. I've done investigations like this for stories I've written. Corporations keep track of every penny of their finances, so if there's a payoff to Ben Shafer, it'll be in their accounting records. We just access the finances and follow the paper trail."

"Presuming that he used his real name," I shrug a bit.

"Agreed. It's not necessarily going to be easy, but there's always something. Uh, money that moves from one account to another. Numbers that don't add up."

"A pattern," Chloe nods. 

"That's your specialty, right? Recognizing patterns."

"Okay, you say once we access their finances. How are we gonna do that?"

Jackson chuckles, "that's the cool part. See, as far as we can tell, all top-level Reiden executives have access to their computer network."

"But..." I sigh a bit, "their system doesn't use passwords, it uses facial recognition."

"So we just need to locate an executive with access and then trick their system into thinking they're signing into their account."

"And that's where you come in," Abe points to Chloe. "This is going to be a team effort. Even Mitch. We're presuming there are thousands of documents to comb through, so we're going to copy the records onto a computer with enough storage space. The one in the animal lab."

"And what's my role?" Chloe nods. 

"You get to have some fun."