Try Harder

9:15pm

Beka found it much easier to work without Doug's constant distraction. All he ever did was aggravate her and get in the way. She had no idea what she ever saw in the boy, and knowing that she'd once shared a bed with him made her skin crawl.

She tried to put him out of her mind, and focus on connecting the backup server to the phone system's service hub. The room was a complete mess, as all the cables that were pulled from the wall were stripped and left in a tangled jumble on the floor. Beka had to wade through them just to get from one corner to the other. She eventually moved the old computer closer to the wall so she wouldn't have to walk so much.

Before long, she had everything wired up. As she threaded the last strand of cable into the hub and twisted it into place, the computer lit up and its hard drive whirred to life. She grabbed a monitor and keyboard off the shelf and connected them.

Once it had booted up, Beka started partitioning the hard drive as many times as she could. She was essentially dividing the computer's memory up into increasingly smaller chunks. This meant that to anyone connecting to the computer remotely, it would appear as though there were multiple hard drives, instead of just one. She hastily renamed each new partition, giving it the impression of a genuine computer network.

Beka took all the files from the main hard drive and copied most of them to the new partitions. When she'd finished, she quickly looked over the layout of the files. It didn't match the old network exactly, but it was a close enough approximation to fool a computer novice.

She was pretty proud of the work she'd done, but wished she knew precisely what the gunman was looking for on the network. It would have made it easier to tailor the subterfuge to his needs. Regardless, she was confident this plan would slow the madman down for a bit.

Trembling, she grabbed her radio and flicked it on.

"Okay, guys, I did it," she said.

"Beka, I'm sorry, but now's not a good time," Buff replied, impatiently. "We're right in the middle of something."

"The network's back up."

That got Buff's attention. "Really? Oh, that's great!" He sounded relieved. "In the whole building?"

"Everywhere but the top floor."

"Nice work, Beka. Thank you."

Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by Harry's coarse voice, warbling out through the radio.

"You've got a woman on the team?" he said in a mocking tone. "I'm impressed. That's very progressive."

"Suck my dick," Beka said, flatly.

"Well, well, aren't you a feisty one?" Harry said, derisively. "You know, women like you are what kept me out of family law."

"I bet women kept you out of a lot of things," she answered.

"Don't taunt him, Beka," pleaded Buff. "Look, Mr. Bockner, you got what you wanted. The computer network is working again. Now, please, just leave us alone."

There was a long pause before Harry responded.

"That bitch better not be lying," he said, deadly serious. "If I find anything wrong, she's the first one I'm going to kill."

The radio clicked off.

Beka hated letting the old man have the last word, but realized it was best for him to feel as though he had the upper hand. The intention had been to slow him down, and so far, it was working. Now, she had to get back upstairs before he found out the network was a fake.