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A fist rapped on Nami’s door. She kept working, copying files she’d managed to restore from Smith’s destroyed hard drives. She knew the men coming to take her away wouldn’t let her ever set foot in the Forensic Palace of Digital Love Making again, so she needed to take as much with her as possible.
Copying information classified so highly was an enormous crime that would carry a ridiculous penalty, but she figured it couldn’t be any worse than the treason charge coming her way. That and she didn’t trust anyone to do the right thing with the files except Ashley, Mr. Clean, and herself.
The rest of the assholes in Washington could sit on it and rotate.
“Open the door!” someone shouted. “Now!”
The hammering ratcheted up.
“One minute,” Nami said sweetly.
“Now!”
Nami watched the progress bar as the last of the files finished copying to a thumb drive. She yanked the device from the USB port and then pulled the collar of her shirt open.
“Thank the gods I wore a padded bra,” she whispered as she placed the thumb drive under her breast. The hard edges weren’t comfortable against her skin, but it wasn’t too bad.
She stood and placed a hand on each boob, feeling for a major difference. The hard plastic was barely detectable. If someone really searched her, they would find it, but otherwise, she hoped no one would notice. A nice perk with looking so young was that security forces and guards weren’t as likely to feel you up while searching you.
The files she’d copied had just finished a lengthy recovery process that Nami had started several weeks ago. The damage to the hard drives was so severe that she feared they were unrecoverable. But she’d managed to find a relatively untouched platter in one of the last drives she’d opened and had been able to slowly pull files from it.
Because of the craziness of the day, Nami hadn’t checked to see what she’d recovered yet.
“You have five seconds to open up or we’ll break the door down.”
Good luck, Nami thought. That mahfah is metal.
She was about to go to the door when she remembered that Tate had told her to radio them when the men from Washington showed up. She grabbed the microphone atop her desk.
“The party poopers are here,” she said into it.
“Roger that. Radio silence from here on out,” Tate replied.
Nami slid the microphone behind her monitor, hoping to conceal it a bit so the men wouldn’t notice it right away. She killed the power to her forensic machine and then went to the door.
“Who is it?” she called out.
“Open the goddamn door!”
“If you’re here to introduce me to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ, then I’ll have to—”
The door shuddered in the frame.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist, for fuck’s sake.” Nami undid the heavy lock and opened the door. She smiled at the three pissed-off men staring in at her. “Sup?”