Josh waited until seven p.m. to head back to Kenny’s house to start the stakeout. At a local Home Depot he’d bought the items he thought would be needed. It was a list straight from a bad detective story. Ski mask, gloves, duct tape, crow bar, bolt cutter, and a bag to carry it all in. Josh half expected the checkout girl to put her mouth to the microphone and broadcast across the store:
“Price check, price check on Burglar Kit on register 7.”
She barely looked at him, taking his cash and piling the coins on top of the bills when she gave him the change and the receipt. Josh didn’t bother telling her to hand him the change first so he didn’t have to fumble with a handful of paper and purchases – it didn’t seem like the right time for that. He shoved the wad of paper and coins into his pocket. Home Depot didn’t sell digital cameras, so he swung by a cheesy electronics store and got the cheapest model that came with a USB cable to connect to a computer. He was all ready for his first foray into life as a felon.
Driving down Kenny’s street to park a few houses away and watch until all the lights were out, Josh realized he hadn’t brought any food, water, or container to relieve himself in case it was a long wait. He felt like a rookie. He was. Passing Kenny’s house to find a good spot to wait, he was pulled out of his self-absorption by almost hitting a large white Suburban as it backed out of Kenny’s drive. Josh swerved and stared at the SUV as he went by. He caught a full look at the loaded truck; kids in the middle row, back filled with gear, roof rack with more stuff strapped on with bungee cords and baling twine, and Kenny riding high in the driver’s seat. Josh’s heart sank. Kenny had decided to leave tonight instead of in the morning. Josh quickly tried to think of an alternative. Block him in and tell him there was an emergency? Then what, steal the plans from his briefcase? Maybe Josh could don the mask and threaten him with the crowbar, a random carjacking. In the broad daylight of late summer on a residential street. None of these would work. He kept driving, telling himself to think harder. Maybe he could follow them to the lake, then sneak in along a trail late at night and rummage through the briefcase if Kenny left it in the car. Josh reached the corner and had to decide what to do. He had nothing, nothing at all. It was useless. He banged the steering wheel, yelling “fuck!” loud enough that the 74-year-old dog-walker on the corner looked over and shook her head at him.
Josh had no choice. He had to go back to the office and force someone to give him access to the plans. He would put on the mask and threaten to break their legs, telling them he needed the passwords to a bunch of servers so they wouldn’t know exactly what he was after. But that would still leave a trail. There was only one answer left – but Josh didn’t know if he was willing to do it. Would he kill someone to get the information and not leave a trail? He wouldn’t know until he got there. He didn’t think so.
The office complex was quiet; the third shift had not started in manufacturing and most of the white-collar employees were gone. Friday nights were the one slow period the entire week. Josh keyed himself into his building, carrying the equipment he had planned on using at Kenny’s. On the final miles driving over, his resolve had hardened. He would do whatever was necessary. If it were the life of his sister against someone else, he would make that decision easily. Josh walked through the building to the back exit and worked his way quietly toward the building housing Kenny’s office. Someone was probably working late and they would have the password. He steeled himself for whatever was about to happen.
Getting off the elevator on Kenny’s floor, Josh had to step over a bucket and mop. The cleaning crew was emptying trashcans, mopping the bathrooms, and vacuuming. All the office doors in the corridor were open, including Kenny’s. He looked for an office occupied by someone other than the cleaning crew or a security guard. Walking past Kenny’s office, he paused to look in, fantasizing about Kenny having left a copy of the Ventrica design on his desk or in the trash. No chance. Josh kept going, scouting out the other offices. He pulled up suddenly, a thought flickering across his mind. He pictured Kenny’s office and, in the corner, the printer that had spit out a copy of the design. He looked around. No one was in the corridor; a woman had just gone into the men’s room with a mop and Josh could hear a vacuum three doors away from where he stood. He slipped into Kenny’s office and went to the printer. Modern printers weren’t just dumb machines – they were computers, with microprocessors and software. And memory. Even the simplest printer used memory. When you sent a document to print, it stored it in memory first. Every time you sent a new document to print, it deleted the memory of the previous document and used the space to store the current job. If the Ventrica had been the last thing Kenny printed before leaving, it would still be in memory. It was a simple matter to tell the machine to reprint the last job, if you knew how to do it – which Josh did. His heart began to beat faster. Maybe there was a way out of this. He looked at the printer, praying no one had used it since the Ventrica design. All the printers were connected to the network, so almost anyone in the building could send a job here and come pick it up. He had to hope no one had done that. He reached for the printer to begin the sequence of manual commands using the Mode button that would reprint the last job, when suddenly it began to hum. A small display screen that had been dark lit up and began blinking the words Processing Job. This meant someone in the building with the same security clearance as Kenny – and access to his office – had sent a new job to the printer. Probably this had happened several times since Kenny printed the design and Josh was just grasping at straws. But maybe not. He began hitting the buttons as fast as he could, trying to beat the command being sent by someone somewhere in the building. He had to get in his command to reprint before it finished loading up the new job. Josh had never done this under pressure, much less holding the knowledge that the life of someone he loved was the price of failure. He worked on autopilot, racing as fast as he could. After a few seconds, the heavy sound of the roller inside the printer rumbled and Josh could hear the first piece of paper being fed. It was going to print something and he could do no more. He waited and watched. The edge of the first sheet began to emerge, then the words on the cover sheet. Josh couldn’t make them out until more of the page showed. When it was halfway done, he almost broke into tears. It read: Ventrica VII Design…It had worked.
Josh waited by the machine as more than 114 pages printed out. At any second, the person who sent the job that almost erased this document could step into the office and ask what he was doing. Josh took a chance and peeked out the door, looking up and down the hallway. No one. Back at the printer he strummed it with his fingers, impatient. He was so close yet the danger of being caught was greatest right now. Concentrating so hard on the printer and willing it to go faster, he didn’t hear anyone come in until he sensed someone watching him. Josh looked up into the face of a young Latina woman holding a half-filled trash bag.
“Basura?”
“Yes, yes…that’s fine. Please, go ahead.”
If she wondered why his voice croaked, she didn’t ask. As she emptied the trash, the printer spit out the last page. It had only been five or six minutes, but felt like a month. Josh gathered up the document and put it in the bag that still held the tools he’d planned on using to beat some poor manager into unconsciousness after divulging the password. He almost ran back to his office.
Josh didn’t have a number for Helen, so he sent her an email. He had gotten the design. He would fly in tonight and hand-deliver it, wherever, whenever she wanted. Or he would scan it and send it; whatever she wanted. It would be over now. He had done it.
The 11:05 p.m. flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles left on time and was aided by tailwinds. It landed early at 12:32 a.m. Saturday morning and nine minutes later Josh was in his car heading home. He checked his Blackberry for a message from Helen but found nothing. She was expecting the design tomorrow morning, so he would scan it first thing and send it to her. Despite the still existing danger and the strange, horrifying days that had just passed, Josh felt relief.