Monday morning, I was at the offices of NARA Systems. They were typical of the high-tech companies in the valley. Simple Swedish modern furniture in a rather uncluttered sterile environment. The receptionist took me from the reception area to a small conference room in the back. It was a typical conference room with a small but no doubt expensive conference table and eight matching chairs. There was a picture of Nara park with its pagoda style gazebo out on a lake and connected to the land by the typical Asian arched bridge. The locale was explained to me later. If I had known then I might have questioned what I had been told about the companies ties to Japan, namely that there were not any. As it was, I just assumed it reflected the tastes of their decorator.

I took a chair on the far side of the table facing the door. The receptionist asked me if I wanted coffee or water, which I declined. She said Mr. Fullerton would be with me shortly and left closing the door behind her. I only had to wait a few minutes.

The door opened and a tall gray-haired man entered. I got up to greet him. He smiled and offered his hand. "Mr. Farley, I'm Bill Fullerton," he said as he shook my hand. "I'm so glad to meet you. Bernard Johnson has said some very nice things about you. Please, sit down. You know Bernard used to work for me. I thought very highly of him."

"He has said some very nice things about you too," I replied.

"Well, we all know he does tend to exaggerate. Although in your case, his praise seems to be justified. I passed your resume around this morning. And one of our supervisors has already asked for you. He has even asked that we fast track you. We do not normally do that."

"I'm flattered, but what exactly does that mean?"

"It means, if you are available, you can start to work as early as next week. I know you left Advanced Comms rather abruptly, but Bernard assures me it was due to no fault on your part. He said it was a forced cut back on the project you were working on and you volunteered to take the hit."

I nodded agreement with the explanation Bernard had fabricated.

Fullerton continued, "All you have to do is meet with Simon Ortiz. Simon is the supervisor who requested you be fast tracked. If Simon still wants you, we will make it happen."

"This is going faster than I expected," I said genuinely amazed by how quickly things were going. I wondered if somehow Agent Lee had pulled some strings to make this happen. "This is great though. I'm anxious to get started."

"Great. I'll take you to Simon's office and introduce you."

He escorted me from the conference room to Simon Ortiz's office.

Simon got up to greet us as we came through his door. He was a rather small chubby guy with the jowls of a bulldog, the eyes of a pit bull and the hairline of a Mexican hairless. As I was to find out, the similarities to dogkind ended with his physical traits. In my experience dogs are very noble creatures.

"You must be Chuck Farley," he said coming over, smiling and shaking my hand. How he managed to smile with that face is a mystery.

"Chuck, this is Simon Ortiz. Simon, he is all yours. I will leave you two to it. It was nice meeting you, Chuck," Fullerton said as he left.

"Please have a seat and let's get started," Simon said indicating the chair in front of his desk. He sat back down in his own chair. He picked up a phone and said, "Sherry, could you bring us some coffee."

"None for me," I declined his offer.

"It is one of the perks of my job having Sherry at my beck and call. Besides, I enjoy the view when she exits if you know what I mean," he said with a lecherous grin.

Simon picked up a printout of my resume. He spent some time going over it while I sat there in silence waiting and enduring his occasional judgmental glance. Certainly, he had read it before. He obviously enjoyed being in control and having others at his mercy waiting on him.

Sherry entered with a tray. To my surprise, it was Sherry from First Tech. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

"It's a long story." She set the tray down. She gave Simon an uncomfortable glance and said, "I'll tell you later."

Simon returned her look and dismissed her, "that will be all, Sherry." She turned with an exasperated look on her face and left. He leeringly enjoyed the view as she walked out. As soon as she closed the door he said, "Like watching a mama cat trying to escape a burlap bag." He was referring to her tush's struggle against the tight confines of her skirt. "Don't tell me you wouldn't want to help free that pussy." He chuckled. His intentions clearly weren't altruistic. He was more the type to have put the momma cat and her kittens into the burlap bag. All pussies would be smart to avoid this guy I thought.

I forced a grin to acknowledge his colorful imagery and play on words.

"Do you know Sherry?" he asked.

"We both worked at first Tech," I explained.

"Of course. Did you ever tap that?" He gave me that ludicrous grin of his.

"No," was all I said and bit down hard on my tongue.

"Hmmph," he grunted his opinion of my apparent prudishness and went back to reviewing my resume. After much pretentious hemming and hawing, he began his questions.

"It says here you graduated from U C Davis, went to work for First Tech and after two years there you left and went to work for Advanced Comms. Now, two years later you are moving again. Does this mean you get bored easily?"

"Not really, First Tech was a good place to start, but when Advanced Comms started up, it attracted a lot of people who worked at First Tech and I was one of them. I would have stayed with Advanced Comms, but they were having some funding problems. I volunteered to be cut."

"I heard. Actually, I was quite excited to see your resume. You were just what I was looking for. You have programming experience with ASICs, FPGAs, and embedded processors. You've used both Xilinx and Altera. Very impressive. It says your SSBI background investigation is current. That should expedite getting you cleared on to the project." He began studying my resume again.

"Tell me about what you've been up to since you left Advanced Comms," he said looking up at me once more.

"I've been doing a little job hunting, but mostly just taking some time off."

"I heard you had started your own consulting business?"

"Can I ask where you heard that?" I suspected Sherry might have told him.

"It's a small community Chuck. Word gets around. The reason I'm asking about this is because the job I've got for you will require your full attention. I can't have you moonlighting on other work. If you have anything else going on, you are going to have to tell me about it. And you are going to have to wrap it up."

I quickly assured him, "Not a problem. I was investigating some unusual activities at a couple of software companies, but we're about to uncover everything we were looking for and I'm basically done with it."

I exaggerated the investigation's progress for a reason. It seemed suspicious that Simon was even interested in my investigation. I suspected, he or someone he reported to was the mastermind behind the plot to spread the spyware and this fast track job was intended to curtail my investigations. I thought by implying the guilty parties would soon be revealed, it might just pressure whomever was behind all this into a mistake. For once I was right. Little did I realize what that mistake would lead to.

Simon and I talked for over an hour. He kept pressing me for more information on my consulting work. All I would tell him was that I would be finished with it very soon so it would not interfere with my work for him. I kept asking him why he had wanted to fast track me. All he would tell me was it was my qualifications. Both our stories were believable. Both of us were lying.

At the end of the interview, Simon said he could have an offer for me by the end of the week and if I wanted I could come in as early as next Monday to fill out paperwork. They would set up a temporary office for me. The job was mine. The fast tracking still had me very suspicious.

Normally, I would never have accepted a job working for such a manipulative, inconsiderate lecher, but of course there was nothing normal about any of this.

I looked for Sherry on my way out, but I didn't see her. I figured I'd have a chance to talk to her once I was on the job here.

I went back to the apartment and told Rogue I had the job. I called Ripley to arrange another group meeting, but apparently, there was something going on at Advanced Comms that had everyone tied up through lunch time.

Ripley also informed me that Pixie had stayed in Sacramento. "She needed to spend some time with her folks apparently," Ripley said. He clearly wanted to say more about it, but probably not over the phone.

Rogue seemed to be less energetic lately. I think, the kidnapping adventure following her chemo two weeks ago and the rafting trip this past weekend, were all beginning to catch up with her. We grabbed lunch and ran some errands. That evening we ate out, and spent a quiet evening in. It was just another manic Monday. Time it goes so fast when you're on the run/ Only a week left we were under the gun.

#End Chapter Fourteen