Free Full Frontal Murder by Barbara Paul Page B

counteroffer. I’ll hold your job open for you for one week. One week, André—not a day longer.”
    The younger man’s eyes bugged. “What?”
    â€œSame salary, same perks, same office. Same job. Take Carnell’s offer, if you must. You’ll have five working days to decide whether you want to stay with Carnell or come back to your job here.”
    André looked dumbfounded. “That’s it?”
    â€œThat’s it.” Holland waited a beat and asked, “Was there anything else?”
    â€œEr, uh, no.” The young man backed out of the office.
    Holland paid all of his people well, more than he needed to; it was the time-honored way of assuring employee loyalty. But André had a lesson to learn about loyalty, and Chris Carnell was just the one to teach him.
    Holland got up and left his office. In the reception area, Mrs. Grainger looked up from her desk to see if he wanted something; he shook his head. Today she was wearing one of her pearl gray outfits with the white collar; Marian called her The Pilgrim.
    He went down the hall to the last office. The door was open; inside, Bill Tuttle stood giving instructions to a new employee—a young woman not much older than André Flood.
    Tuttle broke off in mid-sentence. “Mr. Holland?”
    Holland held up a hand. “Finish what you’re doing.” He perched on a high stool to wait.
    Bill Tuttle was a skinny, clumsy, balding man who wore Sergeant Bilko glasses and had a nose for business Holland had come to respect. It was Tuttle who’d approached Holland, when the agency was only a month old, with a plan for a way a team of hackers could check out the credentials of job applicants. Holland’s first inclination was to pass; it sounded penny-ante. But he’d given Tuttle a provisional go-ahead, warning him his team would have to show a profit fast. It did. Once the groundwork had been laid, Tuttle’s gang of hackers could find out anything about anybody, and it didn’t take them days or even hours to do it; Holland had had to take on extra staff to handle all the business Tuttle had generated.
    But the credentials checking was one aspect of his agency that Holland never talked about to NYPD Lieutenant Marian Larch. The Computer Abuse Amendments Act had been expanded to cover not only federal agencies but all PCs online; Holland could be prosecuted for what Tuttle was doing. The new law had not put an end to hacking; it had merely made hackers more crafty about covering their tracks.
    Tuttle wrapped up his instructions quickly; the young woman cast a shy sideways glance at Holland on her way out. “Okay, boss,” Tuttle said. “What’s up?”
    â€œI’m here to give you a mini-promotion,” Holland said.
    Tuttle grinned and flopped down in a chair, which rolled back on its casters a few feet. “How mini?”
    â€œAn extra thousand a month.”
    The other man rolled his eyes heavenward. “Thank you, lord!”
    â€œDon’t thank him, thank me.”
    â€œThank you, boss. Why, may I ask, am I the beneficiary of such unexpected largesse?”
    â€œI want you to act as my backup. For those times I have to be away. Mrs. Grainger does a good job of managing the office, but she can’t make decisions about the work we do. Someone needs to be in charge when I’m out of the country or if I get hit by a bus or something equally catastrophic happens. That means we’ll have to find some time each week when I can brief you about pending cases—you’ll need to have a rough idea of what everyone is working on. Do you think you can handle that?”
    Tuttle snapped his fingers.
    â€œGood,” said Holland. “I’ll send around a memo. Sorry, but you don’t get your office redecorated as part of the deal.”
    Tuttle gazed around at the office in which every available surface was covered with paper. “Looks fine to