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“Morning Carrie. Are you ready to jump in with Gina?”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I am. I even have my appointment scheduled with the therapist, like you asked.”

“Excellent. What’s on your mind, then?”

“I’m sure you heard about Upwood getting shot?”

Tom nodded. “I did.”

“So, can we please make that our top story tonight?”

Tom steepled his hands in front of him and with an ankle planted on his knee, he leaned back in his chair, looking her up and down. “What’s your angle?”

“Do we need an angle? It’s a national headline.” She couldn’t tell him about Savannah without breaking Peter’s trust, but it would be enough to convince Tom, she was sure of it.

“Fine. But nothing more than the facts. He was shot. The FBI is looking into it. They have no suspects. It doesn’t feel big enough to be the leading story. Put it in the B block.”

It was a start. Hopefully, before the mid-afternoon run down with Gina, she would have enough to convince him to move it to the top story.

“Can I get more of your black budget notes? I decided to pursue that follow-up piece.”

Tom smiled. “Excellent. I’ll email you everything I have.”

Back at her desk, she opened the e-mail from Tom containing the link to his files. She needed to cross reference Tom’s spreadsheets with everything given to her by the anonymous tipster. Picking up her phone, she dialed the IT department.

“Harrison, hey it’s Carrie. I have a hypothetical question for research.”

“I’m listening.”

“If I downloaded files from the cloud onto a flash drive and then loaded them onto an air gapped computer, would there be any way to trace the files once they were on the air gapped machine?”

“Someone has been brushing up on her techno-babble,” Harrison teased. Carrie was competent on a computer, but usually sounded like a technophobe when trying to talk about it. “To answer your question, the answer is no, not technically. It’s possible to trace that they got downloaded and even figure out the serial number of the flash drive you used, but once it’s on an air gapped machine, as long as it stays air gapped you wouldn’t have anything to worry about. Planning to steal some government secrets?”

“No honey, I’m coming for your homemade porn collection.”

Harrison laughed. “Oh, sugar. If I made porn, it would be all over the Internet by now. Anything else?”

“Just one more thing. What’s the best way to make sure a machine stays air gapped? Is there a way to like rip out the Internet connection capabilities?”

“You’re just so adorable sometimes. Yes, you can remove a machine’s network card. It’s a delicate process, though. Don’t go ripping things out of perfectly good computers, or Daddy Harrison will have to spank you.”

“Gross, Harrison. They record these calls you know.” Carrie was grateful Harrison couldn’t see her because her face was warm, which meant it was also bright red. The banter between the two of them was normal, even though her friend didn’t know how kinky she was. But today, it was embarrassing because all she could think about was Peter’s hand landing on her ass last night. Damn it. Now she was horny.

After hanging up with Harrison, she pulled the new laptop out along with an empty flash drive she had in her bag. When the files had been transferred to the drive, she unplugged the tower to her desktop computer and unhooked the three monitors she had set up. Then she connected them to the laptop after triple checking that the Internet was disabled and the machine remained in airplane mode. Now she was ready to pull up all the files and start comparing everything to see what she could find.

First, Carrie opened up the most recent document in Tom’s files. It was the framework for his article with some stuff already filled in. This project was Tom’s baby. If he was this far into the piece, why was he handing it off to her? The fact that he was giving her his pet story, showed her just how much he had wanted her to drop the Upwood story. That just made her want to pursue Upwood even more. Lucky for Tom, the two stories seemed to intersect for now. Because it was the black budget, Tom didn’t have account numbers or expense reports, only vague numbers and budget requests for each fiscal year. The spreadsheets from the mysterious R I P were more detailed versions of what Tom had given her.

The money was being pulled from foreign aid accounts and being funneled into the black budget, specifically, an account run by the CIA. Payments were being sent to cartels in Colombia and a few other places, but for some reason Colombia seemed to stick out in the documentation.

After several hours and two Red Bulls, Carrie's eyes were crossing. A break was in order. As she was closing up the laptop, it occurred to her to wonder who had passed this information on to Tom. Some of what was in his notes pointed to him being on a similar track as her. Was someone threatening Tom? That might explain the strange behavior. Or maybe Tom’s source could help her identify her own. Giving up a source was something the editor was unlikely to do unless it was a life or death situation, but it couldn’t hurt to try, so she grabbed her energy drink and jogged to his office.

When she knocked, there was no answer. She pushed open the door and found the room empty. Damn it. She went to his desk to leave him a note. The screen on his desktop was still active, and Carrie instinctively looked at it.

Her hand flew to her mouth. There on the screen, was a picture of Lola, the bartender from the Doll House. How the hell did Tom know her? Then it hit her. Lola looked exactly like Tom’s ex-wife. Was Lola Tom’s daughter? Did he know what was going on with Upwood?

When she closed Tom’s door to head back to her desk, she had more questions than answers, but she had some more threads to tug on. Her heart was pounding when she sat down.

Pulling out her phone, she sent a text to Peter.

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