Page 89 of Her Selfless Warrior (Omega Sky)
“But not really,” Kostya said.
“Nope, not really, because then a year and a half later, something else pops up. Because I was working on a story here in D.C., I ran into another situation. It made headlines. One of our biggest American semi-conductor manufacturers, Rey-Con, had sued a Chinese company for stealing trade secrets. It was all over but the shouting, but there were a couple of rumors on the street that at the time of the theft, Sanofi Manufacturing and Analytics were supplying a shit-ton of engineering consultants.”
“So, people were suspecting that Sanofi might have sold the secrets? Was that hurting Sanofi’s business?” Kostya asked.
“Hell no.” Lark sat back and shook her head. “Not with the senator pressing people to continue using them. But as soon as I heard about it, I couldn’t help but remember Hardy’s notes about Sunny-Solar and their simulators. That company in Wisconsin had hired two engineer consultants from Sanofi. It seemed a little too coincidental to me.”
“And Candy? How did you meet up with her?” Kostya wanted to know. Lark leaned into him as he pulled her closer.
“I was in a closed online forum that was supposed to be just for engineers to talk about ways to shore up their defenses to make sure that their code couldn’t be stolen in the future. There was a lot of chatter about layered encryption tech, and how it just wasn’t cutting it anymore.” Lark blew out a breath that feathered her bangs upward. “I put in an alert for Sanofi, Sunny-Solar, and Rey-Con, so I could read any chats that talked specifically about them. That’s when I found one username that would bring up Rey-Con and Sanofi. No Sunny-Solar, but still…”
“Was that Candy?” Amy asked.
“Yep,” Lark nodded. “Now, she didn’t know how to block herself, so she was easy to track down. Once I got her e-mail address, I was able to set up a meet.”
“She was willing to meet, just like that?” Kostya was skeptical.
“You know, not everybody is as paranoid as you special ops types. But no, not just like that,” Lark sighed. “First I had to have her read some of my articles, then she insisted on being able to call into the Vanity Fair office and have the call directed to me, just to make sure I was on the up-and-up.”
“Good,” Kostya smiled. “I’m beginning to like her.”
Lark hit his shoulder. “I told you she was good people, that should have been good enough.”
He rolled his eyes.
Lark looked over at Amy. “See? They’re cynical as well as paranoid,” she huffed.
“Realistic and cautious,” Ryker countered.
“Anyway, Candy and I agreed to meet. She laid it all out for me. Her current husband, Jay Jensen, was refusing to sign the divorce papers unless she did some digging on Sanofi. Jay’s a janitor at Sanofi, and he discovered some things there. He overheard some conversations and stole some papers. Anyway, he found out that some of the men were using the bank that Candy worked at, so he got the bright idea of having her snoop around at her bank to find out what the Sanofi employees were doing over there.”
“And she went for it?” Amy asked incredulously.
“She’d been trying to divorce his ass forever, but he kept refusing to sign the papers. He promised her that if she got him the information he wanted, that he’d sign.”
“And did she?” Ryker asked.
“She was still digging around when she and I met up.”
“Why was she doing online searches in the chatroom?”
“She figured the more she knew about the Sanofi guys, the easier it would be for her to find out about their banking status,” Lark explained. She laughed. “The thing is, after meeting the overbearing pile of stink, I find it hard to believe he could ever be stealthy. Hell, considering how big he is, I can’t imagine him ever being overlooked. I sure do understand why Candy was pulling out all the stops to get out of her marriage to Jensen. He’s a slime of the first order. I had to take a bathanda shower after meeting with him.”
“Wait a minute, you met with him? When? Where?” Kostya demanded to know.
“Three days ago. At his apartment. Why?” Lark looked at him curiously.
“You went over there on Thursday?” There was something funny about the way Kostya asked the question. Lark examined his face.
“Why are you asking?”
“Just answer the question, Honey.”
“Yes, I already told you, it was on Thursday afternoon.”
“So let me get this right. You went to see this guy that you knew was involved in some shady shit the day before you had me fly out here for a date. Am I getting this right?” Now his voice didn’t sound funny. Kostya sounded a slight bit perturbed.
“Now wait just a minute, big guy. I go into and have gone into a hell of a lot worse situations than that. Jay Jensen was chump change compared to the crack houses in L.A. And don’t get me started on where I had to go and who I had to meet to get the complete story for the shanty-towns in Brazil.”
