He looked surprised. “You’re not even willing to discuss it? Christmas is coming. What about your clients? What about the babies?”
She didn’t want to admit how much she’d already been worrying about Christmas. Kate’s food pantry was teaming up with two other organizations to provide a Christmas Eve dinner that was quite ambitious in scope when it came to the number of people they hoped to feed. Not only that, but Kate wanted to give one unwrapped toy to each child who came through the line. Whether or not they would achieve their goal would depend on the dollar amount they raised and the number of toy donations they were able to bring in.
“I have to do this on my own, Ian. It’s what I set out to do. If I can’t make this work, then I threw away my law career for nothing.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure all nonprofit organizations have their ups and downs. Maybe you can’t help everyone, but you’ve helped a lot of people, and that counts for something.”
“I know it does,” Kate said. “It’s just that once I help them, I feel like I’m letting them down if I can’t keep doing it.”
The waitress brought their meals and they dug in.
“Then let me help you,” he said.
“You’ve already been way too generous. I can’t accept any more.”
“I really haven’t given you that much.”
“You’ve given me three thousand dollars, which is a small fortune considering I can feed eight people for six dollars and twenty-one cents. It isn’t your responsibility to keep the food pantry afloat. I’ll just work harder.”
“Is it because I”—he made air quotes—“appropriated the money?”
“That’s part of it, I guess.”
“What if I give you some of my own money? I have plenty.”
Kate shook her head. “I can’t.” Maybe she was being stubborn and ungrateful, but how could she feel like she was accomplishing her goals if Ian swooped in every month with a bag of cash, stolen or otherwise?
“Don’t you think your clients are deserving of the assistance they receive, regardless of where the money comes from?” Ian asked.
“Of course I think they’re deserving.”
“Well, if you won’t take money from me personally, then we’re back to me playing Robin Hood.”
She exhaled, torn between her decision not to accept his help and her desire to see her clients with the things they needed.
“Think of it this way,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather see your clients benefit from the money instead of the thieves who stole it from people whose Christmases will probably be shitty this year because of it?”
“You make a valid argument.”
He pointed his fork at her. “Exactly.”
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t struggle with it as much if you told me more about it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How does it work? When I asked you if there was a difference between hackers and cyberthieves, you said there was. What did you mean by that?”
“There are two kinds of hackers—white hat and black hat. The white hats are hackers who hack for good—like me. We hack into things, but our goal is to figure out how to keep everyone else out. The cyberthieves, or black hats, hack for malice or greed. They’re the ones who introduce the malware that causes harm and launch attacks that cripple websites. They hack into Home Depot and Target, and they help themselves to your credit card information when all you were trying to do was buy a drill or paper towels and laundry detergent.”
“Clearly you don’t know how to shop at Target. There are way cooler things to be found there than paper towels and laundry detergent.”
He laughed. “Duly noted.”