CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After everyone’s gone, it’s just Lucky and me in the room together. He has a pen out and a blank piece of paper, and he’s staring at me attentively.
“Do you know when you might be available to do a night visit to the job site?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I guess it would depend on what you think we’re going to be doing, and how long you think it’ll take. Since it’s at night, it’s possible May could watch my kids for me, but it depends on her schedule.”
“Okay. So, we need to talk to May.”
“I could text her, if you want.”
“That’s a good idea. Why don’t you go ahead and do that?”
Taking my phone from my purse, I quickly tap out a message to my sister, asking her when she might be free for a sleepover so that I can get down to business here with the Bourbon Street Boys.
“What’s next?”
“I was thinking we could get over there to the administrative offices around eight p.m. and work until about four in the morning. Mr. Jorgensen tells me that the last person is usually out the door by six-thirty in the evening, and they come in around eight o’clock in the morning. I’m guessing it’ll take us a few hours to go over all the computers, but just in case, we’ll have more time than that before we can expect anyone to show up and spoil our fun. Does that sound right to you?”
I nod. “Yes, it sounds about right, but I wouldn’t want to commit to anything until I actually got in there and started working. It’s really difficult to say how long it’ll take without having more details about the people who work there. Because we don’t know the background of any of the employees and how sophisticated they might be with their computer use, we won’t know for sure how deep the problem goes until we have our hands on their drives.”
He nods. “Yeah, you’re right.” He pauses for a moment and smiles at me. “Did I mention how happy I am to have you working on this case with me?”
My heart warms at the sentiment. “Maybe? Yes? No?” I chuckle. “Everyone has made me feel very welcome.”
“I think you’re really going to like working here, despite your first impressions. I promise it’s not normally like it was on Friday.”
I try to focus on the positive and not the incident in the panic room. That was just a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing. Except for the part where I spent quality time with Dev. Wrong place, right time? “Well, my sister May loves it, so it must be a nice place.”
“I realize that right now you only plan to be here temporarily, but if you decide at any point that you might like a more permanent gig, you should let me know. There’ve already been several cases we’ve worked on where we had to bring in outside talent, and we’ve had to turn down several more jobs because we just weren’t sure we could bring in somebody qualified enough to help. From what your sister and Thibault both tell me, you can pretty much handle anything we’ve been approached about so far.”
I’m flattered but also a little worried. “How does Thibault know anything about what I do?”
Lucky leans back in his chair a little bit. “He’s in charge of background checks. Whenever we think about working with someone from outside the team, he does a thorough check. Law enforcement allows us to use their databases.”
I get a little nervous over that. Does that mean he did a credit check on me too? I don’t have the best credit in the world, which is kind of embarrassing. Bouncing child support checks never helps with that situation. “I guess I passed . . .”
“Yes, you passed. And it doesn’t hurt that you had a very glowing recommendation from your sister. You’re her hero, you know. And we respect the hell out of her, so what she thinks matters to us.”
“You sure know how to make a girl blush, Lucky.” I know I sound goofy saying that, but I can’t think of how else to describe what I’m feeling. It’s been a long time since somebody slathered my family and me with compliments like this. It’s seriously flattering to be told on the day you’re laid off from one job that you’re respected so much by a new coworker, especially when it’s someone on a team of people who are consulting for the New Orleans Police Department. But it doesn’t change a lot of very important things for me.
“It’s just the truth,” he assures me.
“I did just get laid off from my job, but I’m not sure I’m up to the task of being a Bourbon Street Boy person.”
He shrugs. “It’s up to you. Thibault says you’re good for the work, and what you’ve said so far on the Blue Marine case makes sense to me, so if you do well with this job, there’s no reason why you couldn’t at least consider doing more consulting for us. If you’re worried about your kids, don’t be. When you work behind the scenes like I do, the demands are a lot less.”