Say It Again (First Wives, #5)(30)

Nothing.

“Do you have the new administration Wi-Fi passwords?” she asked Claire.

“Are you asking if I have obtained the off-limits codes that could land me in solitary if I’m caught with them?”

Sasha leveled her eyes, lifted one manicured eyebrow.

“Uppercase x, three, eight, lowercase z, hashtag, zero, uppercase o, the at sign, five.”

Sasha typed in the password.

“But rather what?” Claire asked.

A slight hum in the line . . . and the sound of a clock ticking. Sasha looked around the boiler room to make sure there wasn’t a clock there that was picking up the sound. “The office itself . . .”

She pulled up another window, one that would record.

“I don’t understand.”

“Every computer has the ability to hear you, even if you don’t turn on the microphone. The technology is there. I devised a system to record once voices are heard. As long as the computer is turned on, I can hear what’s going on in the office.”

“That sounds a lot more sophisticated than you make it out to be.”

“It is. The firewalls keep me from gathering this information remotely. It only works while on campus.” Which was something she wanted to work on. Her days at Richter were coming to an end, but the information she needed access to was more than a simple conversation. What she needed was alumni names. And not just the ones found in the yearbooks.

Those could be changed.

Along with their birthdays and biological parents . . . apparently.

Sasha never used her . . . less than legal hacking skills at Richter for anything other than adolescent pranks.

Changing grades and obtaining tests before they were given was never a goal.

Embarrass the staff, make a name for herself . . . those had been her objectives.

What Sasha needed was a couple of hours.

“That’s how you recorded Professor Neumann doing Nurse Palmer in the science lab,” Claire said with sly laugh.

“I cannot confirm or deny that claim,” Sasha offered. Even though the memory of the day she’d replayed that audio during the equivalent of a fire drill, for the entire campus to hear, made her glow on the inside. Linette had no choice but to cut the entire PA system off and end the drill. When they managed to trace the recording, they found it on Neumann’s computer. Placing it on Nurse Palmer’s would have been a gamble. The woman didn’t always leave her computer on. Neumann, on the other hand, didn’t turn his off.

He did after that day.

In fact, Linette had changed policy and mandated that all office computers be turned off during fire drill days to avoid a repeat.

Sasha had never been caught.

“Are you going to tell me why you want to hear what’s going on in the headmistress’s office?” Claire asked.

Sasha settled in and started to hack at Linette’s firewalls. “What do you think about Mr. Pohl?”

“The creepazoid that follows you around?”

Good definition. “Yeah, him.”

“He makes me itch.”

Sasha sat back while the computer ran through a few million numbers. “I break out when I see him, too. I’m not sure Linette knows the man she invited to recruit here.”

“So why hack into her office?”

“Because that is the only place I can. And since I’m meeting with him tomorrow, in her office, I wanted to hear any conversation that might be said before, or after, I’m there.”

“You don’t trust her.”

Sasha shook her head. “I don’t trust him.”

“I heard he’s here to decide if he wants to hire you for some kinda spy job.”

She paused. “Who said that?”

“Students. Last year he offered one of the high school seniors on my floor a job. Denenberg was pissed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Rumor has it that he only is allowed to recruit college grads. Since Denenberg got in his face after our race the other day, I’m guessing that rumor holds some truth.”

Sasha typed in another command, sat back. “Recruiting an eighteen-year-old for that kind of a job should be illegal. Denenberg was right to be angry.”

“I don’t think twenty-one- or twenty-two-year-olds are a whole lot different. Especially when they’ve spent most of their life behind these walls.”

“Yet the lure is there, isn’t it?” Sasha asked. “Especially for the long-term students of Richter . . .”

“Like you and I,” Claire said.

Brigitte’s conversation earlier that night rolled around in Sasha’s head. Pohl hired the emotionally vulnerable, yet talented in all the crime-worthy skills.

“Yeah. Like us.”



Instead of showing up early and sitting outside Linette’s office like a student preparing for a lecture, Sasha waited until the last second to walk through the administration doors and up to Linette’s assistant.

The assistant smiled the second she noticed her and pushed to her feet. “They’re expecting you.”

Sasha walked into Linette’s office, shoulders back, chin up . . . confident.

Mr. Pohl sat across from Linette and stood when Sasha entered the room.

“Good morning, Sasha,” Linette greeted her with a smile. That alone was a little off-putting.