The Passionate Mistake Read Free Page B

notice and gossip about that slacker Cathy go right ahead. She’d leave now except she’d never take the chance of the tablet being picked up by someone else with those search results and the other evidence of her cracking.
    As soon as things wrapped up she stepped forward to claim her tablet, ending the recording. Before she had time to move away from the table she heard Mike say to the team leader, Alex: “Alex, who’ve you got working on the Jonas site?”
    “No one yet. Why?”
    “That’s strange. The code’s been rejigged. It’s done under Francine’s name but she was sitting right here at the time the alterations were made.”
    Cathy paused and started gathering up water glasses to give her an excuse to linger, so she could listen in.
    “Big changes?” said Alex .
    “Nothing major. I only spotted it because I was already in there having a tinker. They’re fairly sophisticated fixes to bugs we hadn’t even spotted. Not her usual coding style either. Good work. I like it. Do you think it might be Sophie? They work together, don’t they?”
    “ We haven’t discussed anything about that program, but I’ll ask.”
    “Do. Let me know. They shouldn’t be using each other’s profiles though. It’s confusing for the system and it makes it difficult to assign credit.”
    The men left. Cathy moved the glasses to the water cart and followed the last meeting attendees back out, tablet tucked under her arm. She was intrigued he had spotted the changes she made. In her experience no one noticed tiny alterations like that. Not unless they were searching for a bug that had been introduced, and she had done no such thing. She’d improved the software; only subtly, but hey; If you could achieve perfection, why not?
    He had some skills, she mused. She’d assumed they had hired him for his management talents, but maybe his programming know-how had given him the edge over the competition. So he was a whiz kid programmer too. He hid his inner geek well.
    Of course these days it was rather harder to pick computer nerds out of a crowd. Computers were the dominant tool of the culture. Mainstream. You didn’t need to look like a pale, hairy creature that had just crawled out from under a rock and was blinking in the light of day in order to write software.
    Look at her. She h ardly fit the stereotype either; or at least, not when she looked her normal self. But dressed as she was, with mousy brown pigtails and an overgrown fringe, glasses (without prescription lenses), no make-up and baggy cardigan and jeans, she might just qualify for the stereotype after all.
    It chafed. She hated looking like this; ordinarily plain and not worthy of attention. After years painstakingly learning to make the most of every single advantage life had given her, fighting her way to the top with every tool and weapon at hand, this enforced mediocrity felt like some sort of surrender. Like defeat.
    Let alone the pretense she was meek and ignorant. Though truth be told, perhaps she couldn’t lay claim to achieving meekness. She’d bitten off a few heads over the past two weeks; from those who expected the go-fer girl to be all willing and eager to be a doormat in order to make friends and win her way up the ladder.
    Not Cathy. Cathy was going nowhere, and she didn’t care a scrap. Let them stare at her in consternation when she sneered right back, contradicted or outwitted them . . .
    No, she couldn’t say meekness was something she had managed. As it was, even trying to adopt a subservient attitude while she tidied up after people and ran menial errands had her feeling like a thunderstorm all day; massed on the horizon and ready to strike.
    Two weeks was far too long. It was doing her head in. She had to find the ideal piece of software soon. Find it and steal it.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
    She thought the room was empty when she stormed in and started to gather up papers, cups, mislaid pens and other paraphernalia. Stupid