~o~O~o~

~o~O~o~

 

---

 

Author's Note: Since I crave attention, here's the second chapter to this meddlesome story. Well, meddlesome if you're a Whisper fan. :) I have made some progress on that story today, but no promises. Thanks go out to Elrod for creating the MAU Universe. I'm trying to not break it, but I will probably need to pester him soon. Thanks to all my beta-readers for their feedback and support. Djkauf for his magical editing.

~o~O~o~

 

 

Sadie sat at her desk and pretended to do her work on her new laptop. Her fingers moved over the keyboard, the screen changed and to anyone watching, it looked like she was using the laptop. In reality, she performed all of her work using a sandboxed, virtualized copy of it, sans the crap, inside her core.  The expensive laptop was only a prop.

She could have used it and saved herself the minor effort of virtualizing it, but her new laptop came with a few additional ‘features’. Features like the same keystroke logger, remote control boot sector virus and the email client setup to copy emails to the IT guy’s inbox that was on her original workstation, minus the extra email to a foreign country and she highly doubted her little laptop came with those ‘features’ from the manufacturer.   Her dilemma was with how to report the additions to her laptop without people asking difficult questions as to how she discovered them.

The additions were buried very deep and hidden from their corporate detection tools. Since, expert computer security specialist was not part of her Accountant resume and it was certainly not part of a ‘simple’ Executive Assistant’s job description either, she couldn’t exactly report her discovery to Mr. Rogers.  The additional problem with reporting it was the fact that there were no tools she, as a simple assistant, could get and install on her locked down corporate controlled laptop that would detect the additions to her laptop’s operating system.

Sadie had a pretty good idea who was responsible for the additions and she wasn’t making it easy on John, the helpful IT guy, to spy on her and Mr. Rogers. Nothing went out from her system unless it was spam and the keystroke logger somehow missed a lot of characters, especially when it came to passwords.  Now, after three weeks on the job, it looked like her friend in IT was getting a little frustrated by the lack of juicy data coming from her laptop because he was attempting to remote in and find out why his spy programs were failing.

“What to do, what to do?” Sadie indecisively muttered to herself.

Turning him in herself would probably cause too many questions to be asked about how she knew and no one was more surprised than herself how much she enjoyed working for Mr. Rogers.  Sure, fetching coffee and enduring the lustful and sometimes condescending stares from men could feel a little demeaning at times, but unlike her previous jobs, she only had one boss and no one else in the company could tell her what to do. He might be a little behind the times technology wise and he was a little old school when it came to how women should present themselves in the office, but he did ask for her opinions and he listened to her.  He didn’t always agree with her, but he did listen.

She watched as John opened Mr. Rogers’ inbox and began rifling through it looking for sensitive data.  He wasn’t going to find any and she needed a way to hold his interest, if only for a few minutes.

“Fuck it, this asshole is going down…” Sadie muttered, determined to end the espionage now.

To keep John occupied, she simulated typing an email by initiating a slow transfer of a two week old, trade secrets rich email.  The bait was on the hook and the fish was nibbling at the line, but landing him would depend on a little more luck.  She needed an expert to catch John in the act and set the hook. Someone who should recognize that the botnet hacking tool he was using to remote into her laptop wasn’t the standard remote desktop support tool.

Over the past few weeks, Sadie had done as much research and investigation as she could without attracting attention herself. She made it a point to visit Kelly, the CFO’s Administrative Assistant and Gretchen, the CIO’s Administrative Assistant.  The three of them, plus Sheila from the front desk had even gone to lunch a couple of times.  She used those visits to inspect their workstations.  The only clean workstation was Sheila’s, but she didn’t handle any sensitive data.  She assumed that the CIO and the CFO’s laptops were probably infected, but she couldn’t confirm her theory without raising suspicions.

She also managed to test a few rank and file worker desktops and they were all clean.  The infection appeared to be targeted to the people who would have the most critical and sensitive business data.

She had tried to gain access to John’s laptop. At most, she only needed a minute or two but, she never was able to get the time because except for when he went to the restroom, he kept the bleeping thing with him at all times.  That fact alone told her the dude was guilty and hiding something.

She needed a third party to catch John in the act and Jim Nibanon, their resident network and systems security officer, fit the bill perfectly. Jim had only been working for Rogers Tech for a year and his last performance review was excellent.  His workstation was one she had tested for infection and it came up clean, but she learned a lot about him by simply viewing his bookmarks and browser history. He subscribed to all of the top geek and hacking related sites and, in addition to computer security geek stuff, he liked comic books and MMORPG gaming. Due to that, she felt he was the best shot she had at taking John down without looking like she had anything to do with it.

Plan of action in place, Sadie pressed the away button on her phone system, notifying Mr. Rogers of her status.  He would probably assume she was simply on a bathroom break. Which was something she needed to remind herself to take on a regular basis since not using the bathroom, at all, would probably make people a little suspicious of her.

As she rode the elevator down to the seventh floor, she maintained a remote connection to her laptop and continued doling out words on the extra-long email to keep John interested.  Fortunately, Jim’s cubicle was on the way and on the other side of the building from where John sat; hopefully increasing the odds he wouldn’t realize what was going on until she was standing next to him in his cubicle with the expert at her side.

“Hey, umm, Jim?” Sadie politely knocked on his cube wall as if it was a door.

“Miss Williamson!” Jim abruptly stopped working, rolled back in his chair and turned to face her. “How can I help you?”

Sadie felt a little surprised and flattered that he knew her name, but then again, a few months ago, her old male self would have most certainly known the name of the new, hot female in the office.  She glanced over at his screen. He had a network monitor running on one screen and a multiple server performance monitors displaying on the other with a terminal window open and overlaying a few other network performance monitors.  Time to play her expected role. “Oh, pretty, umm, sorry to interrupt you, but I’ve been having some problems with my laptop and I was hoping you wouldn’t mind translating all that computer stuff for me when I ask John, over in desktop support, for his help. ”

Jim grimaced. “Yeah, those desktop support folks can be a little difficult, but not a problem, I’d be happy to help.” He said, chuckling as he rapidly secured his workstation with a quick key combination and stood.

“Are you sure?” Sadie felt a little guilty for playing the damsel in distress.

“Of course, not a problem.” He magnanimously motioned for her to precede him. “Lead the way ma’ lady.”

Sadie couldn’t help liking the guy. He already sounded like someone she would have liked to be friends with before her change. “I feel happy, I feel happy.” She faked a British accent as she quoted from Monty Python.

Jim chuckled and she only led a few paces before he caught up and joined her. “I’m the Black Knight. I’m invincible!” He returned.

She giggled and muttered out of the side of her mouth. “Yer a loon!”

Now Sadie really felt guilty about using Jim because she knew from personal experience the effect a beautiful woman can have on a man, especially a woman who could quote Monty Python. However, if playing the damsel in distress card with Jim worked and helped the company, then it was worth it. She found the concept a little humorous since if she was still a man, she would have never asked nor expected another dude to help her with a computer problem and even if she had, there would have been no way that she, or the other guy would’ve been as cheerful and borderline flirty with each other. Nope, definitely zero flirting, not even if they were best friends.

She purposely took a route that would bring them to John’s cubicle from behind and hopefully, increase the odds of Jim spotting the evidence on his screen before he could try to hide it.

“Shhhh...let’s surprise him!” Sadie pulled Jim closer to her and excitedly whispered as they made their approach.  He seemed a little dazed by her close proximity and if this worked, she was going to have to do something nice for him, like take him to lunch or buy him a box of chocolates.  Computer folks loved chocolate, right?

John was deeply engaged with trying to further hack her laptop and over his shoulder; she caught sight of her desktop in the remote desktop tool John was using. It certainly didn’t look like the standard tool used by the company. “Oh, hey, that looks like the email I was writing…”

~o~O~o~

The next few days were interesting, to say the least.  Caught, red-handed, John first tried to bluff his way out of it by claiming the tool he was using to remote into her laptop was a new, beta copy of their remote desktop tool.  When that didn’t work, he tried to claim he was late for a meeting and make a run for it.  He snatched up his laptop and headed for the elevators.  Jim was concerned, but he didn’t think John was a spy.  He thought John was just an IT guy playing around with hacking tools.

In an attempt to ask John some additional questions, he walked with him into the elevator, but his initial assumption was proved wrong when John sucker punched him and pushed him out of the elevator before the doors closed. Sadie had already called security and they managed to tackle him before he made it out of the front doors.

Mr. Rogers was pissed with a capital ‘P’ when he learned about the spy working in his company.  Yes, her plan worked, but a little too well.  The CIO was trying to do a little CYA of his own and Jim’s job was on the line because he should’ve known sooner.  Sadie needed to figure out a way to save Jim, but coming up with a plan to override the CIO was going to be a little tricky.

The FBI and CIA became involved in the investigation and John, their friendly little hacker, went directly to jail. Somehow, the twerp managed to call in a very expensive team of lawyers. They managed to con the judge into thinking their client was just as much a victim as Rogers Technology International and get his bail set ridiculously low.  Mission complete, he promptly posted bail and disappeared.

Jim and the FBI, rightly assumed that John had been stealing company secrets from Rogers Tech for a long time, but they couldn’t prove anything because his laptop was heavily encrypted and not with the company’s encryption tools. The FBI offered to send it to their Computer Forensics lab for analysis and before the FBI took it, Jim managed to make an image of the laptop’s hard-drive.

Sadie managed to talk Jim into giving her a copy of the encrypted image under the pretext of having a computer science friend from college who worked for a three letter agency known for having good computers.  She hoped her ‘friend’ could crack it before the FBI.  Jim knew he wasn’t supposed to give her a copy of the evidence, but he also knew his job was on the line and he was a little desperate to keep it.  Why he trusted her, she didn’t know, but if it she could crack the encryption; she might be able to save his job.

The encrypted disk image resided in a little, protected section of her memory and now that she and Michelle were relaxing in their bed, she decided to try cracking it.  Breaking into a system at the hardware level was a trivial operation for her, but taking gigs of encrypted raw data and breaking the encryption looked like it was going to be a challenge.  The FBI told Mr. Rogers that they ‘might’, stressing ‘might’, be able to crack it in a month or two.  If, John had used a weak password and she didn’t think he used a weak password.

Minus some general housekeeping utilities, Sadie put all of her resources into breaking the encryption. The relatively simple dictionary attack failed, but she expected it would.  She switched to a brute force method, but after ten minutes and trillions upon trillions of calculations later, she stopped and decided to attack it from a different angle. Since she could see all of the encrypted data on a mathematical level versus an obscure black box like a human would, she decided to unravel it and attack it from all sides.

“Love, are you sick?” Michelle asked, concerned as she snuggled up against Sadie’s body in bed.

Even though Sadie didn’t need to sleep, she still loved snuggling and linking with Michelle when they went to bed at night.  Michelle looked so sexy and at three months pregnant her stomach betrayed only a slight bulge, but she could still wear a bikini and no one would guess.  Not that Sadie cared what other people thought because she actually looked forward to their pregnancy progressing along its natural course.

While it was impossible for her to have children herself, thanks to their link, she could share in the experience. Michelle found it almost comical how much Sadie enjoyed experiencing her morning sickness with her, but she understood that it made her feel closer to their child and more like a real human.

Sadie turned and looked over at her concerned fiancé’s face. “No, why?”

Michelle propped herself up and felt Sadie’s forehead like she was a sick child. “We haven’t linked yet, you’re burning up and you’ve been acting a little distracted ever since we came to bed.”

“Oh, I’m attempting to crack the encryption on that hacker’s hard drive and it’s taking some-” Sadie’s eyes widened with surprise and she bolted upright in bed. “Bingo!”

“You got it?” Michelle sat up.

“Yep!” Sadie whistled with surprise as she performed a quick, initial audit of the data. “Fucking A’ . That asshole has a lot of data on his hard drive and now I need to see if I can figure out who the bastard was working for.”

Michelle frowned and patted her stomach. “Tsk, language, we have a set of young ears growing here.” She giggled at Sadie’s contrite expression. “Hehe, link up with me and we can go over it together because the sooner we do that, the sooner we can do ‘other’ things.”

Michelle gently pushed Sadie back down onto the bed with a kiss. Leaning over her body, she brought her legs over and straddled Sadie’s body. She broke the kiss when she sat up and reached behind her neck to loosen her link tendril. She smiled with satisfaction when she rested her head between Sadie’s breasts as they linked up.

“I say we do those ‘other’ things first…” Sadie whispered in Michelle’s ear as the pair’s link dissolved the barriers between their minds.

~o~O~o~

It took Jim and the IT department almost two weeks to completely disinfect all of the company’s computers.  Jim worked many sixteen-hour days and it broke Sadie’s core to know that he was probably going to be fired today. In her hands, she held Mr. Rogers coffee mug and three manila folders. One of those folders contained a printed email from Jack Cranstedt, the CIO, requesting Jim’s termination along with all of the paperwork needed to immediately terminate his employment with Rogers Technology.

Michelle warned her it would probably happen and with her HR knowledge, the pair had come up with a plan to save Jim’s job.  After all, it was all her fault his butt was on the chopping block.

“Sir, I have your coffee and an email from Mr. Cranstedt.” Mr. Rogers smiled with appreciation as she set his cup down on his desk, but she held onto the manila folder containing the CIO’s email. He leaned back in his chair and look up at her with consternation. “You don’t agree?”

Sadie nodded slowly. “No, sir, but now that our little spy has flown the coop, someone has to be held accountable.”

“Okay, so let me read Jack’s recommendation and I’ll see what I can do about easing the pain for Mr. Nibanon.” Mr. Rogers leaned forward as Sadie placed in front of him a thicker folder than he expected.

He opened it, glanced at the first page and looked up at her with confusion.

Sadie momentarily smirked with satisfaction at his reaction. “I don’t think the FBI’s Lab will break the encryption, but last week, I took the liberty of giving a hacker friend of mine from the University a copy of the encrypted hard drive from Mr. Hargrove’s laptop. He applied a few tricks of his and had a lucky break yesterday morning. I spent last night doing some analysis of the data.”  Mr. Rogers gaped with surprise at her pronouncement until Sadie pointed back to the folder.  “The first page is the Executive summary. The rest is the supporting documentation. I think you will find the information both alarming and enlightening.”

“I see…” Mr. Rogers glared at Sadie for a moment, expecting her to wither under his stern gaze.  “Hmm, I know that Nancy thinks you’re the best, but what makes you think I won’t fire you for going behind my back?”

Sadie calmly placed a second folder on his desk. “Nothing and if you don’t agree with the results, sign the document inside this folder.”  She placed a third folder on his desk. “And, here is Mr. Cranstedt’s email, along with the termination forms for Mr. Nimano.”  She took a step back. “Is there anything else you need right now sir?”

Instead of replying, he started to read her report and after a minute, he became so engrossed with his reading, he forgot about her. She silently let herself out of his office and resisted the urge to call Michelle and Nancy to ask for advice.  She liked her job and would hate to need to find another so soon.  

Sadie was planning on flying Natalie out to Hawaii for a conjugal visit with Hector/Jenna. Not having a job would make the planning even easier. Hmm, maybe Michelle could get some time off?  A little natural vitamin D and swimming in the ocean was good for the babies, right?

She sighed with frustration and distracted herself by going over Mr. Rogers’ emails and schedule. She printed a few of them and confirmed a few of his meeting appointments with external clients. If he didn’t fire her, Mr. Rogers would expect her to be with him for the early dinner meeting with the CEO and CFO of Smith Electronics.

Mr. Rogers was trying to land a fat government contract and Smith Electronics produced a key part.  If they could secure the part at a lower price than his competitors, the company would have a better chance of winning the contract.  

The first few client meetings with Mr. Rogers were a little strange for her because she wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of sometimes subtle and sometimes downright blatant sexual innuendo.  She was sure that Michelle wouldn’t have batted an eye at it, but it annoyed her to no end until she realized how much her presence turned the men’s brains to mush and helped Mr. Rogers with his negotiations.

He surprised her by summoning her back into his office by exiting his office instead of using the intercom system. “Sadie, would you please join me?”

He didn’t address her as “Miss Williamson” and he said “please”. It was a good sign. “Yes, sir.” Sadie grabbed a fourth folder from her desk and meekly followed him back into his office.

Mr. Rogers returned to his seat. “Over the last few years, our little hacker cost my company 1.5 billion?”

“On the medium end of the scale, yes sir.  Minimum damage is 500 million with the max estimated to be 3.7 billion in lost contract revenue plus cost overruns.”  Sadie calmly recited the results of her research into the contracts Rogers Technologies lost to competitors or paid excessive amounts defending cost overruns to the Government Accounting Office when they bid too low.

“I see, and you would resign if we fired Mr. Nimona?” He pointed to the folder containing her resignation letter.

“Yes, sir. It’s kind of my fault he found the hack. If I hadn’t asked him to help me talk to Mr. Hargrove, he wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“Hmmm, possibly, but I couldn’t help noticing your analysis missed our most recent contract. Both of the suspect companies were involved and they bid much higher than I expected. Why is that?”  He asked, his eyes pierced directly to her core.

He knew, or at least, suspected. Sadie feigned confusion by shrugging her shoulders. “I’m not sure, but since my laptop was acting up, I’m guessing the last few, critical emails I sent for you never reached him.”

“I see…” Mr. Rogers leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, lightly tapping his nose as he appeared to mull over her statement. “And, the email that brought him down was two weeks old.  You surprised him with information that was already out of date and no longer important.”

Sadie managed to keep her fear from showing up on her face.  “Crap, this is it. I’m fired.” She thought as Mr. Rogers appeared to make his decision as he abruptly leaned forward

“Very well, what do you recommend I do with Mr. Nimano?” He asked, surprising her.

“What!?” Sadie gasped, her calm exterior momentarily pierced before she regained control. “I mean, umm, sorry sir, but…” She stumbled to a halt.

“You’re wondering why I’m not firing you right now?” He asked, bemused by her uncharacteristic display of emotion.

“Well, yes?” Sadie asked, confused by the turn of events.

Mr. Rogers pointed to the folder containing her analysis of the hacker’s data. “It’s simple, while it appears you have some hidden talents and possibly shady contacts, you’re the best assistant I’ve ever had. Probably even better than my wife; don’t tell her I told you that.” He smirked at her as she gasped with surprise.  “I also like to consider myself a good judge of character and thus far, you’ve done nothing but impress me, and Nancy.  And, trust me, she’s not easy to impress.  So, what do you recommend I do with Mr. Nimano?”

“Well, he knows his stuff and according to my friend,” Sadie stuck to her story because as accepting as Mr. Rogers might be right now, there was no way he would accept the fact that she had the ability to crack the encryption on the hard drive faster than the FBI. “Our network is very secure. Mr. Nimano has been very proactive with keeping up on the security patches and he’s even plugged the lesser known exploits. It’s not his fault and there was little chance he could have detected the virus since it was limited to machines he wouldn’t have access to.”

Mr. Rogers nodded with acceptance and motioned for her to continue. “Okay, and...”

Sadie sighed with resignation. Might as well go all the way. “As a result, I think he deserves a raise and a small bonus…”

“A raise and a bonus? How much of a raise and bonus?” Mr. Rogers smiled.

“5-10%, his pay rate is a little below market and 10-20k for the bonus.”

Mr. Rogers looked up, briefly surprised. “That much?  Hmm, okay, 7% and 15k, how’s that sound?”

“Excellent, sir!” Sadie opened her folder and extracted two sheets of paper.

“Just get HR to fill out the proper forms and I’ll sign-” He stopped when she set the raise and bonus approval forms already filled out in front of him. “How?” He shook his head. “Forget it, I’m not even going to ask.” He quickly signed his name.

Mr. Rogers returned the forms to her. “When’s my next appointment?”

“5:30 sir, we need to leave no later than 4:35 to make it in time due to traffic.” Sadie briskly replied as she returned the signed forms to her folder.

“Take these,” He pointed to the folders containing her resignation letter and the email requesting Jim’s termination. “And shred them please.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else?”

“Not at the moment.” Mr. Rogers glanced back down to the folder containing the data from the hard drive. “Thanks, and tell your friend thanks, too.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll let him know and not a problem.”  Sadie waited until she had left his office and closed his door before she let her emotions show.  She momentarily leaned against the door to his office and breathed a huge sigh of relief before making her way down to the HR department to drop off Jim’s raise and bonus forms.

~o~O~o~

The next couple of weeks seemed to pass by pretty fast for Sadie.  The babies had a growth spurt, causing Michelle to break out the maternity clothing because of the baby bump. Compounding the issue, the loose fitting and ‘frumpy’, as she termed it, clothing made her feel fat.  Sadie thought Michelle looked even more beautiful and she didn’t hesitate to tell her every chance she got. After Sadie retrieved Michelle a fresh jar of pickles from the store and endured a slightly mollified complaint, she leaned over and kissed her. “Babe, you know I would carry them for you in a heartbeat if I could.”

Michelle took a bite from her pickle and sighed. “I know.” She reached down and laid her hand possessively on her stomach. “It’s just because the weight has started to mess with my balance a little. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it before, you know.” She shrugged her shoulders and grinned mischievously. “I bet I’m going to be a real bitch to live with when I start to feel like a whale over the next few more months and it’s bothering me more than I expected it to.”

“Well, I’m flying Natalie to the Hawaii tomorrow. I could come back and get you. We could both use a few days of vacation.”

Michelle looked tempted, but she sighed and shook her head. “No, I would need to give the office a bigger notice and your schedule is pretty full too. Aren’t you going to Japan and Taiwan with your boss in two weeks?”

Sadie grimaced. “Yeah, and I’m not looking forward to it either.  Japan can be pretty rude when it comes to how they treat women, but I guess it could be worse; we could be going to the Middle East.”

“Well, on the plus side, think of all the cool Japanese only video games and electronics you’ll be able to pick up and you should be able to find some killer deals on clothes in Taiwan, right?” Michelle giggled as she watched Sadie’s eyes gleam with anticipation for the geek toys before she groaned with defeat when she realized she would probably need to bring her biggest suitcase. Sadie knew Michelle would want and expect her to buy a few things for her.

The next morning, Sadie met Natalie at a small, private airport where she rented a small single plane hangar. Since her wings could fold, her hangar was actually the size of a one car garage instead of what someone might expect. As a result, the fee wasn’t incredibly expensive and it was paid in advance for three years using her share of the theft ring’s money. She had rented it on a whim because of her newly discovered love of flying and she didn’t expect to get as much use out of the hangar as she had, but it sure came in handy as a place to transform into her flight mode without prying eyes.  

Prior to landing her job, she and Michelle took a few extended weekend trips to other parts of the country.  They managed to find a few strategically placed airports with handy private hangars they could rent for a few days at a time for the purpose of giving Sadie a place to transform into Pretender mode if there was a car rental available or motorcycle mode if not.  They visited Yellowstone one weekend, flew over the Grand Canyon and went skiing in Aspen the next weekend.

“Are ya ready to see your girlfriend and hubby to be?” Sadie asked as Natalie fastened her seatbelts in preparation for takeoff.

“Yep! And, thanks again for doing this for us.  I hope you realize that you don’t have to.” Michelle worked to control her breathing as Sadie’s takeoff acceleration pushed her into the seat.

Sadie waited to reply until they had leveled off at their cruising altitude of 44,000 feet and 625 MPH a few minutes later.  Her take off was a little aggressive, but well within the limits of what a jet of her class was theoretically capable of achieving.  Of course, not many single passenger jets had the range she had or a fully pressurized, space capable cabin, but no one else needed to know that last little detail, did they?  “Okay, ETA at Honolulu is four hours. I hope you went to the bathroom before the flight and it’s not a problem; I love to fly and you’re family, got it?”

“Thanks, Sadie. I know we don’t spend as much time together as we should, but you and Michelle have been great.  I feel very blessed to have you two in my life with JenEctor.” Natalie sniffled and giggled at her mashup of Jenna and Hector’s names.

“Yeah, well, I can honestly say I NEVER expected life to turn out the way it has. I mean, who would’ve thought someone could take Hector off the market?” Sadie chuckled as Natalie gasped with mock surprise.

“Hehe, yeah, and I never saw a man look so good wearing a mini-skirt and my own shoes!” Natalie and Sadie laughed a lot during the relatively short flight.  Fortunately, Natalie didn’t need to utilize Sadie’s waste processing capabilities like she had on her long flight home from Jenna’s island.  Neither of them liked using that feature, but it beat the alternatives when stuck at 40k feet and three hours from the nearest bathroom.

Lacking a private hangar, Sadie simply pulled into an empty parking spot and let Natalie out. Her plan was to hang around until the tower shift changed, and then fly home.  She distracted herself during the wait by watching a movie.

She felt a person’s hand lightly pat the skin of her right fuselage. “Holy shit Craig! Is this a BD-5?”

A young man wearing mechanic coveralls dared to touch her. Sadie debated shocking the shit out of the kid, but doing so would only cause problems.

The man’s older coworker glanced over and slowly nodded with a perplexed and thoughtful expression. “Hmm, I dunno son. She mostly looks like one, but it’s like she was crossed with an F-22, or something. Honeycomb composite skin and, hmmm, looks like vectored thrust. Yep, she’s a looker alright and bet she goes faster than the smell of stink, but ya shouldn’t be touching her with yer greasy mitts.”

The kid rapidly removed his hand, leaving a tiny grease stain on Sadie’s skin. “Ah crap! You’re right. Hand me some spray, I need to clean this spot.”  He sprayed a little cleaner on the spot and gently rubbed it with a soft towel. “I’m sorry baby; I didn’t mean to get ya dirty.” He paused and rubbed it dry. “There! All better.”

While feeling slightly annoyed with the guy, Sadie was forced to admit it felt kind of nice having him clean her, but now she had a spot on her back that itched.  Grrrr.

“Oh, damn, now she has a clean spot.” The kid turned back to his partner. “Hey, isn’t there an open spot in hangar C?  I could grab the tug, pull her in and clean her up.  It’s almost a crime making her stay out in the hot sun, isn’t it?”

“No, kid, no it’s not. I’m fine. Craig, tell him it’s not okay...” Sadie muttered to herself.

“Hmm,” Craig rubbed his chin in contemplation. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to put her in there, but let the tower know you moved her so they can notify the pilot because I bet she cost a pretty penny to build. Also, if you clean her, ya gotta do it on your own time. We got work to do, got it!?”

“Damn it!” Sadie debated powering up and taking off right then and there, but now she had witnesses who would know there wasn’t anyone piloting her.

The kid, or Matt according to his nametag, pulled her into a nice private hangar and parked her between two Gulfstream executive jets.  Sadie was impressed with the place. Unlike her private hangar, the floor was epoxy-coated and looked clean enough to eat off of. Unfortunately, there were also security cameras everywhere.

Matt chocked her front wheels and affectionately patted her nose cone with his hand, careful to not leave any grease stains.  Just in case, he wiped the spot down with a rag.  “There ya go girl. Now, you hang out in here while I finish my shift. If you’re still here when I’m done, I’ll stop by and give you a good detail job, okay?” He paused as if he could hear her reply.

“No Matt, it’s not okay. Just drag me back outside and I’ll be outta here.” Sadie tried to telepathically tell the guy.

Matt nodded as if he heard her. “Okay, well, I’ll be right back. I need to place another chock on your rear landing gear.” He chuckled. “Can’t have ya accidently rolling into another plane in here. The boss would skin me alive and you’re far too pretty to be getting all banged up.”

As nice as the guy was, Sadie still wanted to strangle to him. She had to get home, but doing so would definitely break her cover and freak the guy out in the process.  She dialed Michelle’s number. {“Hey, Michelle. It looks like I might be a few hours late getting home tonight.”}

{“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”} Michelle asked, alarmed.

{“Hehe, yeah, I’m fine, but a worker here at the airport took a shine to me. He decided to be a nice guy and pull me into a hangar, and now, he wants to give me a bath.”}

{“Oh, that’s kinda funny!”} Michelle giggled.

{“Yeah, not.  I’ll give you a call with my ETA as soon as I’m wheels up, okay?”}

{“Sure babe, not a problem and hey?”}

{“Yes?”}

{“Is he cute?”}

{“Grrrr…Love ya, bye!”}

Michelle laughed. {“I’ll take that as a yes and I love you too!”} She finished the call with exaggerated kissy noises.

Matt returned and crawled under her left wing and placed a chock around her wheels. “Whoa! Fucking awesome...” He gasped with surprise before gesturing for his coworker. “Hey, Craig! Come here and look at this. She’s got an Autobot symbol on her wings!”

Damn it! Now what?

~o~O~o~