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Parting Shot

Page 115

by Mary Calmes

I realized how lame I’d sounded.

“That’s bad?” he repeated, sounding growly.

“Is that supposed to be me?”

“That’s bad,” he repeated, laughing at the end.

“I’m dying,” I muttered. “Gimme a break.”

“You’re not dying,” he said seriously. “But yes, it is bad. I promise to start being a much more solid citizen now that I have controlling shares in my company, and even more importantly, have a hot boyfriend.”

“Really?”

“What?”

“You are acting so strange.”

He shrugged and then started typing seconds later. The weird B-movie villain laugh came shortly after that. “Oh, Keystone, my old friend.”

“What’s Keystone?”

“It’s a surveillance program we used to run at Sutter before we upgraded to Você, which monitors all our in-house cameras as well as all the devices at our headquarters downtown.”

“You mean, your program is basically on everyone’s computer at your company.”

“Yes,” he answered, not looking at me. “Except mine, Levin’s, Miguel’s, and Margo’s.”

“And do your employees know it’s on there?”

“They do, yes. They’re informed up front, and they have to sign a waiver that states they were informed and consent to using a device with said proprietary software loaded on it.”

“Because it’s a work phone.”

“Precisely.”

I groaned. “But they still mess up and use it for personal use, don’t they?”

“You would be surprised at how many do, yes.”

“Because they don’t see it running, or don’t see an icon, they forget it’s there.”

“Correct.”

“And if they’re doing private stuff on your time, on say, your computer or your phone, then you have every right to know what that is.”

“That’s right.”

“I think that’s a gray area.”

“Not so far,” he assured me. “Employees of Sutter can have no expectation of privacy while they’re on the clock.”

“I think––”

“Also,” he began, still typing, looking for Evan Polley in the database. “Interestingly enough, there is no audio on this surveillance.”

“Not that it really matters anymore, but that’s good.”

He typed furiously.