Chapter 5

After they'd ordered and received their drinks, Lori sipped her white zinfandel slowly and watched Eric. He'd appealed to her right from the start and incredibly enough he seemed to grow on her even more the longer they talked. He wasn't classically handsome, not by a long shot, but he was attractive in an all-American, boy-next-door kind of way - assuming that the boy next door worked out, that is. A few freckles were sprinkled across his nose and there were little lines radiating from the corners of those brilliant green eyes. Apparently he smiled a lot. Right now, though, he seemed nervous. His long fingers played absently with a paper napkin, slowly shredding it. Such nice big hands, she noted again, with a tiny internal sigh. They were large and lean, with short, clean fingernails and calluses that told her he didn't spend all of his time staring at his computer screen. Down girl! Remember, this isn't a real date. Which might be a good thing. She'd had exactly two so-called real dates since she'd broken her engagement over a year ago and they'd both been even more uncomfortable than this. Reluctantly, she forced her brain to concentrate on business.

"So what did you want to ask me about?" she asked, wincing at her own lack of tact. His eyes shot upwards, away from the red-and-white checked tablecloth. His skin reddened, as if he was embarrassed by what he had to ask. Lori waited, drumming her fingers absently to the irritating drone of Nickleback. She must be getting old, she mused, because the current crop of music sensations annoyed the daylights out of her. "Why do you need a herpetologist? What's up with this giant lizard?"

Eric gulped a good third of his Sam Adams. Lori watched his Adam's apple bob with agitation and tried to smile reassuringly.

"This is going to sound completely insane..."

She nodded. Hopefully he'd eventually spit it out, so they could enjoy their dinner. "So you said. Look, it's okay. I promise not to call the men in the white coats, at least not till after we eat. Go ahead, Eric. Spill it."

"Have you heard about the WYRM virus on campus?" he asked.

Lori's forehead crinkled and she gnawed on her full lower lip while she paused to consider. A virus infecting worms? Or a worm-like virus attacking humans? Was it something one of the immunologists in her department was working on? It didn't sound at all familiar. Then, she remembered to whom she was speaking and grinned. "You mean a computer virus, don't you? Not some sort of disease spread by night crawlers? Frankly, I'd have a better chance of knowing about the latter."

He nodded, grinning back. "It's a computer virus. W-Y-R-M., not W-O-R-M. It's an old-fashioned word for dragon." He shrugged, as if to say that hey, he hadn't named the thing. Lori smiled and nodded, then he continued. "Anyway, this virus has been popping up on computers all over campus for maybe a couple of months, now. I'm surprised you haven't heard about it in the sciences. I'd have guessed that you rely pretty heavily on computers for your research analysis and writing."

"We do," she acknowledged. "I just haven't been paying much attention to anything other than lizards. I'm trying to finish up a paper in time to get it published before my tenure review in December."

Eric groaned sympathetically. "Ouch! I hear you. I just had mine last fall. I wasn't sure I was going to survive that last semester of kissing up, let alone the frantic dash for publications."

Lori smiled her thanks for the commiseration. "Anyway, what I do know is that the department computer tech came through last week and checked all the hardware for some virus," she told him. "But like I said, I didn't pay him a whole lot attention. My equipment was clean, so that's all I cared about."

"Understood," he said. His clear green gaze was sincere, but he was fidgeting with the remains of his napkin again. She resisted the impulse to still his hands with her own, surprised yet again by her unprecedented desire to touch him. She was usually jumpy around strange men. "So here's the deal. There's this virus making its way through the campus network. It pops up, seemingly randomly, locks up your computer for half an hour or so, then disappears, sometimes taking some of your files with it. That was bad enough. Then a couple of weeks ago, it started showing up in Financial Aid and Accounts Payable. There was no large chunk of money missing, but after a few days, one of the number crunchers in administration noticed something odd. He dug a little deeper and discovered that the occasional odd cents, more often just rounded off partial cents, were being channeled into some off-shore bank account. Individually the amounts were negligible, but all together they added up to several thousand dollars."

He had her interest now. She propped her elbows on the table and leaned her chin on her hands, waiting for him to continue.

"So anyhow, I'm the guy they tapped to try to track down the hacker. The University doesn't want to go public and contact the cops or the FBI because the interim university president wants to be named permanent president. If he can fix this without any negative publicity his chances for the appointment get a whole lot better."

She nodded, sticking her tongue out again. Typical university politics. Yuck.

"So we all figure it's some pissed-off student. We've got a few in our department who might be good enough. And whoever this is, he or she really is good. I've been working day and night on this for over a week and I only got my first lead yesterday." He paused and then added matter-of-factly. "And I'm pretty damn good myself. That's why they stuck me with the job."