Chapter 13: Whose Rule

I read the notice twice, and the second time my hands stopped shaking.

"That's my app," I said. "Saturday at 5:02. They moved it."

"They changed one row on a server they own," Doc said.

"Take a picture of the pages before anything else happens."

Doc opened his desk drawer and took out the envelope, and I laid both sheets under the lamp.

I photographed the tap row, the email log and the printed line at the top that said the file had been exported Wednesday at 9:03 p.m.

I sent the photos to myself, to Doc and to the Oslo program chair.

Mikkel's phone buzzed on the bookshelf.

He read it and did not move his face.

"My cloud account was closed four minutes ago," he said. "The copy there is gone."

"And the laptop?"

"My access to the department network is suspended, pending a review of my handling of confidential data."

"They'll say you forged the file," Doc said.

"Yes."

"A visiting researcher who kissed the student on a sidewalk, and the whole campus has watched it forty thousand times."

Mikkel nodded once, as though Doc had read him a weather report.

Doc locked the envelope in his safe and turned the dial.

"This stays here," he said. "Go home, Natalie. Both of you, go different ways."

I went out and down the stairs, and Mikkel came after me.

He caught up with me on the steps outside, where the first snow of the week was coming down on the lot.

"Natalie, wait."

"No."

"One minute. I will say it badly, but I will say it."

I turned around on the bottom step so that for once I was looking down at him.

"My rule was one sentence long," I said. "Tell me what it costs, and I decide."

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