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cross-reference code.”
    “Yeah
okay.  I’ll call London, er Brian, and we’ll be
at the site in a half hour.  You be there?”
    “Yes. 
See you.”
    Ivy
jumped out of bed and into the shower, planning a mad scramble to let the dogs
out, feed them, get dressed and drive to the office.   She would
phone in a quick order to a nearby Starbucks for coffee and breakfast
sandwiches to shore the team up.
    Three
hours later, Terry had explained his findings to the team, shown them the
documents and been driven home by Ivy’s assistant to get some sleep.  The
three agents carefully examined each transaction and were running searches to
try to find more.  Ivy now had her assistant electronically cutting and
pasting signatures into an indexed document, while she was in her office
handling her other work.  Steve rang her phone and asked her to join them
in the conference room.
    “Ms.
Ivy Vine,” he said.  She noticed that sometimes his voice had a slight
drawl and she wondered where he had grown up.
    She had
to laugh at the nickname.  It was one she used herself sometimes.
    “We
need one more thing.”
    “Only
one?”
    “We
need you to request a larger set of data over a longer date range.  Now,
for each of the three banks, we need . . .”
    Whether
from the long hours or the stress of the situation, Ivy had reached her
limits.  “No.”
    “Think
about it.  We have a trail here.  We need to scope how big these
operations are.”
    She
stood stiffly.  Ivy rarely became angry.  She could argue heatedly,
but real anger was something else.  When it hit, it was immediate,
white-hot and impossible to control.  The agent was pushing her too far.
    “I have
stuck my neck out sharing as much as I have.  No way can I go back to the
banks and ask for more data.  It would create all sorts of concerns. 
You must realize that.”
    “Then
I’ll go for another court order and we’ll come back.”
    “You do
that.”
    Ivy
glared at him, marched over and stood next to Steve where he sat at the head of
the meeting table.  “I may not be some high-powered FBI attorney, Agent
Nielsen, however I do not believe any judge can or will force a service
organization like this one to ask a client to supply more data.”
    It was
then that Steve broke into a big grin, turning his severe face into that of an
impudent boy.  “Got you!” he said, breaking out in laughter.
    Right
then Ivy was too tired and too fired up to be the butt of a joke.  She
turned on her heel and marched out of the room.  She stomped down the
hall, took the elevator to ground level and went out the front door, seeking
fresh air to get her temper to settle back down.  That big agent was
totally exasperating.  She marched down the street and around the block,
annoyed at herself for having lost her cool, irritated with Steve for
embarrassing her in front of the other agents and particularly aggravated that
he had gotten the better of her.  She kept moving for a few blocks,
stopped, breathed in and out about twenty times to bring herself back together,
turned and walked back.  Once on her floor, she saw the damned big agent
in the reception area to her offices.  Ivy gritted her teeth and lectured
herself to keep calm.  She was 62 and this man had her acting like a crazy
person.  He waited until she walked up, looked at her contritely and held
the door open to their office suite.
    “Bad
timing on my part,” he said quietly by way of apology.
    She
nodded stiffly, knowing she should laugh it off but she wasn’t quite back in
command of herself.  He walked closely behind her to her office, watched
her go to her desk, and then turned back to the meeting room.
    Two
hours later, the three agents filed in to Ivy’s office as she finished a
conference call.  She forced a smile, doing her best to appear like her
usual self.  Steve hovered near the doorway.
    Brian
said quietly.  “We left our working models on your server.  Please
have them archived