“So, hey, man, do you think you could do me a favor? I need to find someone—get me dialed in.”
“Sure. Who is it this time, boss?”
I tell him the name of the person I want him to locate and everything I know, which isn’t much.
“Okay. Shouldn’t be hard. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thanks, man. As soon as possible, please.”
“Yeah, I figured. When have you ever asked me to find someone ‘whenever it’s convenient for you, Henn’?”
I chuckle. “Sorry.”
“No worries. Whatever you need. Always.”
“Thanks, bro. So what’s been shaking with you?” I ask. “Work good?”
“Yeah, finally finished working with the feds on our sitch. They’ve got enough to put the pimpstress extraordinaire into an orange jumpsuit forever, probably. Bye-bye, Oksana. Nice knowing you.”
“That’s a relief. Any sense there’s anyone else left in The Club organization we should be keeping an eye on?”
“There are definitely some heavy hitters in Russia and Ukraine who ran a big part of the show from there, but no one stateside with any real power—and certainly nobody who’d know about us.”
“Keep an eye on things, though, would you? Just so we know if there’s ever something we should be concerned about. Jonas is already starting to doubt his decision to leave Oksana standing—we should probably give him periodic assurances that everything’s still quiet.”
“No problem.”
“So what are you working on now that The Club stuff is all done?” I ask.
“Oh, I just did a really fun job.” He tells me about a large department store chain that recently hired Henn to try his mighty best to breach their own computer system for the purpose of testing their security. “It was awesome,” Henn says. “They truly believed they were impervious to hacking. They’d supposedly hired ‘the best cyber-security team money could buy’ to protect their data, but I dug around and broke ’em wide open in less than a day. I waltzed into my first meeting with their supposedly ‘expert cyber-security team—’” He snorts loudly with glee. “And I was like, ‘So, hey, folks, great to meetcha. Oh, by the way, I got into your piddly-diddly system four different ways from Sunday in about six hours—here, here, here, and here,’ and they totally shit their Depends.” He sighs happily. “God, I love my life.”
I chuckle. “And how’s everything else? Things with Hannah good?”
“Better than good.Awesome.She’s moving to L.A. next month.”
“Really? Wow. That’s fantastic.”
“Yeah, the long distance thing is killing us, man. And since Kat’s decided to put her PR company on the back burner for a while to become a mommy, Hannah’s decided to look for a PR job in the entertainment industry.”
“Awesome. Hey, you should ask Reed if he knows someone who might be able to help her with her job search. Reed knows everyone.”
“Yeah, I already talked to him. He’s on it.”
“Good.”
“So how are things with Kat? Have you two been nesting, getting ready for baby?”
I glance at Kat across the room. She’s dancing with Sarah again, wiggling like she’s got ants in her pants, throwing her tiny belly around with abandon. “I’m gonna ask Kat to marry me.” I pat my pocket. “Got the ring right here.”
“No shit?” Henn hugs me. “Awesome. When are you gonna do it?”
“As soon as you get me that info.”
“Ah. Interesting. What does one thing have to do with the other?”
I briefly explain how I’m planning to propose to Kat, using the information Henn’s gonna get for me.
“Very cool,” Henn says. “Okay. I’ll put a rush on it, boss.” He grins. “Wow. I never thought I’d see the day Josh ‘YOLO’ Faraday would get married and settle down.”
