He swept through the front doors and across the lobby like every other morning for the past six years. As he passed between the security scanners, the status lights snapped red and the bar refused to yield for his pelvis. “Ouch! Fuck!” the bar across his abdomen forced out of him.

“Please go see the lobby security desk,” the computer voice directed. The man scowled. He was starting to get a bad feeling. He retreated and diverted to the security desk.

The man – and it was a real man – looked at the screen in front of him, then at his face, then back at the screen and tapped a few keys on his keyboard, then looked up and smiled. “Good morning, Mr. Rossi. Please return to the gate. You may now pass. Mr. Patton will meet you at your floor.

Rossi frowned. The firm’s Director of Security flagging his ID and meeting him at the elevator was never a good sign. He acknowledged the security officer with a smile and reversed path to the gates. The status light buzzed green and the bar fell away. “Please proceed directly to elevator number 6,” the computer voice requested. The light above elevator 6 glowed green. As he stepped up to the doors, they opened. He entered, and the doors snicked shut. His private elevator ascended without any intervention from him to the 29th floor, where the doors opened, and Ralph Patton, Director of Security for Carruthers Ransom and Azziz, PLLC, confronted him.

“Please come with me, Mr. Rossi.” Patton turned on his heel and strode into the depths of the suite. A man at each elbow encouraged Rossi to follow. At least, Rossi thought they were men. One of them might have been a woman. Both of them could have been androids. Patton led them back to the left rear corner, the NW corner of the building, and entered a door with “Jack Marris | Litigation” etched into a metal plate on its surface.

“Please sit,” Patton commanded. Everybody kept saying please before their requests he could not refuse. He sat. Patton withdrew from the chair, but neither he nor the two elbow men left the room.

He had an unobstructed view of the Olympic Mountains between the towers on opposite sides of Union Street directly behind Jack Marris’s desk. Shortly after he made this observation, he heard the whisper of silk behind him. “Michael, I’m sorry I had to have you brought to me like this, but some firm protocols are unbreakable,” Jack Marris said as he swept across the carpet to his desk. Many people sitting in Rossi’s position would say the view had improved. “I had you brought to me rather than barred entry to the building and served with a trespass order by the security guard while you turned in your now-worthless ID card, because of my personal regard for you and appreciation for all you have done for the firm.” He showed Rossi the respect of not sweetening the explanation with a smile and outstretched hand.

“I’m being fired.”

“You knew that before you rode the elevator up here.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sitting here because I felt I owed you a personal explanation.” Marris straightened and tapped a finger on the file in front of him. “You’ve done great work here, won some huge cases, proven yourself to be a fine courtroom operative, but the Board of Directors has decided that you are not partnership material. Unfortunately, your position is one in which we cannot maintain an attorney whose long-term commitment to the firm might be compromised.”

Rossi said nothing. He was thinking about the last time he had been in this office, standing by the window next to Marris, asking why the firm had rejected a client he brought them for a “conflict of interests” that was easily waived. Marris had explained then that sometimes a potential client and an existing client could have interests that conflict in areas outside of the proposed representation, and in those circumstances the firm must demonstrate loyalty to a client by respecting its other relationships.

“Human Resources has been directed to draft a stellar recommendation for my signature. Benefits has mailed to your home a letter detailing your severance package. Your personal belongings will be delivered by messenger within 72 hours. Thank you for your service.” Marris completed the recitation and regarded Rossi with measuring eyes.

Rossi stood. “Thank you, Sir.” He walked away from the desk. The elbow men fell into ranks, but as Rossi made a direct route to the elevators, they allowed him to show himself out.

He showed himself out, and across the street, to the right, and four blocks up the Hill to Turntable Roasters. He breathed in a lungful of coffee aroma, savored it on the way out, and strode to the counter. “Medium cappuccino, skim, for here, please.”

“Mug?” the cashier asked.

“That’s what ‘for here’ means, yes,” Rossi retorted.

“Of course,” the young man acknowledged. Rossi waved his phone past the scanner and trusted the electronic payment system to reverse the correct bits on the appropriate square nanomicromillimeters of storage real estate. The barista had his mug of espresso and skim milk on the counter almost before the cashier finished saying “hi” to the person next in line.

Rossi set the mug in the center of a tiled circular table in the corner by the window and dropped his briefcase on the bench behind it. He didn’t sit; his agitation was too great. He stared out the window, arms akimbo. That means hands on his hips, but arms akimbo just sounds cooler. Two young women walked by the window, Asia, with socks longer than their hair and skirts shorter than their eyelashes. They were obviously traveling together although they spoke not nor did they glance at each other. They simply walked in their tennis shoes and black knee-socks, miniskirts and sweaters, with that strangely graceful carriage Asian women have. They were either 16, or 36, and completely mysterious to him. He shook his head and sat on the bench next to his briefcase.

Now the reason he came here. He unlocked his briefcase and withdrew the MacBook Air, placed it on the table, fished a slim headset out of his jacket pocket, and plugged it into the headphones jack. He tapped in his eight-digit password, clicked on the telephone icon on his desktop, and waited for his image to materialize in front of him. When it did, he tabbed the focus to the “ID#” field of the dialog and typed the ten digits from memory. He stabbed “return” and sipped his cappuccino while he waited for Shan’s mien to shove his own mug up to the corner of the screen.

It was not a long wait. “Mr. Rossi,” Shan Vetrano said, as if the call were the most important event of his day. “How are you?” His eyes were a little round for Chinese, and his nose a little small for Roman, but those were how your eye would want to categorize them. Michael Rossi knew that he was the 26-year-old son of a Chinese woman and Italian-American man, graduate of the University of Washington’s Computer Science department and owner of Data Security& Investigation Consultants, LLP, which was the name on the bank account to which Carruthers Ransom had wired $127,000 for Shan Vetrano’s assistance with the CryBioTech v BioCryoTech case. “You look distressed, Mr. Rossi,” Shan observed before Michael could answer his first question. Shan always was a few questions ahead of him, navigating digital mazes and constantly waiting for him like a golden retriever on a hike.

“Shan, they fired me today, locked me out of everything and wouldn’t let me near my office.”

“Dude.” Shan shook his head. “Crazy. I’m sorry, what can I do for you?”

“Between last night and now, could they have wiped my computer?”

Shan frowned, like he was querying a database, or running a long algorithm. “Possible, of course, if properly motivated. But, doubtful, because why would they think they had to?”

“No, I don’t think they would want to, so there would be a decision-making process.” Rossi put down the cappuccino and closed his eyes. They would only destroy data if they felt they had no alternative play, and lawyers always come up with an alternative play. It’s not so much they want to avoid destroying data as it is hating to admit they can’t come up with an alternative play. Right now, they would be developing their alternative play, not destroying data that could be worth a pile of money to them. “But I’m sure they have it locked up tight.”

“Is there something you need?”

On a transcript, it would read like an interrogation. “There is work of mine, ideas and notes, that belong to me, on that network, and also that I am holding for other people, clients who trust me personally more than they trust the firm. And …”

“Dude, say no more. I can get you in there. Anytime. Just call me.”

“Tonight.”

“Ok. I’ll get you in there and out, tonight.”

“Thanks, Shan.”

“No worries, Mr. Rossi,” Shan replied, and grinned. “I’ll even bill it to them under my security testing contract. I’ll call it a ‘data security spot test’ and charge them twenty grand.”

Michael laughed. The joke made him feel better than he had in three days. Shan Verano vanished from the screen and his own face filled the void. He shut the lid and looked out the window. He could only conclude he was under surveillance. Between his two meetings with Jack Marris, Michael had attended one other meeting, and Carruthers Ransom – he loved referring to the firm that way now, it made them sound like a kidnapping cartel – could only know about it if they were watching him when he walked into a tavern and ordered a shot of Scotch. They could only know that he had met with a young local attorney who agreed to take on the client Michael had been forced to turn away. The great Michael Rossi would help behind the scenes and completely off the record to sue the venture capital group that had stolen the man’s invention.

Now he was fired. He would have to reassess, but first, he had to recover his data and his belongings before they could be thoroughly searched.