Betrayal - A Bucky Barnes Fanfic

Chapter 36

"April, I need you to tell me everything you know about the NYPD security breach right now!" A slim, middle-aged black-haired woman came storming into the break room and sat down at the small table with Ava and April. April had just told Ava how her wedding planning was going, but the black-haired woman seemed determined to have her question answered right then and there.

Although Ranner had announced Ava needed to get rid of her overtime, she was already putting in new overtime since returning from Portland. Saying goodbye to her mom two weeks ago had been painful, but she had promised her to come back to Portland no later than Thanksgiving. Ava's evil premonition that James would break her heart quite horribly didn't seem to have come true, which meant that Ava doubted her sixth sense, the gut feeling that had usually supported her in every situation in life without any problems and her instinct that she had usually always been able to rely on blindly. Instead, the last two weeks with James had been almost magical. They saw each other almost daily, he was usually waiting outside her flat when she came home from work. When he wasn't taking her out to dinner or a movie, they spent a relaxing evening in her flat. Most nights he even slept over, which made Ava think about putting an extra toothbrush in her bathroom just for him. Actually, Ava had wanted to ask April if it was too soon to buy a toothbrush for him and if she would scare him off, but her break was almost over and the black-haired woman was just opening her sandwich box she had brought with her, as if she had no intention of clearing the place in the next ten minutes.

"Hi, Sandy. I think I'm the wrong person to ask about that. I was just passing on the police press release," April replied with her usual friendly manner.

"Come on, April," Sandy pressed on, "you must know more! I mean, a data leak? Seriously? That can't be all there is to it!"

"If you want to do a story on it, you can surely talk to Ranner about it. Maybe he'd be interested in doing a background story on the New York Police Department data leak?", April tried to end the subject with her perfect smile.

"What data leak?" asked Ava. Her interest was piqued now after all. She couldn't help thinking about Wanda, who, she only now realised, she hadn't thought about since Portland. Her relationship with James couldn't have been better, but her research seemed to suffer.

"There must have been a data leak at the NYPD, causing them to expand their IT department. Supposedly they're going to bring out the big guys now to protect their servers," Sandy blurted out, "To me, that means there's a lot more to it than a simple data leak. Maybe someone hacked into their systems and stole sensitive data? Maybe there will be the next WikiLeaks scandal soon?"

Ava stood up and went back to her desk without saying goodbye to April. Her thoughts were circling around Wanda and her hacking attack on the NYPD's servers. Wanda had wanted to show her something important, but someone had deleted the data before she could. Could the NYPD mean this data leak incident? Today James would have to spend the evening without her, Ava could no longer neglect her research. She needed to talk to Wanda not only about the data leak but also about her brother Pietro who had been active in the arms export scene.

"Hey Ava, how about Jim's tonight? April and some friends of mine are coming too," Peter beamed at Ava, distracting her from the chaos in her head.

"That sounds tempting, but I'm afraid I have to cancel again. My research is waiting," Ava replied, really regretting having to cancel this time. Peter had already asked her a couple of times if she wanted to come for drinks after work, but she had cancelled every single time for the last two weeks to spend time with James or to relax in her flat with a book.

Peter gave her a fleeting smile and disappeared again. Ava almost felt as if Peter wasn't going to ask her to come to Jim's again any time soon, she had cancelled too many times already. And she couldn't even blame Peter.