Victor Cominsko had the complete book on Justin Trask before he took the first step into the man's office. He knew the man's history with the company, his habits, his likes and dislikes. He knew the man had a talent for numbers, and a love of the good life, but not the balls to risk everything in the quest for greater riches. He knew where Justin had spent every penny of the money he'd been embezzling from the company the past four years. And the numbers of the off-shore accounts that held all the rest, though the amounts were much lower than he would've expected. He even knew about Justin's penchant for parking in the fourth spot in the fourth row of the parking lot, even if he had to arrive an hour early every morning to get it. But the one thing he didn't know, that he didn't realize until he stepped into the office and spied a picture on the man's desk, was how stunningly beautiful Justin's wife actually was. And right away, he knew that could change everything.

"Mind if I sit down?" he asked solicitously, taking the visitor's chair on the other side of the desk. As chief auditor for such a large company, Victor understood the fear that a meeting with him often evoked, even among those few, honest folk who never padded an expense account, much less embezzled large sums of money. He had become, in fact, quite adept at reading that fear, and quite frankly would savor it, feeding off the power of it in very much the way a vampire feeds on blood. However, it took no great skills to read this man's fear; it was very plain on his face. So plain, in fact, that Victor glanced around to make sure there were no weapons at hand. Sometimes desperate men did indeed take desperate measures, just like in the movies.

Reassured that he was, on the face of it, relatively safe, Victor took a longer look at the woman in the photo. She appeared to be quite beautiful, though he had to wonder how this mousy man had ended up with such a sexy wife. In the photo, she and Justin appeared on the beach, probably on a tropical vacation. He looked pasty and pathetic. She, on the other hand, had a latent sexuality about her. Her long dark hair framed a face with classic features, from the high cheekbones to an aquiline nose to full lips. She appeared to be about five-foot ten, with full breasts nicely filling out the yellow bikini top. About C- or even D-cups, he would guess. She was well rounded, with full hips and toned legs. In her pose he thought he could see something calculating about her, though not the sharpness of a woman who calculated correctly all the time.

"Nice picture," he remarked lightly, though watching carefully. This would be a good test of the man's make-up.

"Um, thanks," Trask replied, not even glancing at the picture.

That meant something, thought Victor. Only a very confident man would have that kind of picture on his desk. Unless the man was completely oblivious to the message he was sending. And most men would've moved the picture once it was noted by another guy. That he didn't said something else.

"Um, what can I do for you Mr. Cominsko?" Trask asked nervously.

In answer Victor leaned back and swung the door shut. "A little something has come up," he said easily. He enjoyed these little mini-plays, the dancing before the kill. He could just as easily have summoned the man to his office, have him ushered in by a secretary, awe him with the immensity of his position, and lower the hammer with a ferocity that had caused strong men to weep and plead. And he did that occasionally, just to keep the troops in line. But sometimes it was more fun to put his prey at ease, to calm their fears, and then to shock and shatter their world with the breadth of his power and knowledge.

"A-a-anything I can do to help," Trask replied. Victor got the feeling that if he just sat in silence for a while, Trask would eventually spew out all the details, confessing his crime with tearful eyes. And while that would be enjoyable, it wouldn't be as enjoyable as realizing the plan that was now forming in his subconscious. The pieces were even now falling into place.

"I'm going to get right to the point, Mr. Trask. I've noticed a few discrepancies in your work. Not so critical when you look at it in a day-to-day perspective, but pretty expansive with a wider perspective. In fact, pretty substantial when you look at the whole of it."

Victor knew he still hadn't uttered the dreaded "E" word for "embezzling", which inevitably led to the "F' word, which stood for "felony," and in some cases, :"federal prison." It'd be interesting to see which way this one headed. And he still hadn't decided whether the rewards would be worth the risks that his new plan would require.

"I, I'm not sure what you mean." Trask was stalling, looking as desperately trapped as a mouse in a glass jar. "I, I may have made a couple of mistakes. But nothing all that serious. And I've always promptly reported any miscalculations. Your views on accuracy are well known around here."

Victor wondered about the thoughts that must be speeding through the man's mind. Run. Flee. Escape. Those would be at the top of the list. Well, he decided, he would give the man a way out. But first he had to make the trap feel as airtight as possible.

"Mr. Trask. Do not mistake me for an IT weenie who just caught you surfing for porn. As you can see from this printout, you've been skimming money from the company's accounts for almost four years. That's a couple million dollars! And, just to show you that I've done my homework, here's proof that you've used that money on a number of high-end purchases. This isn't the kind of stuff one buys on your salary, is it? I'm guessing you're looking at about ten years."

Trask had figured out a pretty elegant scheme, Victor reflected. If not for a discrepancy in one of his own operations, he might never had caught onto this one. With the programming Trask had added into the system, he was skimming literally tenths of a cent from certain international transactions and depositing the money into dummy company accounts. Multiply that by millions of transactions a year, and soon, as they say, you had real money. Best of all, the money was still on the books. But nobody at the company had access to the accounts. It was another example of an age-old problem for any company making financial transactions No matter how smart you made the system, someone smarter would find a way to cheat it. And you always, always had to hire someone even smarter, like him, to find the cheats. Fortunately, there was no one smarter than him to find his own skimming schemes.

To his credit, Trask didn't sob or weep. He simply hung his head and pushed his chair away from the desk. "What now? Do you call the police? Or do I have time to call my wife first?"

It was time to shift the landscape again. "Actually, Mr. Trask, you and I are the only ones who know about this transgression. It would take me several painful hours to explain the details to even our most astute financial minds. And a scheme with as much genius as yours, it'd be a shame to waste that much effort right away. So I was wondering how you'd feel about keeping this between the two of us for awhile. To see if something can be worked out?"

There. He'd left a hole open wide enough for even the most obtuse accountant to find his way through. An apparent opportunity to avoid jail. But not, Victor smiled to himself, without a price. A heavy price..