How To Catch A Falling Star

They also tried to lure him into the shadowy depths of the nation's cyber security force, but he was not interested. A job, any job, was beneath him.

He could have easily paid full tuition with the money he got, but where would be the fun in that? The fun lay in scamming the already beleaguered Bank of Cyprus into making a significant donation into his account. The poor Cypriots were still looking for their money while Vikram enrolled in NYU.

He went only to those classes that he gave a damn about. And he only gave a damn about classes where he could sit behind Laura Duquesne and gaze at her lovely blonde hair and tight ass.

Vikram yawned again and stretched his limbs. His awakening ritual was interrupted by a phone call. Grumbling under his breath, he picked up.

"You had better have a fucking good reason for calling me on a Sunday!"

"I do," said Heather Franklin on the other end. "I need you to use your mad skills again."

Vikram groaned loudly. His skills had brought him up on the radar of several organizations who needed access to classified information. He couldn't care less about the money, it just seemed like a fun pastime.

"Go on," he said, stepping into his flip flops.

"Look into a man named Herbert Townsend. He's the CEO of Chevron," Heather went on. "Go over this guy's life with a fine toothed comb. Online history, credit cards, sites he visits, everything. If he has a fetish for lubed carrots, I want to know by the end of today. It would be especially helpful if you could find something work related."

Vikram shook the sleep off. His right hand went into his tousled hair and twirled the unkept mass of strands. Mentally, he evaluated the situation.

"Are you asking me to hack into the servers of one of the world's largest oil companies to look for dirt on their CEO? Those servers have military grade security, a firewall bigger than the Great Wall of China and are constantly monitored by some of the best cyber security professionals in real time."

"Are you saying you can't do it?" Heather asked flatly.

"All I'm saying is," came the reply, "at least give me a challenge, Heather. This stuff is too easy and it gets boring after a while."

"I'll expect your email by four. Your usual fee will be in your account tomorrow."

The line went dead before Vikram could ask her out on a date. He cursed himself and mentally promised to do it the next time she called. The best lawyers covertly employed all sorts of fringe citizens – hackers, former gang members, forgers, ace PI's and more to get what they needed.

"It's all about leverage," Heather had said once. "Get that and you have your opponent by the balls."

Vikram turned on his laptop and began typing in his practised mode.

"I am just a facilitator. I am a rich man's Google. What they do with the information is none of my concern."

Far away, Heather Franklin prayed that he could find something she could use to save Norah.

The settlement room literally stank of greed and unfettered gluttony. Actually it smelt of Clive Christian cologne, but one usually begets the other.

"Let me do all the talking," said Heather quickly, seeing three men walking towards the conference room. "I've looked up who their attorneys are and I know what to say."

Norah and Heather were sitting beside a stack of papers when the men from Chevron arrived. Expecting a swift win, the CEO himself had made an appearance, flanked by two sharply dressed attorneys. Norah had been an annoyingly persistent thorn in his side, one he wished to extract at the earliest.

"Have you agreed to our offer, Ms Vaughan?" asked one of the lawyers. "A one time payment of two hundred thousand dollars for all the slander and negative publicity and we can part ways."

Norah laughed. "Even if I had that much money, I'd rather burn it than see it go to you."

Heather coughed and looked at her, reminding her to be quiet. The opposing lawyers took the opportunity to size up their new adversary.

"Who's the new face?" snickered the other lawyer, gesturing towards Heather.

"I'm her new lawyer, Heather Franklin," came the short reply.

"In that case," began the CEO, Herbert Townsend, "you will be happy to know that we have a revised offer in mind which would be easier on your client's pocket. We will settle for fifty thousand dollars and a public apology on the front page of the Wall Street Journal."

Heather eyed all three men on the other side of the table. As much as she loathed the fact, she was one of them. Right after this case, she would go back to being a dirty suit.

But not today.

"I have a counter-offer, Mr Townsend," she began in a chillingly calm voice. "I believe you will be interested in it."

"Let me hear it."

Heather took a deep breath and began. "You will drop this case right now, reimburse my client all her legal expenses plus interest and then you will write her a cheque with many zeroes in it to compensate for the relentless harassment, intimidation and hounding you subjected her to over the past five years. How does that sound?"

There was silence in the room while the opposing attorneys looked at each other. Townsend leaned forward and asked humorously.

"With all due respect, Ms Franklin, are you high?"

"Not quite."

"Then what could possibly possess you to think that we would be doing any of those things?" he asked incredulously.

"I was hoping you would do it out of the goodness of your heart," said Heather snidely.

"I don't have that much goodness," Herbert laughed. "As I see it, we hold all the aces here. You have nothing. Let me repeat the offer – fifty thousand dollars and a full page apology. This offer expires in the next minute."

"I do have one ace up my own sleeve, Mr Townsend," said Heather. "Polymeric alkyl-substituted phenols."

Those three complex words had the cumulative effect of discolouring Herbert Townsend's face. Suddenly, all the blood rushed out of it. He held his handkerchief to his mouth and coughed. He turned to his lawyers.

"I need to talk with Ms Franklin in private."

They looked at each other, bewildered by the sudden change in their boss's demeanour. He dabbed his handkerchief on his suddenly sweaty brow while his lawyers left. His shaky eyes turned to Heather.

"How much do you know?" he croaked out.

"I know that polymeric alkyl-substituted phenols are very promising additives to conventional fuel which could increase efficiency, decrease wastage and more. So promising in fact, that your company allocated over 20 million dollars to researching those compounds over the last two years. The research is being carried out in a facility just south of Modesto, California. Am I right so far?"

Townsend nodded, still shell-shocked at what he was hearing.

"Here is a list of wire transfers for the funding of that research and here are all the memos regarding those additives," Heather said, handing over some of the papers beside her. "Your board of directors were so taken by the new compounds that they selected you to personally oversee the project. You handled everything."

Norah broke into a smile too. She had dreamt of this moment for too long and just two days ago, it had been no more than an idle fantasy. She made a mental note to tattoo "I heart Serendipity" on her arm at the earliest opportunity. Heather went on after a small pause.

"The only problem, Mr Townsend, is that the research facility does not exist. The research does not exist. You took that money and cleverly transferred it to several bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. It was almost impossible to piece it all together, but here are the transfers to your accounts."

Heather handed over some more documents and Townsend stared at them, wide-eyed.

"You embezzled 20 million from your own company, all the while feeding them bogus progress reports so they would keep investing. Eventually, I guess you would just say that the project turned out to be a failure and the money was sunk. It would be written off as a loss."

"How did you get this information?"

"It hardly matters," said Heather dryly.

"It will never hold up in court," he declared. "The means for obtaining it are illegal and I will sue for..."

"Who said anything about court?" interrupted Heather. "All I plan to do is send this to your Chairman, every member on your Board of Directors as well as all your major shareholders. What they do with it is none of my business."

Townsend slumped back in his chair, reeling from the unexpected punches flying his way. His heart rate was through the roof and his brain hurt from the developments over the past few minutes. Finally, he stopped shaking enough to ask softly:

"What do you want?"

"Everything I asked for earlier. I leave the exact amount of the settlement to your wisdom, but be careful. If I don't think the figure is large enough, I will send these documents anyway. Also, nobody from Chevron ever contacts my client again. Are we clear?"

He nodded. Heather leaned back. "Call your flunkies in. You have some paperwork to draw up."

Townsend motioned for his lawyers to come in through the glass door. Curtly, he told them the new terms of the settlement. Their faces fell. One of them turned to Heather angrily.

"I don't know what you've told Mr Townsend, but this is clearly blackmail. I will be sure to let the New York Bar association know of your conduct, Ms Franklin."

"Mr Stolarski," Heather began, rising up from her chair. "From one corporate shark to another, let me remind you of the two unwritten rules in our line of work. Number one – the truth doesn't matter, the money doesn't matter, the law doesn't matter, all that matters is leverage and who has it."

Norah grinned and started towards the door. Heather held it open and let her leave before turning to the opposing attorneys again.

"Number two – always know when your opponent has more leverage."

"I still can't believe it."

Norah lay on the deck-chair and held the cheque up with both hands. Her mind was still coming to terms with the number written on it. Heather looked at her from the adjacent chair with a smile on her lips and another glass of her favourite Bordeaux in her hands.

"Is it enough?" Heather asked.

"Enough?" replied Norah disbelievingly. "I would have settled for a tenth of this."

"Shh... don't tell them that," giggled Heather. "Townsend was obviously scared enough to give you that much for your silence."

They were back on Heather's balcony. The weather this night was calm, in stark contrast to the storm on their first meeting.

"We won, Heather," said Norah softly. "Thank you."

"We won the battle but we lost the war years ago," sighed Heather. "Humanity is heading for a massive course correction. Before I grow old, many of the world's coasts will be submerged by rising water levels, New York included. I will also have the unique pleasure of seeing half our population starve to death when our food supply falls hopelessly short."

"You sound very negative for someone who just won a major case against an oil giant?"

"Negativity is the modern day realism," said Heather, downing another gulp of wine. "It's what keeps my hopes from daring to rise. That way I'm never disappointed."

"Don't you have anybody in your life? Any family or a boyfriend maybe?" Norah asked in a small voice after a moment's hesitation. She was unsure about prying into Heather's personal life.

"I have a funny uncle who likes to grab my butt, but otherwise no," she replied. "As for boyfriends, I'd rather not go there."

"Come on," wheedled Norah. The wine was clearly getting the better of her. "Just between us girls."

Heather heaved a sigh of resignation. Maybe she could blame it on the wine later.

"I'm a lesbian. At least, I think I could be."

"You think you could be?" asked Norah curiously.

"I mean.. I don't know," she said defensively. "I've had several experiences with women. I'm still figuring it out. For the most part, it's something I deny."

"How many other people know?"

"No one really," she replied. "I'm not into repeat performances, if you get what I mean. I cruise dyke bars when I feel low. It helps me escape my reality for a few sweaty hours."

Norah didn't say anything, goggling at the previously cool lawyer for a few minutes. Heather turned on her side and looked at her idol longingly.

"What about you? Have you ever been with a woman?"

"That's usually a question for a third date," Norah said with a coquettish smile.

"We're both drunk enough not to be ashamed any longer."

Norah pondered the question for a few long moments. Moonlight came in through the glass pane and lit up the space between them.

"It was twenty years ago. I was in Nigeria, covering how oil companies had polluted the ground water and destroyed large tracts of arable land by drilling irresponsibly. There was a village which dared to stand up to them in protest. The villagers blocked the local refinery. I stayed with the village headman's daughter, who was spearheading the movement. Her name was Vasi. We talked at length about her protest."

Heather listened in closely.

"One day, she took me deep into the forest to a small hut she had built. She stayed there at times during the summer. We went inside and began unpacking, when suddenly she kissed me. She said she had wanted to do it ever since she saw me for the first time. I'm sure you can imagine the rest. The tropical summer got much hotter in that hut. It was a wonderful few days that we spent there. I have never experienced such pleasure again."

"What happened to Vasi?"

Norah paused, extricating the painful memory from some private crevice in her brain. Her tone quivered.

"She disappeared from the village. Her body was dumped a few days later, beaten, stabbed and raped multiple times. It was a warning to all the others. Her cause died with her."

Heather gasped. "You don't think..."

"Different methods for different countries, Heather. In the US, they will bury you in trials and intimidate you till you give up, while in Nigeria, they will pay off the rebel army to make their statement for them."

"Did you file a case against them?"

"Yes," said Norah, the emotion creeping into her voice. "I even dragged it as far as New York. The judge kicked the case out of court, calling it an effort to slander American industry. The next month, he announced he would be running for Council spokesperson with the generous donation the oil company made to his election campaign. No one looked twice. That's how our judiciary works."

"True enough," said Heather wearily. They looked at each other again.

"How did it feel when Vasi kissed you?"

"It felt like a smooth velvet. Her lips were so soft. I could tell she was experienced by the way her lips pulled at my skin as they explored different parts of me-"

Norah's story was interrupted by Heather rising off her chair. Norah looked as the petite young lawyer walked over and lowered herself. Their lips met in a loving embrace. Heather's tongue tentatively explored Norah's mouth, brushing from side to side. The first kiss was slow and measured, like a flower peeking out of its bud and feeling its first ray of sunshine.

"Did it feel like that?"

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Norah asked, lying flat on the bed. Heather leaned over her, their eyes mere inches apart. Her ruby red lips parted and she whispered. "I have never wanted anything so much."

Heather lowered her lips to Norah's again. Her tongue probed deeper this time, swirling against Norah's in a dance of carnal ecstasy. The older woman gradually reciprocated, tilting her head to the side to accommodate more of Heather's roving tongue. Her hand reached in between their two bodies and found the younger lawyer's breasts.

Heather lifted her face when she felt her lover's fingers in her cleavage. She looked into the crystalline blue eyes under her, so sensual in the dim light. Norah smiled and Heather sat, straddling her hips. She reached behind her back and undid her bra. Her breasts were in plain view now. Their average size had made her feel the occasional pang of insecurity.

Norah smiled and reached out to cup the breasts. Her deft fingers kneaded the supple flesh. Heather closed her eyes, feeling eddies of pleasure spread out over her torso. Her skin tingled at the delicious sensations the older woman imparted. She gasped and her eyes opened wide when Norah held one nipple between her fingers and twisted it gently. She took the hint and mirrored the action on the other nipple, stretching it out. Every tug made Heather moan. Norah looked straight into Heather's eyes and smiled. Her fingers continued to play with the hardened buds, pulling them precisely enough.

Norah sat up and brought her mouth to Heather's pendulous breasts. Heather's nipples stood out like hard points. Norah let the tip of her tongue graze around the areola, while continuing to tweak the other nipple between her fingers. She alternated her mouth on both nipples, teasing with her tongue. Heather could hardly bear the arousal welling up inside, then she finally felt teeth.

Teeth and nipples met, sending fireworks through Heather. Norah held the nipple between her teeth, lapping at the hardened nub with her tongue. Heather ran her fingers through Norah's hair, clutching her tresses and holding her head in place. Norah worked away on the nipple, grinding her teeth into it just hard enough to make Heather squeal.

"You're definitely more experienced than you let on," panted Heather as Norah redoubled her efforts on the nipple. Norah raised her mouth to Heather's and they kissed passionately. Her arms locked around Heather's shoulders and nails dug into her back.

Now Heather seized the initiative and stuck her face between Norah's voluptuous breasts. They sagged slightly, but remained plump and full. Heather grabbed a handful of one and gripped it tightly. Her fingers sank into the flesh. Norah's nipples were larger and more pronounced, sticking out of her skin like bullets. Heather traced them, eliciting a low moan from Norah. She ran her fingers in a concentric spiral, lazily teasing her before she finally clasped the protruding nubs. Her fingers pressed them and stretched them out.

"You're beautiful," Heather said softly.

"You really think this old lady is beautiful?"

In answer, Heather kissed her lips again. There was no restraint this time. The kiss was a torrid explosion of passion lighting a fire within them. They mouthed each other desperately, slurping each other's tongue with a frantic intensity. The need behind the simple kiss was indescribable and yet, they took time to explore each other's mouths and savour the intimacy of the moment.

"You once described the sunset over the Andes glaciers as the most beautiful sight in the world. I think you are even more breathtaking."

Norah sat on Heather's bed, naked in body and soul. She had not felt quite so exposed and vulnerable in years. A slow warmth spread through her heart as her younger lover slowly knelt and leaned between her legs.

"I see you shaved," Heather commented, seeing a neatly trimmed patch of hair leading to Norah's succulent folds.

"I always keep myself presentable, hoping that someday I might meet someone," she shrugged. "I have one year to live after all. Might as well make full use of it."

Heather still wondered how someone could be so casual about an impending, inevitable fate. Norah sensed this and said evenly. "Let's not dwell on that now."

Still pondering, Heather kissed under Norah's breasts. Her lips trailed down the older woman's torso to her navel and then traversed her torso from side to side. Her efforts elicited a low moan from Norah.