My Crazy Hot Interstellar Affair

48. Mild Mannered Accountant Plots Embezzlement Scheme - Saves World

An eternity passed while Andie sat in bed, buried beneath her stormtrooper blanket, flashes of lightning licking at the walls. She stared so hard at the spinning gold star on her laptop, her eyes watered, and her lungs were on fire from her stubborn determination to keep holding her breath.

She was more than aware that everything came down to this moment. All her plans to become a glowy, pregnant fugitive from justice would come to a quick end if she couldn't get into the Star Enquirer's computer system and deplete their assets.

When Andie had almost given up hope, and her lungs were about to burst, the star stopped spinning and the icon—a five-pointed sunburst with the name "Emerson Lieder" in the center—materialized onto the screen.

It worked!

She was in the system!

But before she could full-scale rejoice, something occurred to her about the icon, which was this: why was Emerson Lieder's name emblazoned in the middle? He was the passive one. Sure, Emerson was the king, but it was Cyra who took an interest in the Star Enquirer, while he remained on the mothership fabricating new wife-brains, or playing three-dimensional chess with Vulcans, or whatever busywork they gave him to keep him out of the way.

Was the reason his name was front and center on the logo something as simple and appalling as Amu chauvinism? Or was there something about Emerson Lieder that Andie was failing to notice? She shivered and pulled the Stormtrooper blanket up to her chin.

It made little sense, and one thing Andie had learned in her 26 years of life was that if things don't add up, it's essential to go back through the data slowly and carefully until you find your error.

But she didn't have the time for slow anything at the moment; so she set aside this train of thought and focused on the matter at hand—infiltrating the innards of the Star Enquirer's financial system.

Opening the balance sheet, she clicked on the "Assets" line to get the detail. Almost all the Star Enquirer's eight hundred million dollars were still being kept in non-interest-bearing accounts at a single institution—The First Bank of Hollywood.

Although this was the absolute best news for her evil plan, it made Andie's blood boil. They hadn't listened to her advice about investing the funds in high-yield instruments! Calm down, self, Andie admonished. If the Amu had invested in longer-term assets, it would take weeks to steal it all. Slowly her breathing eased, and her skin turned from a scarlet-tinged glowy blue back to its "normal" glowy blue.

In other good news, the Amu, having no other assets, would only have two options once Andie had drained the accounts:

A. Start all over on earth.

or

B. Evacuate and look for other worlds to invade. Perhaps one with less complicated business regulations.

Andie was certain they'd choose B, because the company had taken decades to build, and bottom line, earth's arcane laws made the place as inhospitable for the Amu as the ammonia-laden atmosphere of Jupiter.

With Anderson Cooper still droning on the great room TV about the "storm of the millennium," Andie clicked the link for the First Bank of Hollywood. Once in, her finger twitched as it hovered over the mouse. One keystroke to put in the order to transfer every penny to the account she set up for a new shelf corporation—a nice little company called Xenon Publishing Inc. Biting her lip, she clicked.

"It's done then?" Bad Andie said.

"Yes," Andie replied. "I just became a felon."

"How does it feel?"