"I have good news and bad news for you," Michelle started out addressing the group. "The good news is that Dave has cleared up much of the backlog in ...he slush pile. He really did a bang-up job, and we all need to thank him for it." What's the bad news?" one of the other editors asked."Well, the bad news for the rest of you is Dave has done more than his fair share, so I'm splitting up what remains, and everyone is going to work on it, even Dave and me. If we all chip away at it we should be. She was as ridiculously happy being pregnant as she had been at her wedding. Lia had gone home the night of Gina’s wedding and I hadn’t seen her since. I missed her, but I’d been through it before. I wasn’t so much sad as resigned, it would have ended, it was just a matter of when. My life had calmed down, in large part because Lia’s drama was gone. I’d written my story and been nominated for a few awards and received a promotion and a raise. At a housewarming party for one of my coworkers, I. " Sam had told me Mike was a former bond-trader who was said to have made a killing in the eighties. He was also said to own an island in the Caribbean, as well as his own private jet."Mike wants to take us out for drinks, honey," he said. "It will be a chance for you to meet some of the partners."I was worried about our reservations, but it was obviously important to Sam that I go along, so I agreed. Mike made no pretense about checking me out as Sam introduced us. He was a very forward man,. ”The general scowled at me. “You don’t know anything about the security we would put in place.”I was tempted to tell him about the procedures I had learned a lifetime ago for the protection of nuclear weapons, but decided on a different tack instead. “So you would guarantee two-person integrity for the process as well as material delivery? You would have an outside audit every month for both access and material controls? You wouldn’t rotate your guards to new assignments where they would blab.