by Jayne Castle
“No.” Samantha smiled for the first time as she slid the frozen pizza out of its box. “I’ve been able to do a lot with it. Very flexible.”
“Good.” Eric looked briefly pleased because he had, after all, designed the program for Samantha. Then the brooding look descended once again. “Want a beer?”
“Have I still got some wine left?” she inquired blandly, turning on the oven.
“Of course. You know I prefer beer. I’ll open a bottle of that zinfandel I saw down in your cellar.”
“That will be fine.” What would Gabriel say if he saw this pizza? she wondered, wrinkling her nose at the array of frozen cheese and tomato sauce. He would probably have chucked it out the window and made his own from scratch.
“How’s your mom?” Eric demanded politely, returning with the bottle of California zinfandel. He had no trouble opening the wine. Eric bad had the benefits of an excellent education, even though he flaunted them occasionally.
“Last I heard she’s enjoying herself working up a battle plan to stall the licensing of a new nuclear plant that’s supposed to be coming on line next June in the Midwest somewhere. I haven’t talked to her for a while.” Like over a month. The closer the plans for cornering Drew Buchanan approached completion, the less Samantha wanted to talk of her mother. Vera knew nothing of the project. Samantha wanted the whole matter to be a fait accompli which she could casually lay at her mother’s feet.
“What about your family?” Samantha remembered to ask politely, although they both knew she couldn’t have cared less about general Thorndyke welfare. At least Samantha liked to think she couldn’t have cared less.
“You’ll find out for yourself when you turn on the telephone recorder and listen to the playback,” Eric told her wryly.
Samantha sent him a sharp glance as he handed her a glass of the dark red zinfandel. “That’s why my phone’s been ringing? And why you haven’t bothered to answer? Your family is trying to get in touch with me?” Just what she needed.
“Afraid so.” Eric threw himself down into a white, ladder-back kitchen chair and gulped from his can of beer. He looked disgusted and dejected, and Samantha knew her first twinge of genuine concern. Eric had sometimes elected to use her residence as a place to hide from his family in the past, and it always meant trouble for Samantha because the Thorndykes had learned where to come looking.
Without another word Samantha walked over to where the recording machine sat on the end of the pleasantly cracked tile counter and flipped the device to rewind. Then she sat down in the chair facing her half brother and sipped the wine while they both listened in silence to the string of increasingly annoyed Thorndyke voices on the tape.
“Samantha? This is Emily Thorndyke. Is Eric with you? Please have him call home as soon as possible.”
“Samantha, this is Mrs. Thorndyke again. We want to reach Eric, and we know he’s probably staying with you. This is family business and has nothing to do with you. Please do not get involved?”
“Samantha? Mrs. Thorndyke. I insist you have Eric get in touch at once. If you don’t, I’ll have to ask Victor junior to take a hand in this.”
It was the ultimate threat. Samantha was only mildly amused that Eric’s mother still called her eldest son “junior” even though his father had been dead for two years. The woman was a creature of habit.
Emily’s voice came on the tape three more times before she made good on her threat and had her son make the call. Victor Thorndyke Junior’s deep tones held all the dynamic disdain his position as president of Thorndyke Industries had given him. He was thirty-eight years old, and he didn’t care very much for Samantha. But, then, none of the Thorndykes did, except for Eric. Samantha didn’t blame them. Every time they came into contact she managed to annoy them.
They’d liked her even less after she’d accidentally gotten wind of the take-over attempt planned by a Thorndyke rival shortly after Victor Thorndyke had died. For no good reason that Samantha could think of, she kept Thorndyke Industries on her list of continually monitored companies, and when the hints of take-over activity had filtered through her rapidly expanding information network, she’d passed the word even though the firm was not a subscribing client.
Actually, Samantha reflected, it was facetious of her to say she didn’t know why she monitored Thorndyke Industries now that her father was dead. She did it precisely because the company was her father’s legacy. It had been his creation, a businessman’s work of art which he had left behind as a testimony to his genius. Samantha felt an odd loyalty to the firm even though she had never been actively involved in it. When she had provided the take-over warning, Victor Junior had successfully used the extra time she had bought him to counter the attack. There had been no thank-you note from the Thorndykes, Samantha recalled dryly. None was expected.
“Samantha,” Victor Junior’s voice declared with all the firmness he normally applied to incompetent staff members, “I must insist you stop playing games. This is business. Have Eric call me at once.”
There were no more calls on the tape. Samantha rose and shut off the machine with a long-suffering sigh.
“Well, Eric, what are you up to this time?”
He stared at her for a long moment as if trying to line up the right words. Then he said slowly, “I’m leaving the firm, Sam.”
She arched an interested eyebrow, unsurprised. She only wondered what had taken Eric so long to make the decision. “Going to become the first Thorndyke on welfare?”
“Sam, this isn’t funny! The only way to make it on your own terms in this world is to make it on your own terms! The way you and Dad did.”
“You’ve been studying elementary philosophy? That was a very profound statement.” She chuckled.
“Don’t laugh at me, Sam.”
“You know I always laugh at Thorndykes. It’s good for the digestion.”
He ignored that, watching her with a grim set to his mouth. There was a hardness in his eyes that Samantha had never seen there before, and she wondered at it. “I had my way out all planned, Sam. I’ve been working on it for months. I had developed a product to market, and j was going to set myself up in business somewhere here in the Northwest.” His band closed into a taut fist on the table.
“Had?” Samantha questioned very gently. “Past tense?”
“Vic stole it.”
“He what?”
“He stole it!” Eric repeated in a tight voice. “He took the software packages I’d been working on and patented them in the name of Thorndyke Industries.”
“Eric, what are you talking about? What software packages?”
“They’re called ‘application generators,’ Sam. A new idea in the computer world, and they’ll make millions for the people who develop and market them. I’ve been working on mine for ages, and they were absolutely brilliant! Beautifully simple. Most of the bugs worked out. Incredibly adaptable…. “
“Okay, okay, buy all the glowing adjectives. Tell me what they do.”
“Application generators are little modules of preprogrammed software which you can plug into any new program that’s being developed. Saves countless hours of routine programming.”
“But every program is unique. Made to do a special job like crank out payroll checks or produce an inventory list. How could you preprogram sections of them?”
“Because even though every company wants its computer programming to do jobs which are unique to that company, there really are a lot of similarities in the tasks involved,” Eric told her impatiently. “All payroll-writing programs have certain things in common, no matter which firm they’re designed for. They all have to figure deductions, vacation pay, stuff like that. I’m designing little modules which a programmer can simply plug in whenever he gets to the routine part of his program. Instead of having to write out all the lines of code it takes to tell a computer to deduct social security taxes, he simply inserts the lines of code I’ve already written.”
“Can that b
e done? Can programs be written that are interchangeable for different computers?” she asked.
“That’s the magic part. Making them adaptable to a variety of computers,” Eric told her with great satisfaction. “I can do it.”
“Sounds good, Eric,” she said slowly.
“It sounded good,” he corrected heavily. “It sounded like my ticket out of Thorndyke Industries. It sounded like the perfect way to start in business for myself”
“So what went wrong?” she asked gently.
“What went wrong is that, thanks to another guy in the computer department at Thorndyke, Vic found out just how valuable those program modules of mine might be.”
“He hadn’t known you were working on them?” Samantha frowned.
“Oh, he knew, he just didn’t pay much attention to what I was doing. He agreed to let me play with the computer on my own time, and he agreed that anything I developed during that time would be mine. He didn’t seem to care what I did as long as I handled Thorndyke business during regular working hours on the computer.”
Samantha waited, knowing from what Eric had said in the past that Victor Junior had probably brushed off his brother’s computer talents, considering them rather clerical in nature. The family had more than once tried to pry Eric out of the computer room and into the front office as a vice-president, deeming that role more in keeping with the status of a Thorndyke. But Eric hadn’t budged, and his desire to stick with computers had been grudgingly tolerated.
“Go on,” she finally prompted.
“Well, Vic found out from this other guy about the potential value of what I was doing, and the first thing I know he hauls out an old, standard form everyone, including me, signs when they go to work for Thorndyke.”
Samantha winced. “The kind of form which clearly states that anything developed by an employee during his tenure with the company belongs to the company?” It was a fairly standard contract in most technologically oriented businesses.
“Yeah.” Eric stared grimly at the counter across from him. “Everything happened very quickly after that. Vic can move fast when he wants to. With the help of my so-called friend in the department, tapes were made of my little programs, patent applications were filed, and Vic graciously offered me the great honor of being promoted to vice-president of Research and Marketing for the new Thorndyke Industries product.”
“Oh, Eric.” Samantha sighed sympathetically.
“He knew I wanted out of the firm, and he guessed I was going to use my inventions as a way to start over on my own. But he never said a word until I had everything done and ready to go!” Eric slapped the table in fury and frustration. “But I’m not going to let him trap me this way, Sam!”
The buzzer on the stove sounded, indicating the pizza was ready, and Samantha got to her feet to check on it. Eric’s eyes followed her across the room. “What are you thinking of doing, Eric?” she finally asked quietly.
“I handed in my formal resignation before I left to come up here,” he began steadily.
Samantha nodded as she gingerly plucked the tray of bubbling pizza from the oven. “So you quit? Hence all those calls on my answering machine?”
“Yeah, but Vic and Mom and Amanda don’t know the half of it yet.”
“I’m listening,” Samantha said in resignation.
Eric drew a long breath. “I decided that, since Thorndyke Industries deprived me of my ticket out, it was only fair that it finance my new start in some other way.”
Samantha finished slicing the pizza with one of her very dull knives and picked up the pan with pot holders, starting back toward the table with her burden. “How?”
“How much, Sam, do you think West-Land Equipment would pay for a spread-sheet showing the wholesale costs of all the parts and materials Thorndyke buys to build its new submersible pumps?”
“Eric! My God! What have you done?” Samantha was shaken. The pizza slithered precariously on the tray as she came to an abrupt halt halfway to the table and stared at him. “You’re talking about industrial espionage!”
“I’ve got that financial information, Sam. I went into the Thorndyke computer and pulled it out before I left Los Angeles two days ago. I made a printout of it, and I can sell it to West-Land for enough to set myself up in business as a computer consultant anywhere in the country! Don’t you see the beauty of it? Thorndyke’s going to wind up financing my career, all right, and on my terms!”
Samantha read the agony of suspense in her relative’s taut features, knew instinctively that he was somehow seeking her approval and support for what he had done. But before she could think of anything to say, the pizza gave up its attempt to cling to the tray and slid off onto the brown-and-white-checkered floor, landing in a squishy splash of cheese and tomato sauce.
Wordlessly Samantha glanced down at the mess at her feet. It crossed her mind that this sort of thing would probably never have been allowed to happen in Gabriel’s kitchen.
Then she raised her eyes again to meet the urgent blue gaze of the young man who had just announced his intention of selling the family secrets.
“How do you know West-Land will pay so much for what you took from the Thorndyke computer?” she whispered.
“Because the deal’s already been made, Sam,” he explained in a stark-sounding voice that told her just how uneasy he was over what he had done. There was a tense pause, and then Eric ground out savagely, “Don’t look at me like that! I couldn’t call if off now, even if I wanted to!”
“Why not!” she demanded.
Eric’s mouth twisted. “Because the whole arrangement was made through a… a kind of broker. A man who does this sort of thing for a living. He found the buyer when I contacted him and told him what I had. He takes a cut.”
“And if you were to change your mind?” she pressed anxiously.
“Sam, I can’t change my mind! This broker isn’t exactly a pillar of the business community! Don’t you see? He’s like a loan shark or something. If I don’t deliver the goods on time, I’ve had it. He will send someone to come and collect what I promised to provide. Forcibly!”
“Oh, my God, Eric. What have you done?”
“I’m trapped, Sam. I can’t change my mind now. I have to go through with the deal.”
“Eric, you can’t!”
He stared at her for a long, anguished moment, and then he closed his eyes. “I know. I’ve known since yesterday. A man doesn’t betray his own family, no matter what they’ve done to him. Christ, Sam. What am I going to do?”
Chapter Five
The really annoying thing about this, Gabriel decided laconically, was the thought of Samantha’s expression when she opened the door to find him standing humbly on her doorstep, checkbook in hand.
He hooked one foot over the bottom deck rail and leaned his elbows on the top one. Far below, the white wake foamed around the hull as the Washington State ferry slid placidly through the cold gray waters of Elliot Bay. Behind him the Seattle waterfront receded slowly, the aggressive new skyline half-hidden in the mist.
Jesus! It was cold! How the hell did Samantha survive this chilled, damp weather? Gabriel huddled deeper into the lightweight windbreaker and thought briefly of the sunshine and warmth he had left behind in California. Down there the Pacific was an inviting blue. Here it was steel-gray.
She lived on an island. Figured. Count on Samantha not to live like a normal city person in a high-rise apartment building in downtown Seattle. Judging by the number of cars parked belowdecks, a lot of people around here lived on islands. There were literally hundreds of chunks of land scattered throughout the waters of Puget Sound. It had taken a while to find the right ferry for the island on which Samantha lived.
Gabriel considered again the reception he was likely to receive when Samantha opened the door to him. This was the third day, the last day she had allowed in her ultimatum. Had she been getting anxious? Or had she simply been making plans to contact Oakes?
Whatever her prese
nt state of mind, Gabriel knew exactly what would go through her quicksilver brain the moment she opened her door to him.
“Little witch,” he muttered, lifting the Styrofoam cup of hot coffee to his mouth. “You’re going to think you’ve won, aren’t you? You’ll probably be impossible to live with until we get a few things straightened out between us.”
He could read the delighted arrogance and feminine satisfaction in those gold-flecked tortoiseshell eyes already. His mouth kicked upward in a wry grimace. It was going to take some work to convince her that just because he had arrived, money in hand, she wasn’t one hundred percent in the driver’s seat.
And it was going to be a little hard to explain to her exactly why he had succumbed to the pressure of her feisty ultimatum. Not that he didn’t comprehend his own motives quite thoroughly, Gabriel thought grimly. He’d realized almost as soon as she’d left his house that morning that he’d go through hell to keep her from getting tangled up with William Oakes. Good God! Together Oakes and Buchanan would have screwed her to the wall! The woman didn’t have the foggiest notion of what she was getting into when she talked of forming an alliance with Bill Oakes. She probably didn’t have a very realistic idea of what it took to go up against a man like Buchanan, either. A lamb among wolves.
But a very arrogant little lamb who wouldn’t have sense enough to run when the wolves started closing in on her. Gabriel’s eyes narrowed as he studied a mist-shrouded island slipping past on the starboard side of the ferry. No, Samantha wouldn’t run. She didn’t lack courage.
He sighed and downed the last of the coffee. So here he was, the angel Gabriel to the rescue. Except that he didn’t feel particularly angelic about the whole thing. What he really felt was a distinct hardening of his body below the belt when he thought about having Samantha within reach again.
Some angel.
And Samantha definitely wasn’t going to look upon this as a rescue operation. She was going to take one look at him and think he had come all the way to Seattle for the sake of the deal she had offered. She was going to assume that her threat had worked.