Monahan 01 Options

by Rosemarie A D'Amico

  The man knew me better than I gave him credit for. I just hoped the Detective couldn’t read me as well.

  chapter fifty-one

  “What happened?” Jay asked when they left. I threw off the quilt and went in search of my cigarettes. I realized I hadn’t had one since earlier that afternoon when Jay and I had sat at the kitchen table. My head felt dizzy when I took my first, deep drag. I placed both hands flat on the kitchen table to steady myself.

  Jay had followed me to the kitchen and I heard him saying behind me, “I’m so sorry. I should’ve been here. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been here.” He might’ve been right, but on the other hand, I shuddered to think what could’ve transpired if Jay had been there. I couldn’t remember if Mr. Mask had a gun or another weapon, but if he had, he probably wouldn’t have hesitated to use it on Jay or myself. I don’t know how he would have subdued both of us without a weapon.

  I straightened up and turned to face Jay.

  “It’s over. Forget it. Don’t beat yourself up over this,” I told him.

  “Who was it?” Jay asked knowingly.

  “I don’t know, and that’s the truth.”

  “Then tell me what happened,” he demanded.

  “I woke up. Someone was sitting on me, holding my hands and covering my mouth. He didn’t say or do anything.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Kate, this has something to do with everything else that’s going on. I’m not stupid. Please,” he begged me. “I told you earlier that I’m sorry I got you involved in this stupid vengeance thing. And now this happens. I feel responsible.”

  Just forty-eight hours ago we had promised each other to be honest and I remembered that now.

  “He told me to stay out of it,” I said quietly. “That’s all he said. And then he left.”

  Jay shook his head slowly and stared at me.

  “I’m calling the police back. This has gone too far.”

  “No Jay. No police. No more police. I’m dropping it. He scared me sufficiently. In fact, he terrified me. I know now what it feels like to be drowning.”

  I stood there feeling terrified and reliving the feeling of that hand over my mouth and nose. The walls of the kitchen felt like they were closing around me and I was having trouble breathing, again. I butted my cigarette in disgust and tried to calm myself by taking deep, lung-cleansing breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  I ended up on the balcony, overlooking the street trying to get myself back together. Feelings of helplessness overwhelmed me and I stood there with my hands on the railing, wanting to scream. Rage finally overtook the helplessness and I vowed to myself that if and when I met Mr. Black Mask, face to face, I would personally pound his face to a pulp. I didn’t like being vulnerable and although I’d never portrayed myself as a damsel in distress, the events of the last ten days had made me feel my size, and my sex. I was a small woman, but I was determined not to let my size be my downfall.

  When Jay finally convinced me to go to bed, sleep evaded me. My bed no longer seemed like my special place, where I could hide and feel safe. Jay helped me strip the linens and remake the bed so there were no reminders of what had transpired there a few hours ago. But the cool crispness and scent of the clean sheets didn’t help and I laid wide awake, staring at the digital clock.

  I was curled in a ball with my back to Jay so I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping. I listened to his rhythmic breathing for a long time and when he offered to hold me, I gratefully turned around, into his arms.

  “Thanks for being here for me,” I said into his chest. “I appreciate it.”

  He responded by hugging me tighter and telling me to go to sleep.

  I dragged myself to the office on Monday morning but feelings of dread overwhelmed me, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to cope.

  I had rested all day Sunday and my physical energy returned by the end of the day. Jay insisted on taking a long, leisurely walk after dinner and after a luxurious, steamy bath, my body felt normal. I couldn’t let Jay out of my sight for the whole day and I although I knew it was ridiculous to be feeling this way, I admitted to myself that I needed something to cling to.

  I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of the shower and had a momentary panic attack until I reoriented myself. The bed was warm beside me where Jay had been lying. The clock read nine-fifteen and I huddled under the duvet waiting for Jay to finish in the shower. When he reappeared in the bedroom he was dressed in the same clothes he was wearing the night before.

  As he fastened his watch around his wrist, he said, “I’ve gotta go to sign that statement for Detective Leech.”

  Another panic attack came over me when I thought about being alone in my apartment. I threw off the covers and told Jay I’d go with him and stayed close to his side for the rest of the day.

  We avoided talking about the events of the night before for most of the day but Jay finally brought it up that evening on our walk.

  “Kate, I don’t think you should go to the office tomorrow.”

  I admitted to myself that I’d been having the same thoughts because I was sure that my masked attacker was someone who I worked with.

  “I’ll see how I feel tomorrow,” was all I said.

  “We have to talk about this Kate. You can’t avoid it.”

  We turned around and started walking back to my apartment. Jay wasn’t about to let the subject drop and he stood in front of me.

  “You must have some idea of who broke in. I certainly have some thoughts on the matter.”

  “Drop it Jay,” I said and tried to sidestep around him but he grabbed my arm.

  “No. I won’t. All of this is tied-in to things at TechniGroup. And I don’t think you’re safe going to the office.”

  He was right, but I wasn’t about to hide from the world.

  “Jay, I’ll be fine. Really. Hiding in my office and doing my work is something I’ve perfected over the last week or so.”

  “Call in sick,” he suggested.

  “It’s too busy.”

  “Oh, really? And the work won’t get done without you there? The world stops because Kathleen Monahan takes a day off?” he said sarcastically.

  I yanked my arm out of his hand and defiantly shot back at him, “I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself.”

  “Right,” he snorted. “Just like last night. You really took care of yourself then, didn’t you?”

  “I tried,” I said very quietly, and started walking home.

  “I’m sorry,” he was saying behind me. “You did fine. I shouldn’t have said that but this whole situation is scaring me to death. I can’t bear the thought of something happening to you.”

  His hand found mine and we walked silently the last few blocks. The evening air smelled like spring, my favourite season of the year, and the odours and sounds gave me renewed strength and resolve.

  At the front of my house I sat on the first step of the porch and motioned for Jay to sit beside me.

  “You know,” I told him, “a famous man once said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

  But now that I was at the office building I found I couldn’t get out of my car. It was like there was a huge magnet in the seat and it was sucking all the power and energy out of me. When I looked in the rear-view mirror the image that came back at me wasn’t a pretty one. One half of my face looked like Marlon Brando’s in the Godfather. A magazine article had said that he stuffed his cheeks with cotton for that role.

  The white of my left eye was bloodshot and the top of my cheekbone and surrounding eye were purplish-black. I couldn’t wait for the green and yellow stage. Jay had suggested make-up to cover it up by I laughed him off.

  “People will notice the makeup before they notice the black eye,” I told him.

  Before falling asleep the night before, I had made myself try and remember something about my attacker. Rather th
an push the memory away, I needed to know who it was. The few words he had spoken gave me no clue to his voice because I was sure he had disguised it. I couldn’t remember his height in relation to anything and besides, everyone seemed tall to me. I recalled that he had been totally clothed in black, or very dark, clothes, and the only part of his body that was visible were his eyes. If his eyebrows had been exposed, I was sure I would have recognized him.

  The fear and terror I had felt could only be described as all-encompassing. Those two emotions had taken over everything and my will and desire to survive the situation, alive and in one piece, overcame any reasonable thought process of getting a description of my attacker. I promised myself that I would never find myself in the same situation, ever again.

  chapter fifty-two

  I stayed in my office most of the day and avoided people. The few who saw me on my way in and commented on my face were told that I had taken a nasty fall down the stairs. No one had reason to disbelieve me. I had trouble avoiding Vanessa though and when she finally came barrelling in my office, wanting to go for coffee, I lied to her too and mumbled about falling down the stairs.

  Harold called and asked me to see him and I reluctantly went in his office. He was standing with his hands behind his back looking out the window. When he turned around and saw me he didn’t react to my black and blue face but said, “Vanessa told me that you had a fall. Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “That’s good. I want you to know that I’m extremely sorry for what happened the other night.”

  I had a moment of anxiety until I realized he was referring to me finding Rick Cox’s dead body. What had happened to me on Saturday was not something I wanted anyone to know about, yet.

  “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about Harold. Shit happens.”

  “Things are really fucked up here, Kate,” he told me. I was shocked at his cavalier use of one of my favourite words. Harold didn’t swear unless he was very angry and right now he was acting quite calm.

  I wanted to answer that he didn’t know how fucked up things really were but I waited for him to continue.

  “The stock’s understandably going to go down again today when everyone remembers what happened on Friday night. But, the other party appears to be still interested in this buy-out, so we’re supposed to push on.”

  “All of my stuff is done,” I told him, referring to all of the due diligence materials I had compiled the week before. “How soon can we expect an offer?”

  “Their board is meeting this morning and depending on the outcome of that, we’ll hold a conference call this afternoon with our directors. Vanessa has them all on standby.”

  “Isn’t that kind of quick? They haven’t had time to go over all the due diligence materials.”

  “Oh, they can make an offer and back out if certain things aren’t to their liking. There are time limits but they can do it.”

  “Can I ask a stupid question, Harold?”

  He grinned. “If you don’t mind a stupid answer, Kate.”

  I smiled. “What happens to the stock options?”

  “Well, a couple of things,” he said. “First of all, the other company will buy out all existing, exercisable options. The holders will get paid the difference between their exercise price and the buying price. Say for example, the other company offers $12.00 a share for our shares and an executive has options with an exercise price of $6.00. That’s a difference of $6.00 per share and that’s what they’ll get paid.”

  Simple enough for me. Most of the senior executives were holding about 500,000 options, so at a gain of $6.00 a share, they’d rake in $3,000,000. Before taxes, of course.

  “What happens to unexercisable options?” I asked thinking about all of the options that had just been granted to the senior officers and to Philip Winston the Third. Unexercisable options are options that are usually worthless until they have vested, or matured. The vesting or maturity period is normally one year in our company.

  “They’ll probably take those up too. You know, if this deal goes through, there’ll be a lot of work to be done just on stock options alone. With Ev and Jay gone, somehow I get the feeling that I’m about to become an accountant as well as a lawyer,” he said.

  “Well, you’ll make your mother proud. She won’t have to lie anymore and tell people you work at the post office,” I laughed. “Now she can brag that you’re an accountant.”

  Harold laughed with me and it felt good.

  “I’ll help with the stock option stuff if it comes down to it,” I offered. “What’re we doing in the meantime?”

  “Waiting.”

  “I can wait. I don’t mind,” I told him. “But before we wait, can I ask one last thing?”

  He nodded.

  “No takeover is clean. How many of us are going to lose our jobs?”

  “That’s hard to say, Kate. First of all, it’ll be at least six months before any of that happens. And that’s six months from when the deal closes. If it closes. And, usually on a takeover, the senior executives lose their jobs first.”

  My stomach sank. Harold was a senior executive and I was tied very closely to him.

  “My point exactly, Harold. Senior executives leave, so do their support staff.”

  “Well, we’ll see. If it does happen, you know you’ll never have a hard time getting another job. There are few people in this world with skills like yours, Kate.” He was stroking me and patronizing me but I didn’t mind. Besides, I thought to myself, I think I’d rather work in a Siberian coal mine than stay here.

  Before the day was out our shares had dropped another seventy-five cents to $4.75 and the ‘other side’ came in with an offer for all of the outstanding shares of TechniGroup at $12.00 a share. The offer was a well-guarded secret, and no-one but the directors of both companies supposedly knew about it. An announcement was to be made before the market opened the next day and in the meantime, I was tempted to put in a buy order before the market closed and make myself some fast cash, because once the announcement was out about the proposed takeover bid, the shares would rocket up in price and trade around the $12.00 bid price. It was just a fleeting thought though because somehow I couldn’t picture myself in jail for making a couple of thousand dollars profit on inside information.

  Needless to say, Harold was a happy man and I was sure he would do everything in his power to make sure the deal closed because he stood to make about three and a half million on his stock options. That kind of money makes it easier to look for another job. I had a few thousand shares I’d bought over the years on the employee stock purchase plan and maybe, just maybe, I’d have enough left over after Revenue Canada took their bite, to buy me a new car - or at least get the locks fixed.

  Before my departure that day at five-thirty, I turned off my computer and tidied the mess on my desk. Other than meeting with Harold, I had avoided contact with everyone else. Admittedly, I was hiding and as the day progressed, feelings of cowardice crept around me. My work for the day had ended about an hour earlier but I was loathe to run into people leaving the office at quitting time, so I continued to hide in my office, chain-smoking and thinking.

  Jay and I were in possession of information that could adversely affect the takeover bid. Larry Everly and Chris Oakes were frauds and that information alone could cause enough of a scandal, but I wasn’t sure if it would be enough for the other side to back off on their bid. I knew that our company was in bad shape and a takeover bid was probably the best thing for it. New faces, new leaders, lots of cash. The perfect recipe for short-term success in the high tech world. But even if the information about Oakes and Everly was disclosed or somehow found out, I was cynical enough to know that some people would ignore it or at the very least, continue to hide it.

  I had no idea who the ‘other side’ was and I asked myself if I knew, would I do something with the information?

  So what’s the big deal, I wondered. The other company wasn’t buying Oakes
and Everly, they were buying our company. The two of them would be history because our board of directors would be replaced and Oakes especially would be laughing all the way to the bank. He’d be terminated without cause, and the change of control clause in his employment contract would kick in and he’d be paid three times his salary plus all his stock options. Everly’s company would get back all the money they’d invested and he’d get to keep his job.

  I wondered though what would become of Philip Winston, a.k.a. Robert Weinstein. Would the new company keep him? The fact that he’d changed his name wasn’t grounds for dismissal. Anyone could change their name so long as they didn’t do it for criminal purposes.

  Philip must know that Oakes and Everly were working for his father at the time of the bankruptcy. But that information didn’t help me figure out why he was here at TechniGroup. With everything we’d found out in the last couple of days, I seriously doubted that it was a coincidence that Philip Winston was now our Chief Operating Officer.

  A glance at my watch told me it was five-thirty and probably safe to the leave the office without running into anyone, so I packed up and headed down the hall towards reception. I deliberately avoided leaving by the back door because that exit route would take me past the executive offices.

  I knew I was being stupid about avoiding everyone but it made me feel safe from the unknown. I had barely functioned all day, acting and reacting like a shell-shocked veteran. Unable to identify my attacker but sure that he was someone I knew had made it impossible for me to act normally. When I pushed the button for my floor in the parking garage elevator, I finally faced the fact that it could only be one of three men who had attacked me. Chris Oakes, Larry Everly or Philip Winston. I’d known it all along and I was sure Jay knew as well.

  I’d been unable to bring the thought to the forefront of my mind and address it because I didn’t want to admit it. The intrusion in my house and my bedroom had been the ultimate act of employee bashing. Indignation rose inside me as I stormed down the dimly lit hallway off the elevator to the parking garage.