“No, but we should grab him. His last company folded, and someone else will snatch him up. We can’t let that happen. He worked on the UI for Braeburn! We’re meeting him at six. Act confident about the money. He has to believe we’ll secure our angel funding, or he’s not going to consider us.”
I hang up, pissed. I don’t want to pretend anything for anyone. I have no idea if this Kevin guy is worth anything or not, though, so I guess I’ll need to fake confidence in our funding for now. I don’t even see what the point of meeting him now is. We’ve got eight weeks of cash left.
I call Igloo.
“Did he say yes?” she says as soon as he picks up.
“Kuso. You and Amber must believe I’m a miracle worker. No, he said he’ll think about it.”
“Did he seem interested?”
I roll my eyes, but there’s no one around to see. I turn right, toward the Morrison bridge.
“I don’t know,” I say, and it comes out angrier than I intend. I try to loosen my grip on the steering wheel. “I mean, it started well, and he was interested in the idea. But he was cool at the end.”
“How long did you talk for?”
“An hour and a half.”
“How long was the meeting supposed to be?”
“Half an hour.”
“Did he take any phone calls or anything?”
“Jesus, am I being interrogated?”
“Just tell me, did he take any phone calls?”
“No, he sent them to voicemail.”
“Then you’re fine. He wants to invest.”
I’m about to protest, but Igloo continues. She’s hesitant, which I’ve never heard before in her voice.
“Look, I have a problem. I need to pay my partners and make rent and I’m broke. Is there any chance you can loan me some money?”
Shit. Igloo’s got two employees, office space, and a ton of computing power, while Amber and I are working by ourselves from Amber’s spare bedroom. She’s asking me for money? I want her technology, and I’ve told her as much, but I need to get the funding first.
“How can you need money? You were supposed to be good for another month.”
“I underestimated our burn rate. We spent more on computing equipment than I thought. Also travel, lawyer, and accountant fees I didn’t plan for. I’m in control of our expenses now, but I need some money to get us through.”
My heart skips a beat. Accounting? Somehow I suspect handing Amber an envelope of cash every two weeks from my bitcoin windfall deliveries from Danger isn’t going to cut it when we have an accountant.
“Angie, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking.” I turn on Eleventh. “Money is tight for us, too.”
“I stopped looking for investors because I thought you’d take care of the money.”
“I hope to line up something by next month,” I say. “I didn’t know you needed money right now.”
“Maybe we made a mistake,” Igloo says, “and we should back out.”
I pull over to focus. Will everything crumble because of stupid money?
“Isn’t there any way you can cut back on expenses?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, my mind flashes back to last week when we got together. I asked Igloo if she wanted to grab tacos with me, and she glanced over to a pile of Cup Noodles and shook her head no. I’m asking the college student who lives on ramen to cut back on expenses. I’m an asshole.
I’m so wrapped up in my thoughts I miss what Igloo says. “Wait, scratch that,” I say. “Forget I even said that. Yes, I’ll lend you the money.”
“Thanks, Angie.” Her voice cracks a little.
I end the call and sit there in my car, my brain spinning in circles. I’m parked outside a coffee shop, a row of aluminum laptops lining the window, everyone sitting there immersed in their own world. Man, when was the last time I went off by myself? When I didn’t feel the weight of the world on my shoulders?
I can’t remember. At Tomo I was so consumed then with finding the next asshole abuser, taking on responsibility for their victims. The time with my husband doesn’t even seem like part of my life. Before he nearly destroyed me, I’d been as driven at Tomo, only I was focused on helping them succeed. As a security consultant working with Repard I’d been on the go all the time. College? Could that have been the last time I sat around and relaxed? Shit. I’m forty-five years old. That was more than twenty years ago.
I pick my phone up and make a call to a number I haven’t used since I bought my condo. The mortgage broker I used for my loan.
“Hey, I need to refinance my condo and get some cash out. How quickly can we set something up?”
I make an appointment for tomorrow morning. The equity in my condo is literally the last thing of value I have. If that goes, and I still haven’t obtained financing, then either I steal the money or shut down Tapestry. My stomach is in knots. I still have to go to the office, pretend everything is okay, and go to dinner tonight, where I must pretend everything is awesome so we can woo some hotshot designer.
* * *
1997, New York City.
In almost two years of penetration testing, we’ve never hit a client better prepared than the one we’re testing now. Repard has blown up a couple of times a day, and he’s pulled people off other projects to focus on this one. If there’s one thing Repard can’t tolerate, it’s a boastful client, which is why he’s never allowed in contract negotiation meetings. Somehow he wiggled his way into this one, and claimed that if we couldn’t penetrate their security, we’d waive the testing fee.
Upper management flipped out and Repard got a talking to, which did nothing to improve his mood.
We’re twelve days into the fourteen-day testing window, with Repard getting more tightly wound with each day. We’re all frazzled. We tried social engineering the front desk, the shipping department, and the receptionists in an attempt to place our hardware directly onto their network. We attacked their email servers and firewalls. We FedExed a junior IT guy the unreleased beta of Microsoft’s upcoming MechWarrior video game, hoping he’d play it at work. We subverted two of their supply chain vendors. Nothing worked.
The problem is the client warned their employees about the intrusion testing, which invalidates the whole point of the testing. It’s easy to tell everyone they can’t install any new computers or software for two weeks. It’s impossible to do that indefinitely.
Late this afternoon, Repard is suddenly calm. His frenetic pacing has stopped, and he hasn’t screamed in hours. When he calls me into his office, I assume it’s to tell me how he managed to get inside the client. I never expected music lessons.
“A little higher,” Repard says.
I try to bring my pitch up, but I can’t hold the whistle and end up blowing hard past pursed lips.
“You need to relax your lips. Move your tongue back.”
“I can’t, I’ve never been good at whistling.”
Repard bends down slightly, gets his head on my level, tries to peer into my mouth as though a visual inspection will tell him something about my whistling ability.
“I don’t even see the point,” I say. “2600 hertz doesn’t do anything anymore. Those backdoors were closed a long time ago.”
“It’s an entry requirement. Let’s try again.”
A chill runs down my spine. Repard’s rumored to be the leader of the White Knights, a group of white hat hackers. The exact membership has always been secret, with Repard the only suspected member. Word in the community is mixed, with most believing the White Knights are, indeed, working on the side of the law and big business. Yet there are a few who argue the Knights are corrupt enforcers who secretly break into big companies and then turn around and charge them to close the security holes.
I lean forward, give him a mischievous grin. “Does the secret whistle come before or after the secret knock?”
Repard shakes his head, and turns to rummage in his desk drawer. “Don’t be snotty. Here, let’s try this.
” He hands me a small, hand-built electronic device.
It possesses an old-timey smell of brittle plastics and burnt electronics. I wouldn’t be surprised if Repard hand-soldered the thing.
“What is it?”
“Frequency doubler. Let’s see if you can hold 1300 hertz.”
I sigh and try again.
“Lower,” he says.
We keep trying until I can finally light the lamp of his custom telephone box, indicating that, with the frequency-doubling assistance, I’ve hit and held the require 2600 hertz for a full two seconds.
“Here,” he says, handing over the doubler. “Keep it handy, you’ll need it.”
I palm the little box. “What’s really going on? Why are we in here playing games instead of working on the client?”
“Sit down.”
Uh oh. This is going to be big. I tentatively lower myself down like the chair will bite.
“Relax,” Repard says. “Everybody does a few things. They eat, they shit, they fuck.”
“I am not sleeping my way in.” I’m halfway out of my seat, indignant, even as part of me thinks about the men I’ve manipulated. I did what I needed to for my personal interests. Why is this different?
“Didn’t ask you to, did I?” Repard jumps off his desk, pushes me back into my chair, and checks the door to make sure it’s closed. He turns back to me. “The executive team is going out for breakfast tomorrow morning.”
“How do you know?”
“Dumpster diving. We found weekly calendar printouts.”
“They shred everything,” I say, suddenly suspicious.
“Shredder broke two days ago.” Repard’s got a smug grin across his face telling me this is no fluke.
“That’s lucky.”
“Luck is for fools. I make my own destiny.”
“Why didn’t you tell the team?” I say. “This changes everything.”
“Because you guys would have altered your behavior.” He leans against his desk, arms crossed, smug with secret knowledge. “They would have seen that, known they were leaking info, and upped their security. I needed everyone to keep doing what they were doing.”
“Are you running a second team?” I ask. There’s no other explanation. Repard can’t personally be engineering shredder breakdowns and dumpster diving, because I’ve seen him around here too much.
“It doesn’t matter. Here’s what’s going down. The executive team goes to breakfast tomorrow morning. You’re going to be there, as a waitress.”
“In some short skirt no doubt.”
“Better they look at your ass than your hands. Because you’re going to put something in the food.”
Repard, leans back over the desk to pull a small brown bottle out of a drawer. He pushes it toward me.
The glass grates across the wood desk, the rasp against the wood grain somehow foreboding.
“I’m not poisoning anyone.” I stare at him. “I’m a security consultant, not a murderer.”
“It’s not going to hurt anyone. The VP of sales had a heart attack two years ago. This’ll give him the sensation of chest pains. He’ll call 911. We’re going to respond.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.”
“Angie, there’s no risk. All you have to do is add it to his food, and only his food. We can’t have all the executives thinking they’re having heart attacks simultaneously, or they’ll be suspicious.”
I pick up the little brown bottle and study it. It’s half the size of a lipstick tube, and partly filled with liquid. It feels awfully heavy for such a small thing.
“This is the ticket to bigger things, Angie. You want to know who’s pulling the strings behind the curtain, don’t you?”
This is as close to an explicit invitation to the White Knights as I’m going to get.
I slip the bottle into my pocket. “When and where?” I say, though it comes out as a whisper.
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Repard says, and pats my knee. “It’s going to be fine.”
CHAPTER 27
* * *
WE’RE MEETING Kevin downtown. I stare at the upper floors of Big Pink as I drive, feeling on edge, wondering if I’m being watched somehow by people at Tomo.
“Who picked Morton’s?” I ask, as I drive onto the Hawthorne bridge.
“I don’t remember,” Amber says. “Why?”
“It’s expensive.” That’s not the entire reason I’m complaining. Steak is impossible to cut one-handed. “There’s a hundred great restaurants that cost less.”
Amber shrugs. “If it’s a big deal, I’ll pay for it.”
We get snarled up in the evening rush hour traffic getting off the bridge and hit four red lights looking for parking.
Amber clears her throat to interrupt my passive-aggressive sighing. “He’s worth talking to. He’s smart, and has great instincts. He turned down offers from Avogadro and Tomo because he doesn’t want to work for the man.” She makes air quotes around the last two words.
That’s something. I try to push my worries aside. It’ll be fine.
After I park, we head into the restaurant to find Kevin sitting at a table, a cocktail in front of him.
“Kevin?” I say. “I’m Angie.”
“Nice to meet you.” He jumps up, touches elbows with me first, then shakes hands with Amber. “Amber, nice to meet you in person.”
I’m never sure whether to be impressed or weirded out when someone researches how to shake hands with an amputee. It suggests thoughtfulness and calculated manipulation in equal measure. I try to disregard the feeling. Amber greeted me the same way. She probably mentioned it to him.
“Amber’s excited we’re meeting,” I say.
“I am, as well.”
He flags down the waiter, who takes our drink orders and we make idle chat about the Portland tech scene until our cocktails come.
He tells stories about working for Pierre at Braeburn, a notorious user experience control freak, and mocks Pierre’s well-known speaking style. “Anyone can make a user experience that goes from one step to the next. Seamless flow without steps, breaks, or constraints, this is what sets apart real design!”
We laugh and clink our glasses in a toast.
“Honestly though, Pierre is brilliant.” Kevin takes a sip and puts his glass down to talk with his hands. “I must give the man the respect he’s due. He walks into a review meeting one time, a presentation we spent weeks preparing for, picks up a sharpie, and before anyone says a word, marks up the design concepts bordering the room. It didn’t take him more than a minute tops to grok the whole user experience and then cut it all in half.”
He’s intelligent, articulate, but he laughs a bit too loud at his own jokes, and he’s too earnest when he’s serious.
I’m taking a sip when it hits me. He reminds me of Neil, the computer hacker I hired to backfill my position at Tomo, who went on to betray the company. I choke on my drink and start a coughing fit. Amber and Kevin pass me napkins and my glass of water, but I shake them off.
“A few drops down the wrong pipe,” I manage to gasp. “I’m fine. Ignore me.”
I clear my throat a few times as Kevin talks about designing for web and mobile. I try to ignore the comparison to Neil, because I know it will prejudice me against him, but I can’t help it. Neil had the same ingratiating mannerisms, even though I only realized that in retrospect. Only after he’d screwed over Tomo.
He’s not Neil, yet the vibe he gives off convinces me this is a setup.
I grab my phone from my bag and send Amber a text: Are you sure this guy is legit, and he is who he says he is?
A few seconds later, Amber slips her phone out of her pocket, glances at it, and looks at me like I’m crazy. She gives me an eye-nod that says, Yes, of course, and then goes back to paying attention to him.
“Excuse me,” I say, and take my phone to the restroom.
I do a quick search for Kevin, find his online profile. Yep, that’s really him. There’s an interview on a prom
inent UX blog from his time at Braeburn. Same photo. I rub my eyes and stare at myself in the mirror. Am I going crazy? I scan my body, as though the evidence of mental instability might be located somewhere on my extremities. I feel okay, though he gives me the heebie-jeebies. Did Tomo hire him to spy on us?
Wait, this is me, isn’t it? I take a deep breath. I’m having a panic attack for no reason. It’s PTSD, that’s all. I wiggle my toes, feel them in my shoes. Focus on my pants, the feel of them hanging on my waist, the fabric brushing my knees. I squint in the glare of the light above the mirror. Someone walks into the restroom. I ignore them, concentrating on my grounding exercise.
PTSD or not, there’s no way I’m hiring him. Kernighan, Ritchie, and Thompson could all show up and praise him as the next God of all things software, and I wouldn’t let Kevin be any part of Tapestry. The thought of sitting at the table with him has me in a cold sweat.
Shit, I can’t stay in the bathroom for the whole meal. I reluctantly go back and gingerly take my seat. The food still hasn’t come.
“Feeling better?” Amber asks.
I nod.
“Maybe you could tell Kevin about your vision for Tapestry?”
Kevin turns to me, a gentle smile on his face, his blue eyes focused on me in a trusting gaze.
Neil had that gaze and he stole the company data. That fiasco got me placed on a leave of absence, nearly got me fired. I went back to work months later full of self-doubt. That’s when I met Jeremy.
A single drop of sweat runs down my forehead. I can’t do it.
“You know what?” I say. “I’m not feeling well. I need to go. Sorry.” I grab my bag and turn to Amber. “Can you Uber home?”
“Uh, sure,” Amber says, looking back and forth between us. “You okay?”
“Yeah, no. I mean, maybe it was something I ate at lunch. Good to meet you, Kevin.” The words taste like ashes as I force out the bare minimum of politeness.
I nearly run outside to my car. Sitting inside, I rest my head on the steering wheel.
I screwed up, didn’t I? Like Emily said I would because I can’t handle being in the same place with a man. All the therapy in the world didn’t stop a panic attack.
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