“Get to my office, now.” The voice on the phone was Harvey’s, not Tara’s, and it was angry.
Harvey hung up and Todd put the phone away. “Fuck you,” he said out loud. Whatever he had to say could wait.
But when he called again and Tara still didn’t pick up, Todd realized that whatever Harvey wanted him to come to the office for might be related to her.
“Nick, I’m just going to pop back to the office for two seconds,” he said, trying to hide his rising concern. “I’ll be back in time.”
“It’s cool.” Nick grinned broadly. “Christy and I have got this, don’t we, Christy?” he said to the event coordinator, who forced a smile as she affixed a microphone onto Nick’s lapel.
Todd felt his heartbeat escalate as he sat in the cab, cursing the traffic. They hadn’t made a mistake in their work last night, had they?
“Can you please go?” Todd snapped as the driver slammed on the brakes again.
“What you want me to do?” the driver said, pointing at a delivery truck backing into the street at a glacial pace.
“Fuck it, I’ll walk,” Todd said, throwing a ten-dollar bill at the driver.
—
HE WAITED FOR THE ELEVATOR, ignoring all the people who congratulated him on his big day, punching the button again and again as if it would help.
“What’d you do to Tara?” Lillian Dumas smirked as she strolled up, standing beside him and watching the floor numbers above the elevator tick by.
“What are you talking about, Lillian?” Todd said, exasperated. He didn’t have time for Lillian’s bullshit.
“Do you not know? She quit.”
“What?” Todd’s jaw dropped as the elevator doors opened.
“Yo! Todd! Good luck today, man.” Someone punched his arm, but Todd ignored him, his gaze set on Lillian. “Tara quit?”
Lillian stepped onto the elevator and Todd followed. “She sent an e-mail to the team this morning, thanking us for the pleasure of working together. You didn’t get it?” Lillian asked smugly. “I guess she didn’t have as good of a time working with you.”
“Did she get an offer somewhere else?” Todd asked, not caring that his face revealed his shock.
“No.” Lillian shook her head. “Her e-mail said she was taking time to figure things out.”
The elevator doors opened and she stepped out, fluttering her fingers in a wave. “Have a good day, Todd!” What a bitch.
Had Tara seriously quit? Why? And why hadn’t she e-mailed him or talked to him about it? Weren’t they friends? And what was she doing if she wasn’t going to a competitor?
He got to the forty-second floor and caught the silhouette of a pretty blonde girl standing at the window of one of the conference rooms next to Harvey’s office. He wished he were meeting with her.
“You can go on in,” Harvey’s assistant told Todd, looking nervous for him.
The senior vice chairman stood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking out the window.
“Would you like to tell me what you’ve done?” he asked when he heard Todd enter, not bothering to turn around.
Todd shut the door behind him. “We closed the book last night,” he said cautiously. “We were able to sell all but eighty million, which I think is pretty good given the circumstances. I’ve been over at NASDAQ with—”
“When was the last time you spoke to Rich Baker?” Harvey asked, his back still toward Todd.
Todd’s stomach dropped. “Why?” he asked, careful.
“And Rachel Liu?” Harvey asked, finally turning around. “When was the last time you spoke with her?”
“Is something the matter?” Todd asked.
Harvey pounded his fist on the table. “Yes, something is the fucking matter,” he said, his voice losing control. “You asked a research analyst to write a favorable report and then paid out of pocket for a PR firm to bribe CNBC to run a story about it.”
“Who told you that?” Todd’s defenses shot up. He wasn’t admitting to anything.
“You did, Todd,” Harvey said. “I just saw a video of the whole thing, which was conveniently recorded by a Crowley Brown paralegal at the pool of the Rosewood Hotel after your meeting there. Luckily, she’s decided not to go public with the information which, I’m sure you know, would ruin the deal and this firm.”
“What? How?” he asked, trying to piece it together as the room started to spin. “Who?”
“She’s here.” Harvey tilted his head to the conference room. “Shall we go talk to her?”
Todd’s legs were uneasy as he followed Harvey to the conference room where the blonde woman turned from the window. She looked familiar.
“Mr. Kent,” Harvey said. “This is Miss Pfeffer.”
Pfeffer? Did Todd know anyone named Pfeffer?
She reached out her hand and smiled. “Amanda,” she said. “We’ve met a few times before, I believe.”
Todd studied her face, stripping away the neatly done hair and fitted suit and professional smirk until he saw the girl he’d . . .
Holy shit.
NICK
THURSDAY, MAY 15; NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Nick sat with his hot assistant, Tiffany, at a table by the window in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental.
“A bottle of champagne, please,” he asked the waiter. “Your finest.”
“I personally would recommend the 1995 Salon Grand Cru.” The waiter pointed to the menu.
“Sounds excellent,” Nick said, not even flinching at the twenty-five hundred price tag. At thirty-four dollars a share, he was worth $111 million, not a measly $85. Any figure that was in the single thousands was practically pocket change.
Of course, he couldn’t sell any of his shares until the lockup expired six months from now, but by then the price would be even higher, boosted by his strategic leadership.
Nick smiled out the window at the sweeping view of Central Park. He’d turned down several interviews following the opening bell on the NASDAQ, which he’d rung this morning when the markets opened. Everything would still take an hour or two to settle and for the share to start actively trading, and rather than have the cameras watching his reaction, he’d decided to come here, with Tiffany, to celebrate. There would be plenty of interviews in the coming weeks and months and years, but how often did a man get to experience his first IPO, with a bottle of champagne and a beautiful woman, looking out over Central Park from one of the most luxurious hotels in the world?
The waiter returned and popped the champagne, and Nick toasted Tiffany, who smiled sweetly. He hadn’t asked whether she’d broken up with her boyfriend yet, but he wasn’t concerned. No woman could resist what he now had to offer.
He sipped the champagne and looked at his iPad, which streamed a Notorious B.I.G. playlist into his headphones while he toggled between Yahoo Finance and CNBC, reading for news about himself.
He felt Tiffany’s hand on his arm and looked up. She’d put down her champagne and her face was concerned.
Nick took out one of his earbuds. “What?”
“Nick, you need to look at this,” she said.
“Just a second.” He held up a finger while he refreshed Yahoo Finance. Nothing new yet.
“Nick,” she insisted.
“What is it?” he said, annoyed.
“The New York Times.” She handed him her iPad.
“Who reads the New York Times?” he said as he took the device from her. Everything that mattered was on TechCrunch and Forbes.
Nick read the headline:
SECURITY BREACH AT HOOK LINKED TO JACOBSON MURDER CASE
He felt his heart stop.
The Times has learned that Hook, the location-based dating app company scheduled to go public this morning, had a security breach last March, when an unidentified user hacked into the app’s system to loc
ate Kelly Jacobson the night of her murder. While the user has not been identified, the source confirmed the user was with Kelly in the hours leading up to her death, and that it was an account linked to someone other than Robby Goodman, the Stanford senior who stands accused of her murder. The same source revealed that the company stores information in a way that makes users’ histories identifiable, in contrast to statements made by—
Nick’s phone rang in his pocket. He felt sweat burst from his pores when he saw the number.
“Phil,” he said into the phone, trying to sound casual.
“What’s going on, Nick?”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked, deciding to feign ignorance until he had all the facts.
“Why, with all that education of yours, did you not think it prudent to tell me someone had hacked into our systems?” Phil’s voice was not friendly. “And then have the nerve to let me stand before all my peers and vouch for our security?”
“I didn’t think—”
“Please tell me you deleted the database,” Phil said, “per the agreement we made wherein I installed you as CEO, and that this reporter in the New York Times is mistaken.”
Nick’s face drained.
“Juan was supposed to do it,” Nick said. “I’ll call the team right now and have them make sure—”
“Federal investigators are already at the office, Nick. They’re at my office, too, collecting files and making sure no one touches anything.”
“They can’t do that.” Nick shook his head.
“They can do whatever they damn well please,” Phil snapped. “Call L.Cecil and have them stop the IPO immediately. We have to take back all the shares until we figure this out. And I swear to God, Nick, if the information from that database gets leaked, I’ll see to it that you never work again as long as I live.”
The phone clicked off.
Nick’s heart was pounding so fast he couldn’t breathe.
“What’s going on?” Tiffany asked, but she was far away, shrouded in glass.
“Water,” he said, reaching a hand out to the waiter, then trying to stand, collapsing back into the chair.
“Here.” Tiffany passed him a glass of champagne. “Drink this.”
“I can’t drink that!” he shouted at her. Was she stupid? “We can’t afford that!”
The other guests started to turn and stare, but he couldn’t see them.
“Tara!” he shouted. “Call Tara now!”
The girl took her phone out and dialed the number carefully. “She’s not picking up,” Tiffany reported. “Let me try your phone.” She reached across to his phone while he sat, gripping the chair, willing his heart to slow.
“She isn’t there.” Tiffany shook her head. “I’ll try Todd.” She dialed the number, but to the same effect.
Nick swallowed, closing his eyes as the room started to spin. Stay calm, he told himself, but the world went dark and his forehead hit the floor with a thud.
Tiffany’s enormous breasts were the first thing Nick saw when he came to. “What happened?” he grunted, as she dabbed a towel on his forehead.
“You fainted, Nick,” she said. “Do you remember?”
He shook his head, but then Phil’s voice came back and he closed his eyes again. “How long was I out?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Is the stock trading yet?”
She shook her head. “Do you feel okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. His heartbeat felt manageable and his brain was starting to clear.
“I’ve been trying to call Todd and Tara but neither is answering.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “We can’t cancel the IPO anyway.”
“But the news about—”
“We can’t cancel the IPO, Tiffany,” he said more firmly.
Nick had a two-million-dollar loan. If they canceled the IPO, that loan became a two-million-dollar debt that would start compounding at 25 percent annual interest six months from now, which he had no way to repay. But if the deal went through, his two and a half million shares would have some value, and the price would have to drop down to a dollar for him to not have enough to repay the loan and start clean. Even with the information about the database, surely there were enough investors out there who saw potential in a rebound to keep the price above a dollar.
“What about Phil?” Tiffany asked carefully.
“Let Phil think it was too late.”
He climbed into his chair and carefully read the New York Times article, start to finish.
It must have been Juan who told. Which was good, because no one would believe him once they found out he’d been fired for violating users’ private information. Rachel could write a story explaining how Juan was nothing more than an angry programmer trying to blame his former employer for his own misconduct.
The thought made his brain resettle. Everything was going to be fine. And if Phil couldn’t see that, then Phil wasn’t the hero Nick thought he was.
Nick refreshed his Yahoo Finance browser and the stock information loaded. The ticker symbol HOOK appeared, priced at $33.25.
“Okay,” he said, reaching for the champagne again, “here we go.”
A seventy-five-cent loss wasn’t the end of the world. He had six months to make it back, after all.
He waited fifteen seconds, the time it took for Yahoo to refresh its tickers, and refreshed the screen.
$33.08
He swallowed while he waited another fifteen seconds.
$31.17
Another fifteen seconds.
$29.12
Another fifteen seconds.
ERR.
Nick looked at the screen, pulling it closer to his face. “What?” He refreshed the screen, but got ERR again.
“Where is Todd?” he screamed at Tiffany, his pulse shooting up again. “What does ERR mean?”
“I don’t know,” Tiffany said helplessly, calling Todd again, but still unable to reach him. What good was she?
He looked at the screen: ERR. Refresh. ERR. Refresh. ERR.
“Here,” Tiffany said, turning her iPad toward him, where she was streaming CNBC’s coverage.
“Trading has halted on the NASDAQ for shares of Hook, which hit the exchange about twenty minutes ago, and we’re getting reports it’s because of a computer glitch . . .” The female reporter stopped to listen to something coming in through her earpiece.
“Yes, it seems the computers that are trading Hook have actually crashed as a result of an unprecedented number of sell requests. A story posted on the New York Times website this morning reported on a security breach in Hook’s systems that appears to be linked to the Kelly Jacobson murder, and the market seems to be having a literally catastrophic reaction.”
Nick swallowed, clenching his jaw. He could feel the tears start to form in his eyes. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, he willed himself, repeating the mantra he used to repeat when he was eight and the kids at school were being mean.
“This is good.” Tiffany’s hand was on his.
“How?” Nick shook his head as he felt the wetness work its way past his lids.
“It’s good,” Tiffany insisted. “Great, actually.”
“What do you know,” he spat, like an angry toddler. “You’re a secretary.”
“Nick,” she said, ignoring his jab, “if trading’s stopped, it’ll give the market time to settle down. People will start to gain perspective, and they’ll see this isn’t worth panicking over.”
“But—”
“But, nothing,” she interrupted. “This gives you time,” she said, “which is exactly what you need.”
Nick felt the tears retract and he took a deep breath in, nodding silently.
“They’re halting trading for the rest of the day,” she reported from the iPad
she was watching. “They think it might take up to two days to get the system up and running again.”
“Two days?”
“Yes.” She smiled, leaning forward. “That gives you two whole days to straighten this out.”
“You’re right.” He nodded, sitting up straighter. “Get Rachel Liu on the phone.”
“It’s going to cost you,” Rachel answered without any pleasantries, as if she’d been waiting for the phone to ring.
“How much?” he asked.
“Two million a day,” she said. “Cash, obviously.”
“You know I can’t give you that right now,” he said. “Come on, Rachel, after all the business I’ve given you, you’re really going to—”
“Call me when you change your mind.” She hung up the phone.
Nick took a breath and dialed her number back. “Fine,” he said. The price today didn’t matter to Hook: the company itself raised over two billion dollars last night. He might as well spend it on this.
“Okay,” she answered. “Here’s my proposal: We deny it entirely. Say we knew nothing about the database or the hacker and force whoever told to come forward and hang themselves,” she explained. “And then we say we’ll cooperate with officials so long as they see fit, but it’s our preference to shut down the database entirely and preserve user security.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I’ll send a statement to you by end of day to have your lawyers review.”
“Okay,” he said again.
“Just one thing,” Rachel said, her voice turning more serious. “Nick, you have to promise me there’s no way it can ever come out that you knew.”
“There’s nothing.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” she asked. “No e-mails, no voice messages, no texts? If we do this and they found out you knew, you’re a hell of a lot worse off than you are right now.”
“There’s nothing,” he repeated.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get started, then.”
He hung up the phone and looked at Tiffany. “Can you call Phil and tell him it’s under control?”
“Where are you going?” she asked as he stood up from the chair.
“I need to be alone for a little bit.”
The Underwriting Page 34