That got her attention. She sat up straight, the beady eyes that criticized my every move in team meetings darting from side to side. “What do you mean, let me go?”
“You’ve done nothing but set obstacles in my path from the moment I took this position. You don’t do your work and you are a terrible influence on Sean and Todd. I’ve asked you to deliver updates and statuses regularly and receive nothing back.”
The woman’s jaw dropped—as if she didn’t think she would ever be called to account for the way she’d undermined me for the past few weeks. “I send you updates all the time. They must have gotten lost in your email.”
“Really, Marcy? Don’t make this worse by lying and giving excuses that would make a fifth grader cringe.”
“You can’t do this!” she said. “I’ve been with ARCANE since the beginning! Nick won’t let you fire me.”
I shook my head. “Nick isn’t your boss. I am. And as your boss, I may terminate your employment due to a neglect of duties.”
“But… you can’t…” She folded her arms like a petulant child. “I’m not leaving.”
I ignored her statement. “I’ll give you the afternoon to pack your things and say goodbye to your former colleagues. Then you must turn in your badge and ID card. Now, please leave my office.”
Marcy got to her feet, legs trembling. “You can’t fire me. Nick will be livid, and then we’ll see who gets thrown out on their ass, you bitch.”
I stared dispassionately at her as Marcy insulted me. She wrenched the door open and then slammed it behind her, the sound so loud that my ears popped.
Good riddance.
If Nick wanted to keep that cancer around, there wouldn’t be much I could do about it, so I didn’t bother worrying how he would react. Instead, I turned to the bigger problem in front of me.
How do I turn the numbers around?
New subscriptions were down forty percent from the previous quarter—a huge deficit to make up. I’d hoped charities might prove to be the answer, but if they couldn’t spare the cash, then the only way to get ARCANE in the door would be to give it away, and that wouldn’t help revenue one bit.
Wait a second… If we donated services to charities, we could drastically increase awareness.
Not only would employees of the charities learn ARCANE’s systems and how they work, but donors and recipients might use the system as well, especially at financially based organizations like Seed for Growth.
A large marketing campaign could highlight ARCANE’s contributions to the nonprofit sector, underscoring how vital the service is to the wellbeing of those less fortunate. Instead of approaching potential clients cold and attempting to sell based off facts and figures, donating services would inject a human element into the story, a narrative to coax clients into learning about and accepting ARCANE as a premiere data security option.
I need to write this down.
A dam had burst in my mind, and ideas flooded through with astonishing speed. There had been a few times in my life when creativity had flowed like a fountain, enough to know that letting it sweep me along was the best thing I could do.
I rode the high for a long time, not looking at the clock for fear it would drag me out of the headspace. Hours could have passed. Sheet after sheet of crisp white paper filled with frantic pen scribbles as ideas flowed and changed and merged.
When the phone rang, I nearly threw it against the wall. I snapped the receiver up. “What?”
“Katherine, this is Nick. Come to my office.”
I almost snarled. “Not now, Nick. I’m busy. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” I hung up without waiting for a response.
A part of me screamed about how I shouldn’t have done that, how I should run to Nick’s office and apologize. That part wasn’t in control, dominated by the rest of me that was sick and tired of the forces in the office arrayed against my success.
I worked on a cost-benefit analysis based on loose estimations of how many charities we could donate to, their size, the increased exposure, the campaigns we could run, and the cost of donated services. Once I'd tallied the figures and checked twice, I finally set the pen down.
This could work.
My heart pumped fast, a steady stream of adrenaline fueling the spree of brainstorming and calculations. I wanted to kiss someone, and the first face to spring to mind was James. Twice now, his suggestions led to huge strides forward in developing a strategy. I owed him.
One for this, and one for the other night. He’s stacking up the favors.
With quick motions, I folded the sheet of paper with the final numbers and took it with me as I left my office.
Marcy sat at her desk, arms crossed and sullen as she glared at me. A box sat beside her, half filled with belongings.
Sean and Todd stood next to her, and they also looked up. The men turned tail and went back to their desks.
Satisfaction filled me at the sight of the two abandoning their leader.
That’s right. I’m willing to fire you if you don’t get your acts together. Let’s see if this gets results out of you.
I knocked on Nick’s door, not sure what kind of reception I walked into.
“Nick? You wanted to see me?”
The ARCANE CEO sat behind his impressive desk and waved me in without looking. With no other direction I sat at the chair opposite his desk and waited.
“I hear you fired Marcy?” He said it off-handedly, not looking away from his computer screen.
I hesitated. It was impossible to tell if he was angry or indifferent. “I did. She produced hardly any work and was a bad influence on the other two members of my team. Things should tick along more smoothly without her.”
“She has been with us for a long time. If I hadn’t hired you, she might have gotten your job.”
Nick’s deadpan was hard to interpret. After a few seconds of failing to come up with an inoffensive way of responding, I snapped. Marcy had been a huge thorn in my side, and Nick was an asshole. Why would I try to watch my words around them?
“If you’d put her in my position, that would have been a huge mistake. I may be inexperienced, but she’s incompetent. I can learn new skills, but she’ll always be lazy and a waste of resources.”
That earned me a look. It was only a few seconds, but Nick’s narrowed eyes found mine, flicked down to my cleavage and back up before darting back to his screen. I rolled my eyes.
“Good. She’s been a dead weight for a long time. That doesn’t change the situation here, though. You have three months to give us the best sales quarter in company history, otherwise you either get on your knees or you get the hell out.”
“I have an idea about how we can do that,” I said, ignoring Nick’s proposition as if I hadn’t heard it. I slapped the paper bearing my quick calculations onto the desk. “A marketing strategy that could explode ARCANE’s awareness in our target demographic.”
That got his attention. “Is that right?” He picked up the paper and scanned it. “You want to give away our services for free? Are you an idiot?”
I gritted my teeth. “It’s a proven tactic. We suffer from a lack of awareness about our services. We offer a great product, but no one knows about it or why they should use it. If we give it away for free to highly influential charities in the financial sector, it will increase our exposure among the exact people who have decision-making power at private firms.”
Nick stared at the paper before folding it over and setting it back down. “I don’t like it. Never give a quality product away for free, Katherine. If you don’t get paid, you’re losing.”
I shook my head. “That’s complete bullshit, Nick. If we donate services to these charities, we could end up with triple the number of paid subscriptions coming back at us. Our margins are more than high enough to take the hit.”
We stared at each other. For once his gaze didn’t settle a foot below my eyes.
“Take this away,” he said, pushing the paper across the desk.
“Come back tomorrow with hard numbers, not these bullshit estimates. If the numbers make sense, I’ll think about approving this campaign.”
I ripped the paper off the desk and stood. “They will.”
He might have stared at my ass all the way out the door, but I never looked back because I didn’t want anything to detract from this small, hard-won victory.
The only problem was coming up with better estimates by tomorrow.
I might have to stay here all night.
CHAPTER 12
~ JAMES ~
The sun hung low in the sky, lighting lingering trails of mist with a reddish gold sheen. It was an alluring look, as though San Francisco was a city of magic out of a fictional story.
I pulled out my phone as I strolled along Market, firing a text to Kat. The plan was solid, but she had to be in the office alone for it to work.
Are you still working? All by yourself again?
The duffel bag shifted over my shoulder, and I shrugged it higher up. It contained everything necessary to execute the data-gathering part of the mission. Unlike a military black ops mission, this was a whole other bag of tricks.
The phone beeped.
Yes. Everyone left a few hours ago. I barely noticed. Working on something big and awesome for tomorrow. Might be here for the rest of the night.
Perfect.
A quick turn down Fourth Street, and Kat’s office came into view. It was a newly renovated building with a handful of startups as the tenants, and the renovations had been targeted accordingly. There was a bike room complete with repair equipment, a boutique coffee shop in the lobby, a green wall and waterfalls in the hall leading to the elevators.
Just like any office building, there was a security guard, and multiple checkpoints that required a magnetic access card. The first one was on the exterior doors.
Leaning against a wall of the building next door, I placed myself so that none of the cameras pointed my way. Even at this time of night, there would be a few people coming and going from the building—it was the nature of startups and the people who worked at them.
From my spot hiding in plain sight, I waited until a pair of young men in jeans and sweaters came into view through the glass doors, headed toward the exit and the crisp evening air. Stirring from my spot, I timed my stride so that I reached the doors a moment after the two men on the other side. They pushed the door open, and I looked them in the eyes and nodded thanks as I entered behind them.
One down.
The “con” in con man and con job stood for “confidence,” and there was a reason I was one of the best in the business.
I straightened as tall as I could and then slumped down slightly, mimicking the posture of a man in his late twenties on an errand. Schooling my features to match, I strolled along the hall toward the lobby and the elevators—overseen by the guard at the security desk.
Coming into the lobby, I gave the guard at the desk a friendly nod and a half-wave as I walked to the elevators. I stood there for a second, looking around for floor buttons that didn’t exist, scratching my head at the magnetic card readers beside each elevator door.
“Can I help you?”
I turned to the guard. He had partially stood from his seat behind the desk, realizing that I didn’t belong.
“Oh, hey there. Are there no buttons for these things?”
He stood fully. “Sir, this is a secure building. If you don’t have an access card, then I will have to escort you off the premises.”
I walked over to the desk and widened my eyes. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know I couldn’t come in here.” I looked down at the man’s shirt and read his name tag. “Rob, you’ve gotta cut me slack, here. My girlfriend’s up there working late tonight and I thought I could score major brownie points if I brought her dinner, you know what I mean?”
The guard hesitated. “What’s in the bag?”
With quick hands I unzipped a pocket on the duffel bag and pulled out a large foil bundle. A wisp of steam curled out from the packaging. “Just a burrito. It’s her favorite.”
“Damn, that smells good.” He eyed me. “Where does your girlfriend work?”
“ARCANE, on the fourth floor. I know my way there, I’ve just never walked in without her and I forgot about the card readers.”
Rob scratched his jaw. “Okay, go ahead. She’ll have to let you into the offices. I don’t have control over that. I’ll be watching you on the cameras to make sure you end up where you’re supposed to.”
I smiled wide. “Oh, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate this. If I get lucky tonight it’s thanks to you.”
He chuckled and waved me off. “Just go feed your girlfriend. Have a good one.”
“You too.”
The elevator opened for me, and I gave the guard one final wave before I slid through the doors.
Two down.
The final barrier should be the easiest. When the elevator stopped on the fourth floor, I called Kat.
“Hello? James? Did you not get my text? I’m still at work, I don’t think I’ll be able to get together tonight.”
I grinned. “I don’t know, it might be easier than you thought.”
“What do you mean?” I loved when I could make her voice sound like that—suspicious and curious at the same time.
“Just come out to the front of your office.”
“James. What are you talking about?”
Through the large glass double doors that separated ARCANE’s offices from the hallway on the fourth floor, Kat appeared from behind an office door. Her jaw dropped as I waved to her.
“What are you doing here? Oh, my God, James!”
Kat hung up and ran to the door, cracking it open. She tried to ask a question, but I interrupted with a sudden deep kiss. It caught her off guard, but within a second she responded with equal passion. I cracked an eye open and gave a thumbs up to the closest camera and the watching security guard. The kiss was brief, but by the time we broke it off, we were each a little out of breath.
“Surprise,” I said. “Thought you could use food and a break.”
Her nose widened as she inhaled. “Is that what I think it is?”
I nodded. “Burritos. I don’t know about you, but that would do it for me right now.”
Kat held the door open. “I shouldn’t be letting you in without the proper clearance, but it’s not like you’re the type of person we’re supposed to keep out of here.”
She has no idea.
“I sure hope not.”
“Why don’t I show you around?” Kat asked, and led me on a tour of the small set of rooms. “This is the main office area where ninety percent of the employees sit. As you can see, it’s all open concept and arranged by team, so all of my people sit together in this section here, and those desks over there are the sales guys. The cushy section by the windows is where the software engineers and mathematicians sit. It’s the brain-trust—those guys are scary smart.”
From there, we walked through the few rooms off the main office. “A couple meeting rooms, here. The employee lounge—this is where people eat and we come to hang out when there’s a spare moment. It’s got everything a standard startup needs: pool table, foosball, table tennis, and video games.”
“Interesting. The bank would never even consider putting a room like this in. It doesn’t occur to the corporate types that placing a haven of distraction in the middle of a work environment might improve employee morale and encourage harder work when not on break.”
Kat nodded. “Mmhm. It’s a different world, that’s for sure. Now this room here is the server room, and that’s where the algorithms and everything are held and all the magic happens.”
I stepped up to the door and looked through the window. Rows of computers sat in metal racks, wires bundled neatly and running in thick cables through the walls. The handle was locked, but it didn’t look like it had any special security on it.
“Bathrooms are here, just your stand
ard office affairs. There are other ones in the building’s gym that have showers and everything.”
“Makes sense. If you come in before work, you wouldn’t want to be sweaty all day.”
“Exactly,” Kat nodded. “And for some people who ride their bikes in every day, they want to take a shower after. Finally, here are the offices for the management, and this one is mine.”
She held the door open for me. Instead of stepping through, I dropped the duffel bag and put my hands on her hips. I pressed her back against the door, pinning her there.
Kat lifted her face to mine, bringing her lips within striking distance. They were soft as ever, waiting for me to capture them. We’d kissed enough times that the chemistry was automatic—there was no awkward bumping of teeth or mismatched timing of mouths. The joining of our lips was a Broadway play, the best of the best, an all-star event.
I loosed a low, animalistic groan and Kat responded with her own moan in return. My hand found her neck and the other her thigh, pulling her leg up until it wrapped around me. We pressed into each other as if we could force our bodies together and join into one.
I broke the kiss, hand still on Kat’s neck and controlling her head. I waited until she opened her eyes.
“Do you trust me?”
It took only a shadow of a moment before she nodded. “Of course.”
“Good.”
I recaptured her mouth and turned her around, guiding her backward until her ass bumped into the wide meeting table that dominated a third of the room. Then I bent over to pick something out of the duffel bag on the ground.
A fluttering piece of black silk streamed out of the side pocket, a bare wisp of fabric.
“What is that?” Kat asked, her voice low with the sultry rasp it got when she was turned on.
I didn’t answer, but instead brought the silk to her face, wrapping it around and tying it at the back.
“Can you see?”
Kat shook her head. “Can’t see a damn thing. Pitch black in here.”
“Good.”
I traced my fingers along her arms until they arrived at her neck. Goosebumps pebbled her skin in response, the sensations heightened by not being able to see where I would go next. Kat wore a dress that exposed a healthy amount of cleavage, so I drew my fingertips over the erotic skin next, barely grazing her.
Steal: A Bad Boy Romance Page 7