Coming To Reason (A Long Road to Love)

by O'Connor, Liza

  “I see your point. But did you find something else?”

  “There’s film of some disgruntled employee trying to throw a cabinet from a fifth story window which would have killed her, but a black-coated man wearing a mask came to her rescue.”

  The one and only decent thing Trent Lancaster has ever done. But, still, the whole nonsense escalated until the police arrested Carrie and Trent.

  “I’ve seen the video, but I understood the police dropped all charges.”

  “They dropped the charges on Lancaster, but they never filed any against Miss Hanson. However, it’s possible she paid for her free pass with sex.”

  His anger flared. “What proof do you have?”

  “Rumors. Which also have her in Trent’s harem as his favorite girl.”

  Dan rubbed his temples. “Anything else?”

  “Her sister and parents have nothing nice to say about her. Claim she’s been an embarrassment to the family from day one.”

  “Okay, now I’m getting pissed off. Where do these people live?”

  “On the other coast, and stay away from them. They sound like the suing type.”

  “Send the full report and copies of the investigator’s initial notes.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry, Dan. I know you thought she had promise. But the good news is you don’t need her to solve this problem anymore.”

  “Carrie is the reason it got solved. Without her help, Destiny wouldn’t have known how to search the database.”

  A heavy groan came from the other side. “Why is nothing ever simple? Any chance Destiny can claim she did this by herself and back it up with the knowledge of how to do it, if challenged?”

  “I’m sure she could. Carrie teaches when she does something. Destiny insists she learns more from Carrie in a day than her professors in a semester.”

  “And not mention Carrie during her testimony?”

  “I don’t know if she’ll agree to a lie of omission.”

  “Well, if Carrie is brought up, I can pretty well guarantee you, Sandra will walk.”

  “Charles, if you met this young woman, you’d see—”

  “Not happening. Send me the data Destiny prepares and I’ll let you know your chances of success. Once you review the investigation of Carrie, step back and assess unemotionally if you really want your daughter around Miss Hanson. Everyone who knows her claims she’s trouble. She’s either causing it, or she’s a magnet, but either way trouble finds her.”

  Charles’s warning caused Dan’s teeth to clench. He had to relax his jaw to respond. “I’ll send you the information whenever it’s done tonight.”

  “If it’s after eight, send it to my fax at home.”

  Dan hung up the phone. Was Carrie a magnet for trouble? He discounted the parents. They had damned near starved their child to death. The problems Carrie had incurred this last year, he blamed on Trent.

  But had she gravitated to other men like Trent in her past?

  Helen knocked and entered. She placed a folder on his desk and left. He opened it to find the investigator’s report.

  Upon reading it, Dan’s temper flared.

  Charles had skipped all the positive comments she’d received from her professors, of both genders, and roommates from her college years.

  Additional glowing comments came from professionals who knew her. Dave Massey and several others had nothing but nice things to say about her.

  Several of Trent’s employees, who had been released during the turnabout, trashed her as his lackey.

  He moved on to the field notes and learned a great deal about her earlier years from her first roommate. While her parents put her twin through college, they didn’t give Carrie a penny. Due to their high incomes, she didn’t qualify for hardship scholarships. So while her sister attended UCLA, Carrie went to a small, unimpressive college on an academic scholarship.

  According to the roommate, the only time her parents had contacted her was when they ordered her home to attend her sister’s graduation. They insisted she miss her graduation and pay for her flight to California to celebrate Caroline’s grand accomplishment of graduating in the top quarter of her class. Carrie refused, and continued to refuse, even after some brutal badgering from both parents. She stayed in New York, attended her own graduation, giving her valedictory speech to a smaller audience.

  Dan’s heart hurt for her. How this small, deliberately starved child had grown into such a marvelous, optimistic person astounded him. Most people would have become bitter as hell.

  He returned to the final report, pissed the investigator had only included she’d graduated first in her class of four hundred, but nothing about the obstacles she’d overcome to attend college in the first place.

  Annoyed, he called the investigator. “Did you check her social security number?”

  “Of course. Basic procedure.”

  “If it’s so basic, then why do I have one social security number listed for twenty something different names in my database?”

  After a pause, the guy replied, his words clipped and angry. “I don’t know, Dan. Would you like me to investigate your daughter and determine if she made a mistake or screwed up intentionally?”

  Dan’s temper flared. “The problem began long before Destiny came to work.”

  “Give me a name?”

  He closed his eyes and recalled the list he had seen on the monitor. “Adam Smith.”

  After a moment, the man spoke. “No Adam Smith. Which means you never asked me to perform an investigation.”

  Dan groaned. He relied on the consultant to order investigations, with Greg checking they had done so. “Does Greg send you a list to verify his investigations correspond with yours?”

  “No. I send him a list of names, along with my bill.”

  “I want you to do a financial investigation on Sandra Parker. She’s one of my consultants, should be in your files.” He grimaced. “And do one on Greg, as well, but send it through Charles. I don’t want Greg seeing his name on the list.”

  “Got it. And these wrong social security numbers you wanted to slam me for?”

  “All the people came from Sandra, starting three months after she came to work for me twelve years ago.”

  A heavy sigh whistled through the phone. “I never slack on your investigations, Dan. Your business is half my income. I give you a hundred percent effort. I promise you no one asked me to investigate those people. I would have caught the false social security number within an hour of receipt.”

  “I agree. I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

  “We’ll sort this out. First, I’ll investigate Greg. Sandra looks guilty as hell, but you need to know as soon as possible about your second in command.”

  The moment Dan hung up, Helen knocked on the door and entered. “Excuse me, but there’s a gentleman from Top Value with a chair. He needs Carrie Hanson to sign for it, but she’s not in her office, or Jeff’s, or the bathroom, or the break room. I insisted I could sign, but he says it has to be her.

  “She’s with Destiny.”

  Helen smiled and hurried off.

  He decided to watch Carrie receive her ‘tiny’ chair. He needed his spirit uplifted.

  Chapter 10

  Destiny and Carrie ignored the first polite round of knocking, but the second urgent rapping got their attention. Destiny jumped up and opened the door two inches.

  Helen spoke from the hall. “Carrie, you are needed to sign for a delivery.”

  Destiny objected. “Can’t you sign for it?”

  “No,” echoed Carrie and Helen. Carrie squeezed out the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  “He’s waiting in the lobby,” Helen called after her.

  When she arrived, a man with a beautiful, small, maroon chair stood facing the elevators.

  When the doors opened, he rolled it in.

  “Wait!” Carrie cried. “Don’t leave.”

  He rolled the chair out. “I’d decided you had left for the day.”


  Carried recognized the guy as the product manager, Allan.

  He pulled a half-inch thick stack of paper from his briefcase. They sat on the couch in the receptionist area and reviewed each document. She appreciated he didn’t expect her to sign without reading it.

  When he got to the ‘don’t let our competitors know anything about this product, including its existence’ contract, he even provided verbal examples of what she couldn’t do.

  “You cannot suggest to Trent, or any other competitor, they might think about serving the small person market. If you meet with them in your office, you will need to remove it to a safe place during their visit.”

  The list went on and on. Finally, he stopped and met her eyes. “Our lawyers went nuts when we said we wanted you to review our chair. But Dave insisted you could be trusted and believes we’ll get our best feedback from you, with quality suggestions for improvements. And I agree. However, if a competitor gets wind of this, investigators will jump all over you, and if they find a connection between you and the leak, the company will sue you for every viable asset you have.”

  Carrie frowned. While a beautiful chair, she didn’t want to lose her house over it.

  “They have to prove I’m guilty, right? I’m confident I’m not going to leak its existence. However, I’m not willing to risk my house on someone getting wind about this from other people working on the project.”

  “They will need to show concrete proof. Both Dave and I will insist upon it, because we will begin with the assumption you are innocent until proven guilty.”

  She released the air her paralyzed lungs had held since her house became at risk.

  “I will keep my office locked at all times, and when anyone knocks on my door, I will cover it with a throw before answering. I would offer to leave the throw on, but I need to sit on the chair as it’s intended.”

  Allan nodded in agreement. “I’m assuming you and Trent are no longer speaking.”

  Why did everyone think they’d broken up? However, she didn’t want to get into their stressed-out relationship. “I haven’t spoken to him this week, but rest assured, when we do speak, your new line will never come into the conversation.”

  His brow furrowed and he glanced at the chair.

  “To be honest, Trent is so self-absorbed right now, he wouldn’t hear me if I talked about nothing else. All he wants to do is complain over stuff he’s unhappy about, and I guarantee no piece of furniture will make his list of prioritized complaints.”

  “Good point.” He pointed to the places for her to sign. Then they made a copy of both the standard and special contract. Helen even came and notarized them. Finally, she had a beautiful maroon chair built for her size. Upon seeing Allan off, she rolled her new possession to Destiny’s office so she could use it during their impending long night’s work.

  Dan stood outside his office, smiling at her, as she pushed it down the hall. His good-natured resilience impressed her. Trent would have been a bear for weeks if he’d incurred all the horrible things Dan had today.

  Once she arrived at Destiny’s office, she swore Destiny to utter secrecy about her new baby. “If a leak occurs and they trace it to me, I’ll be sued and I’ll lose my house. So never, ever, talk about the chair.”

  Destiny’s eyes rounded. She placed her hand over her heart and raised her other hand. “I pledge total silence about the object I will never mention.”

  Carrie rewarded her with a smile, pushed the big chair away, and sat in her tiny one. It required no hopping to get into, and it conformed to her back with perfection. However, she soon discovered one big problem. She barely reached eye level with the desktop.

  She reached beneath the seat and tugged at levers. Her first choice caused the back to relax and a footstool to kick her feet into a drawer. Destiny laughed herself into tears and doubled over.

  Carrie couldn’t figure out how to undo the recliner position, so she got off and looked beneath the seat. She noticed a second lever close to the first and pulled it. The seat flew up so fast it smacked the side of her head.

  Destiny squealed in outrage, no longer finding anything funny. “Send the damn thing back. It’s a death trap. Your temple is all red now.”

  Carrie suspected it would be purple all too soon, which might cause a problem. Trent would notice a giant bruise on the side of her face and demand to know how she got it. Since she didn’t want to lie to him, she needed to avoid seeing him until after this weekend, even if he wanted to have make-up sex, which she suspected he’d want, since they hadn’t talked all week and his last bombardment of angry, then pathetic messages suggested he needed comfort.

  Maybe she could tell him she hit her head on the edge of her office furniture while bending over. If pushed, she would blame the desk, but she doubted he would demand such detail. He would jump to suing Dan or some such nonsense.

  She stared at her chair, now excessively tall and laid back. At its current height, she had great access to the levers, but still couldn’t get the back to return to its vertical position. No one should be reclining while at work anyway. With Destiny’s assistance, she got the back righted and the seat lowered. Climbing in, Carrie raise herself to a comfortable level to continue their work.

  “Okay, the Lucille Ball comedy hour is over. Let’s get back to work.”

  Destiny glared at it. “The little guy has some serious defects.”

  “True, but when it’s behaving, it’s very nice.” She chuckled. “Rather like Trent.”

  “Then you should definitely dump it,” Destiny muttered.

  “What could you have against Trent? You’ve never even met him.”

  “True, but I’ve heard enough to dislike him.”

  “What have you heard?” Carrie asked.

  “He has a harem and he’s ripped my dad off for almost two million in commissions.”

  Carrie choked. She hadn’t realized the amount was so high. No wonder Dan intended to sue.

  “Well, the harem thing is a false rumor. However, the other is real, and Trent is totally in the wrong there. I offered to intervene, but Dan asked me to stay out of the dispute.”

  “Let’s focus on these reports. Dad’s depending on us.” Destiny pouted, clearly not happy with the topic of Trent.

  Carrie wanted to ask where she’d heard about the harem. She couldn’t believe Dan would spread such lies. But Destiny had the right point of focus. They had to get this report done before they could leave.

  ***

  They finished the analysis at eight and walked Dan through it by eight-thirty. He requested an additional comparison of the candidates investigated against the list of problem names.

  Destiny shook her head and gazed at him with sad puppy dog eyes. “Dad, we don’t have the data in any system. Greg receives paper billings from the investigator. You’re talking huge man-hours of checking for what I’m guessing isn’t going to be there.”

  He looked to Carrie, who nodded in agreement. “When Greg comes in tomorrow, we could verify the hypothesis, but to check every single name and time could take months.”

  “So I’ve a gaping hole in my controls?”

  Carrie spoke up before he became upset. “You don’t have to. You could require your PI to create his list of investigated people on a word document. He could email the doc and we could drop it into a table and write a report, matching candidates sent on interviews to those checked out.”

  Destiny smiled. “I can write the report.”

  Carrie added, “However, a better control would be to give him secure input access to a specific table in our database so he can input directly into our system, removing time lags. Thus, we could flag candidates being sent without investigation before their actual interview occurs.”

  Destiny’s hands fluttered in excitement. “Perfect! I can write an interface as easily as whatever he’s doing now. This will enable Greg to match billings. Right now, because the list doesn’t match up to our side due to timing issues, Gre
g has to go on an estimate of what he thinks we should be billed, versus actual billing. It’s always off, but he’s lived with it because our estimates have always been higher than actual.”

  Destiny grimaced. “Which could be due to these fake people mucking up our estimates. Sorry, Dad. I should have questioned the matter before this.”

  Carrie wanted Dan to insist his daughter had no blame in the matter. He shouldn’t expect an eighteen-year-old girl to question every procedure the company had.

  “Did Greg know about the discrepancy?”

  “Yes. He also thought it due to timing and our growing business.”

  “Given such a plausible explanation, I wouldn’t have questioned it either. I’ll call Flint Clarke and tell him he’s going to have to enter candidate names as he completes their investigation because, in the future, no candidates will go to an interview until they’ve been cleared.”

  Destiny hugged him. “It’s a perfect solution and will improve a ton of stuff going on.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “Don’t. Just be assured you are improving the process.”

  He tugged on his daughter’s fallen pigtails. “In my view, the two of you are improving the process. His gaze showered Carrie with admiration. “We’ll give you a ride to Penn Station as soon as I send this off to my lawyer.”

  Carrie pushed her chair to her room and locked it inside. She added a note to her list for tomorrow to bring a throw blanket.

  Chapter 11

  Carrie woke at four. She had lots of work to do before driving into New York City. Drilling a hole into a quarter-inch-thick steel plate took forever with a hand drill. She had to clamp the plate to her workbench before she managed it at all. A drill press could have finished the job in seconds. Maybe she’d buy one once she received her last paycheck from Lancasters.

  She imagined what she could do with three months’ salary, then frowned. What if Trent didn’t pay her? If he’d ripped Dan off for two million, he might not think twice about doing the same to her.