18. Icebergs and Death Valley in August

18

Icebergs and Death Valley in August

NICOLE LAMB

Nicole was showered and back in the lab by ten o’clock because engineering school habits die hard. Face time in the lab was important.

When she walked through the front doors, a guy was kneeling, rewiring the security system.

She asked MEREDITH, “What’s that about?”

“They’re changing the security system, so we’ll have a code to get out of the building if we work late. Finally.”

“Oh, cool.”

That was quick.

At lunchtime, Nicole made the rounds of her lab, negotiating the pizza menu.

She used one of the lab computers to place the delivery order, and Arvind walked by while she was typing the digits of the strange-looking Amex into the website.

Arvind screeched to a halt behind her. “Is that a Centurion card?”

“Whatever that is,” she grumped.

“No, really.” Arvind plucked the credit card from her fingers.

“Hey!”

“This is a Centurion card. I’ve never seen one of these before. Whose is it?”

“Kingston Moore, the new sales guy.”

“How the hell did the new sales guy get a Centurion Amex?”

“Is that a good thing?” she asked.

Arvind’s mouth dropped open at her naiveté, which he did at least once a week. Nicole didn’t care about brands and status symbols enough. “It means his net worth is more than a million dollars, and he probably charges at least half a million every year on his Amex account.”

“It’s probably a corporate card. The sales guys have to do a lot of entertaining. Maybe they’re expecting him to put the entry fees for the golf shows on it. Those can be like ten or twenty grand per show.”

Arvind was still marveling at the card like it was a Faberge egg. “I kind of want to take a picture of it. You don’t see these things too often.”

Nicole popped out of her chair and snagged the card from his fingers. “We will not be taking pictures of Kingston’s credit card number.”

“Yeah, fine,” he sighed. “So what did you two do in here all night?”

Nicole thought about cold things. Icebergs. Liquid nitrogen. The absolute zero kelvin of deep space.

Her face burned anyway. “Talked about golf, mostly.”

His eyebrow raised. “That’s a lot of time to just talk about golf.”

“We also ate everything out of the downstairs vending machines for supper.”

“Oh, that’s why the old guard sales guys were cursing this morning, because they eat the Pop Tarts for breakfast.”

“I also had him swing the Excalibur prototype in the golf simulator. Kingston has a really good swing. While we didn’t have anything else to do, I thought maybe we should see what it looked like in the hands of someone who knows how to play golf.”

Arvind chuckled. “What, you don’t think my hacking around a golf course counts as a proper trial?”

“Not in the slightest. Anyway, I videotaped him swinging it.”

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder and watched the vertical video on her phone.

Nicole tried not to sigh at Kingston’s athletic swing as he crushed the ball down the simulator.

“Wow, that is a good swing,” Arvind said. “What’s his handicap?”

Meaning the standardized rating for golf proficiency. “I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“It’s low. I’ll bet it’s under ten. Maybe under five,” Arvind said. Lower is better in golf handicaps. “And he likes you.”

Her face started burning like Death Valley in August again. “No, he doesn’t. We just talked about golf.”

“Did you see the way he turned around and smiled at you? That is the smile of a guy who likes you.”

A smile was a smile was a smile. “Are you sure it isn’t the smile of a guy holding a really good golf club?”

Arvind frowned and went back to the video, scrolling it back and forth until he repeated a one-second clip about three times. “Look here. He was holding the club, but he turned around, then saw you over the top of your phone, and then he smiled. You were the one who actually took this video, right?

Nicole scowled at him. “Yeah. It’s my phone.”

“He was smiling at you.”

Nicole scrolled the video back and forth, watching Kingston smile at her over and over. “Are you sure?”

Arvind waggled one shoulder at her. “Trust me, I know what it looks like when a guy smiles at you because he likes you.”

As the lab sucked down the free pizza over the noon hour, Nicole opened the table for information they’d gleaned from other departments about how the venture-capital takeover was being received.

Arvind started with, “Nobody likes these terse emails flung down from on high. It seems like they’re just mollifying us to lure us into thinking nothing will happen before they drop the hammer and half of us are gone.”

Caitlin nodded, her orange curls flipping as she nodded. “That last memo was ominous. Everybody thinks layoffs are coming. Nobody wants to be last into the job market. Early birds. Worms.”

“Has anybody found out anything more about this venture capital group?” Nicole asked.

Within minutes of the takeover, they’d found the obvious: that Last Chance LLC was incorporated in Vermont but had an office in Connecticut, that it had been in business five years, and some guy named Jericho Parr was somehow associated with it.

But the easy internet trail had stopped there.

Last Chance, Inc. was not a publicly held company, meaning they had issued no stock market shares that were trading around. Since no public documents were required, they’d managed to keep most of their dealings private.

“I looked into their recent acquisitions,” Arvind said. Arvind’s Google-fu was spectacular. He could dredge anything out of the internet, often by semi-shady means like calling people on the phone, not admitting he wasn’t the FBI, and asking questions. “They recently purchased a regional country club and a national tee times booking app, and then they bought us. The only thing in common with all their purchases has been golf.”

“That’s weird,” Nicole said. “Does anybody else think that’s weird?”

Caitlin lifted her lip like she smelled something suspicious. “It’s weird. Most venture capital firms specialize in a sector, not a theme. So, you’d expect a particular venture capital company to buy a bunch of banks, but not a bank, a marketing company specializing in banks, and a piggy bank manufacturer.”

“Right,” Bobert said. Bobert specialized in calibrating the lab machines. He was always tinkering. “It’s not even vertical integration like a meat packing plant, a pet food manufacturer, and a website that sells pet food. It just seems like random golf businesses that don’t fit together.”

Nicole nodded. “Something is fishy with these guys. Okay, without a show of hands, how many people in the lab are willing to sign cards? Selma?”

Selma tapped printed-out spreadsheets, squaring them. “Twelve are willing to sign cards, first round.”

Two of Nicole’s lab bunnies didn’t want to get involved. Interesting. Not that she would have any work-opinion about it. “Okay. That’s a good start. Caitlin, did you talk to Meagan and Morgan?”

She nodded. “Meagan and Morgan and the two young guys are in. The two old guys won’t even hear of it. They muttered something about driving prices up, which is exactly our business model, but okay.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but I suppose we had to approach them. We wouldn’t want them to feel left out. Arvind, accounting and business operations?”

Arvind’s small smile looked very pleased with himself. “Everybody’s in, every last one of them.”

“Perfect. Good job, Arvind.” Nicole turned to the guy at the end of the table. “Matthew? How about legal?”

Matthew rolled his eyes so hard he might have sprained his eyeballs. “The lawyers and paralegal don’t like it and are quibbling that there has to be a loophole somewhere, and they want to wait. They think we should see what Last Chance’s next move is.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “I checked with my dad. There isn’t a loophole anywhere. It’s sewn up tight. McIverson? How about the stragglers?”

McIverson preferred to go by their surname for a reason no one knew. “Afifa, Molly, Maia, Elliott, Fortunato, and Rainbow-Supreme are all in.”

“Okay, that’s over fifty percent of the workers here, even without the legal department. We only needed thirty percent. I’ll arrange for those signature cards to be printed and file the petition,” Nicole said.

She stood and braced her arms on the table and glowered as well as she could glower at her friends. “This Last Chance, Inc. venture capital company may own Sidewinder Golf, but that doesn’t mean they can push us around.”