27. Ryde and Otto

27

Ryde and Otto

NICOLE LAMB

She’d been so stupid.

Ever since she had met Kingston Moore, he’d been wheedling for the designs for the next set of clubs and prototypes.

In retrospect, his ploy should have been obvious.

First, he’d tried to trick her into telling him about the prototypes and future clubs she had designed, even buying the free pizza for the lab.

When that hadn’t worked, he’d tried the honeypot tactic, as spies called it.

But Kingston Moore wasn’t a honeypot. More like a beef pot.

It didn’t matter what kind of pot he was. Nicole had not fallen into his trap.

And she wouldn’t. She knew what he was after now. Some guys might’ve been just after a piece of tail, but Kingston had pursued something far more important to Nicole.

He’d been after her creativity, her art.

There was no reason on God’s green earth why a junior salesman should want prototype designs for clubs that didn’t exist, that he couldn’t sell. Even if he was working on commission, which the sales team sort of was because they had a base salary but also got bonuses based on their numbers, he couldn’t sell designs that weren’t being manufactured yet to consumers.

Nicole stood in the covered driveway outside the hotel’s lobby, and a battered Honda Accord skidded to a stop in front of her. A pink neon sign in the front window read Ryde.

The passenger window rolled down, and the guy inside asked, “Ryde for Nicole Lamb?”

“That’s me.”

She tossed her backpack in the backseat and climbed in after it.

“I’m glad you waited,” the driver said. “Sorry I was a few minutes late. I was hoping you would be waiting because those Otto Rideshare drivers have been hacking our site and intercepting our rides. I got your address that you’re going to right here.” He rattled off her apartment address.

“Yeah, that’s it. Why are they doing that?”

“One of our software coders left in a huff a few months ago, and he stole the code for our ride management software and sold it to Otto, and now they’re hacking our system and stealing all our business.”

“I’m so sorry. That’s terrible,” Nicole said, automatically commiserating. “It’s terrible that he would betray your company like that.”

That scum had stolen designs and sold them to the competition.

And with that, a blast of cold air washed down Nicole’s back more frigid than any air conditioning.

Kingston might be in sales, all right.

He might be trying to get her prototypes and designs to sell them to the highest bidder, like rival golf club companies like Titleist or TaylorMade.

And she’d almost fallen into his trap.