Steal: A Bad Boy Romance (8 page)

CHAPTER 10

~ J
AMES
~

Just like that. You will scream for me once I’m all the way inside of
you.

It
was almost time to leave for lunch with Kat, but I couldn’t help but fantasize
about what it would be like when I finally fucked her. I’d waited years for it,
and I wouldn’t let it be anything other than the best sex she’d ever had. She
would beg for more after I was through with her.

“Shouldn’t
you be leaving now?”

Addison
perched on the edge of the couch—I hadn’t even seen her.

“Jesus,
fuck, Addison!” I sat up from where I sprawled out and took my hand out of my
jeans. “Warn a guy, would you?”

The
petite redhead shrugged. “It’s not anything I haven’t seen before. Were you
thinking about her?”

I
glared at her. “That’s none of your concern.”

“I’ll
just assume you were. You’re falling for her so hard.”

“I
am not!” The denial was too quick and loud. I took a deep breath. “I’m not,
Addison. Just getting myself into the right headspace. Don’t worry about the
plan, I’ve got everything under control.”

She
tilted her head, her big green eyes narrowed. “You’ve been in love with this
girl since you were five years old, James. You may have convinced yourself
otherwise, but it’s obvious.”

Addison
was a pain in the ass sometimes. Despite our past, she was like a little sister
who spoke inconvenient truths just because she knew it would get a rise out of
me. She knew me too well.

“Let
me deal with this, okay? I’m the con man, you’re the hacker. I know how to
play people and that’s all I’m doing here.” If I said it enough, maybe it would
become the truth.

“Whatever.
Like I said, I’m just here for my cut. You could marry the girl for all I care,
so long as we still pull off the job.”

“Ha.
As if.”

Addison’s
words sunk in—it was an option that hadn’t even occurred to me. I shook
myself internally before the thought could settle. The whole point of involving
Kat was to fuck her and embarrass her the way she’d humiliated me. Not to try
to end up with her.

“Before
you go, I have the package ready for you.”

Addison
held out a tiny piece of plastic.

“This
is it?” I took it and held it between my thumb and index finger as I examined
it. “It’s so small.”

I took a
small cap off to reveal a USB plug. The plug accounted for ninety percent
of the device. A small LED sat in the black casing of the other part.

“I’ve
programmed it to work on its own. All you’ll have to do is insert that into the
USB port of one of ARCANE’s internal servers. They’ve shut themselves off from
the internet so I can’t hack in remotely, but this little guy will pull their
data from inside the firewall.”

I
raised an eyebrow, impressed. Addison was getting even better at what she did.
Not for the first time, I thanked whatever god led to her being on my team
instead of working against me.

“Just
plug it in?” I asked. “How do I know when it’s done?”

She
pointed to the LED. “While it’s working away, the LED will be red. Once it’s
gathered the data it can, it’ll turn green. Then you pop it out and return
it for analysis. Hopefully we’ll get lucky and it will tell us everything we
need to know about ARCANE’s operations and Nick’s accounts. Remember, one of
their servers, not just a random computer.”

“So
now I just need to figure out a way to get into ARCANE’s offices and server room
and plant this. What a coincidence I have lunch with one of ARCANE’s senior
executives in ten minutes.” I winked.

Addison
laughed. “Just don’t get carried away and elope with her or something. I have
expensive tastes and I’ve already planned what I’ll do with the money from this
job.”

I
rolled my eyes. “I’ve got this handled. Go watch your anime shows. I’ll get you
the data soon.”

San
Francisco at noon was the perfect temperature, and I took a minute to enjoy the
sun and the view along the boulevard. I had enough time for a leisurely stroll
before lunch.

I
scanned the faces of each person approaching on the sidewalk far before we
passed each other, a habit I’d picked up and trained my subconscious to handle.
My identity was different to so many people—it was always a good idea to
make sure it never bit me in the ass.

A
man in a black suit striding up the hill caught my eye. He walked with a
purpose, and although he didn’t openly display any identification, his
demeanor
screamed FBI.

Agent Clark.

My
lip curled at the sight of the man’s
mustache
. What
were the odds that the agent assigned to catch me would be walking down the
same street at the same time?

Thankfully,
he wasn’t expecting to see his quarry on the street in the middle of the day. I
used my phone as an excuse to duck my head, knowing that any sudden changes in
direction or attitude would tip off the agent that something wasn’t right.

We
passed each other with no incident, and I resisted the urge to look back to
make sure he’d kept walking. Breathing didn’t come easy until after I turned
onto Market and lost myself in the greater pedestrian traffic there.

That was close. What the hell is
he doing in San Francisco? I thought I’d left him back in New York.

I
would have to be more careful in the city from now on.

Kat’s
office wasn’t far from the condo building, and the Mexican joint she’d
suggested for lunch lay in between. I timed my arrival to line up with the
precise moment the clock struck noon.

Kat
waited in the entrance of the restaurant with her phone out. She looked from it
to me with a wide grin. “Right on the dot again, Mr. Marine. How do you do
that?”

“Magic.
It’s the only explanation.”

Her
face lit up with a genuine laugh. The sight of her breathed fresh air into my
lungs, as if I wasn’t a complete person outside of her presence.

“It
sure seems like magic. Let’s sit down.”

The
restaurant was decorated like a typical white-owned Mexican venue. Stereotypes
abounded everywhere, from the oversized sombreros hanging off every surface to
the mariachi music in the background. Hopefully the food would be better.

“Vegan,
huh?”

Kat
shrugged. “I’m not a vegan, but I’ve been trying to eat less meat. Help out the
environment, you know? I have a few friends who swear by this place and I’ve
been meaning to try it out.”

The
menu looked… interesting.

“Cashew
cheese? That’s different.”

Kat
chuckled. “I might avoid that one. These faux pulled pork tacos sound fantastic
though.”

“Faux
pulled pork?” I flipped through the menu. “Huh. Jackfruit. They’re creative,
I’ll give the vegans that.”

We
picked through the menu, joking and laughing about the substitutions we found
before settling on orders.

“How
has it been at work this week? Has your boss made any moves on you?” I asked
casually, but the core of my being strained forward to hear the reply.

“Not
yet. I haven’t even seen him since then. I’ve been doing everything I can to
avoid him, and he’s been out of the office a lot which has helped. Otherwise,
it’s been… okay. Still not sure how I can salvage the situation. It might be
time to start looking for other work now, so I can just leave on my own terms.”

Muscles
I hadn’t even known were clenched relaxed. “It’s still early. The quarter just
started. If you ramp up a new strategy over the next month, you still have two
months to sign new clients and meet your targets, right?”

She
bit her nail. Kat had developed that habit back when we were younger and it
must have stuck with her all this time. I had to strain to not see fifteen year
old her sitting across from me.

“That’s
true. I have time to work with. The problem is that I don’t have any great
ideas for anything that will make a huge difference. I have to show the entire
country what ARCANE is and why it’s something they need.”

I
nodded. “That’s a tall order.”

“It
is.”

“Have
you looked into the charity thing, yet?”

She
winced. “I did. My friend pointed out they couldn’t justify spending the money
on our services when what they have already works fairly well. It would
probably be the same story for most of the charities we could contact.”

“Ah,
well. It was a thought. You could just donate services to them if you wanted to
help them out.”

Kat
tilted her head to the side and looked beyond me. It was her thinking face, and
I knew it well. “We could…”

I
let her work through her thought process—it was always better to let her
finish. Otherwise, she wouldn’t hear half the words I said.

She
looked up and put her hand on mine, the touch light but electric. “I’m sorry,
it feels like we always talk about me and my work. You must be so sick of it.”

Your work is very much my
concern.

“Oh,
that’s all right. Unless you want to talk about credit default swaps, then I’m
fine with talking about your work.”

She
stared at me. “I have no idea what the hell you just said.”

I
laughed. “Exactly. So where are these ARCANE offices? I’d love to see them
sometime.”

“We’re
just on Fourth Street, south of Market. We don’t have many visitors coming
in; it’s a secure office. You’d have to get clearance from a third party
company we use for background checks. It’s a hassle, and honestly not worth it.
There’s nothing special about the office—like any
startup
,
I imagine.”

Not
a promising start. Undeterred, I pressed on with the questions. “How many
people work there?”

“There
are about forty. We rent a floor in the building, so there are more
overall, but that’s it for us.”

“People
work late? It sounds like you’re there all the time. That’s a lot of
dedication.”

Kat
shook her head and snorted. “I’m only there so long because I’m screwed. Most
people are out of there by five, but lately I’ve been staying until eight or
nine. There’s always so much work to do and so much to catch up on. It hurts I
have to double-check everything my team does. I don’t know if they’re doing
things wrong on purpose to get me in trouble, or if they’re actually that
incompetent, but it’s a serious problem.”

“You
should fire them.”

Kat’s
eyes widened. “What? I’m brand new—I couldn’t do that!”

“Look,
you’re new to management, so it might feel wrong to you, but it sounds like
your employees are just taking advantage of you. If you don’t show them you’re
a force to be reckoned with, then they’ll just keep walking over you.”

She
nibbled on her lower lip again. It was just an unconscious move she did while
thinking, but it drove me crazy.

“My
life would be much easier if they did everything I assigned them and
did it well… I’ll have to think about it.”

“Do
you think you’ll be there until nine tonight?”

She
nodded. “Maybe even later, tonight. You’ve given me stuff to think about,
and I might come up with a plan now. It’ll just take a lot of
brainstorming to figure out what exactly that will look like.”

There’s my opportunity.
She didn’t have to know that.

If
I played it right, I could write two things off my list at the same time.

CHAPTER 11

~ K
AT
~

Cold determination filled me
after lunch with James. His advice gave me a lot to think about, and a few
things I could take action on.

The
longer his words stewed in the back of my mind, the clearer at least one thing became—I
needed to get control of my team and get them working for me instead of against
me.

Firing
all three of them would be a disaster. Combined with my inexperience in the
company and limited time to produce results, hiring new employees and
training them would take too much time.

No
matter what else I did, the ringleader had to go. She was the root of all of
the problems.

Stealing
Nick’s rage-inducing tactic, I
dialed
Marcy’s office
phone.

“Hello?”

“Marcy,
this is Katherine. Could you please come to my office? We need to talk.”

“I’ve
got things to do. Can’t you send it in an email?”

Through
my office window, I could see Marcy, Sean, and Todd gathered around her desk.
They spent half the day shooting the shit, talking about their weekends and
what happened on their
favorite
shows. Polite
requests to get back to work only broke them up until I was back in my office.

“My
office. Now.” I hung up.

I
took a deep breath to steady myself. Outside of meetings with Nick, interacting
with my team caused me the most anxiety. New to managerial ranks, it was hard
to get a handle on how to treat them. Add in their older age and greater
experience, and it was a nightmare trying to wield authority.

Marcy
opened the door and stuck her head through. “What?”

The
woman was ten years older than I was and had been with ARCANE since near the
beginning, back when it was little more than Nick, a few software engineers, a
sales guy and an accountant.

“Come
in and sit. And close the door behind you.”

I
didn’t take meetings in my office—it was too small for the entire team,
so we normally took the small meeting room across the hall. This was the first
time I’d closed the door with a single team member inside. Sean and Todd still
sat around Marcy’s desk, looking over.

Marcy
thumped into the chair opposite mine. “What do you want? I was busy.”

“Marcy,
you still haven’t given me an update on the state of the IT conference strategy
we discussed last week.”

She
slumped back in the chair and waved in the general direction of her desk. “I’m
working on it, just been busy.”

“Doing
what, exactly?”

Marcy
shrugged. “Handling campaigns. Talking with our ad people. The usual.”

I
sighed. She wasn’t even trying. “Marcy, I’m afraid I have to let you go.”

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.