Moonlighter (The Company, #1)
Sarina Bowen
1
Early July
Eric
Reporting for a lunch date at my family’s security firm is always trippy.
At first glance, the converted old factory building on West 18th Street might belong to any company. The lobby—with its sleek, industrial furnishings and employee turnstiles— is carefully nondescript. There’s no sign, though. That’s your first clue. No logo. No name.
My brother likes secrets. So much so that I don’t actually know the legal name of this place. To outsiders—such as me—Max refers to it as The Company. The family joke is that I’ll learn the name in his will after he dies.
“But what if I die first?” I always ask.
“You won’t,” is his reply. “Your line of work is safer than mine.”
And that’s saying something, since I’m a professional hockey player. My workdays are spent facing down a dozen guys with big sticks who are trying to crush me like a bug.
I approach the receptionist behind the imposing reception desk. She looks normal enough. She’s pretty hot, honestly. Although she’s probably trained in a dozen ways to kill me. My brother likes to hire sweet young things with a military background and serious skills at the firing range.
“Hi there,” I say as she waves me forward. I happen to know that the desk itself is bulletproof. And there’s an armored cabinet at the receptionist’s feet, should she wish to make herself scarce. And those are just the security features that I know about. “I’m Eric Bayer, and I have a lunch date with the assholes who run this place.”
The young woman blinks. And then her eyes light up with recognition. After all, I look a lot like a scruffier, less intense version of her boss. She gives me a big, flirtatious smile. “Nice to meet you, Eric Bayer.”
I hold my breath, because what comes next is crucial for her job security.
There’s a beat of hesitation on her side of the desk. But then she does exactly the right thing. “Can I see some ID?”
“Of course.” I slide my driver’s license across the granite countertop, happy that she got it right. Even if she recognizes me from TV—and my team got a whole lot of publicity this past month—the poor thing would have been fired if she didn’t verify my identity.
My brother is a ruthless employer. And kind of a dick. But he can’t afford to make mistakes. His clients’ lives are on the line.
The receptionist scans my ID. Then she pretends to scrutinize it. But we both know that a computer is currently checking my driver’s license number against a database of known undesirables. And because there are approximately seventeen cameras focused on me at the moment, a human is also watching somewhere, and weighing in on whether or not I’ll be allowed upstairs.
There’s a soft chime, after which a little green light on her desk winks on.
I grin. “You know what that means.”
“Congratulations on not being an imposter. Here’s your pass and your ID.” She takes another appreciative glance at my photo before handing it back. She looks me dead in the eye and drops her voice to a sultry whisper that makes “Have a nice lunch” sound dirty.
“You know it.” I throw in a wink to amuse whomever is manning the control room right now. Maybe I’ll ask for her number on my way out.
But first, lunch. I move my ass toward the elevators. The doors part as I arrive. I step inside, and they close again.
A sensor has already scanned the chip on my visitor’s pass, so the moment the doors close, the car begins to rise toward the sixth floor. The elevator buttons wouldn’t even work if I pressed one. Only employees can choose a destination, and only if they’re approved to go there.
It’s like an even more paranoid version of the Death Star. Although, I’ve been promised tacos, and I don’t think the dark lord eats Mexican.
Buying me lunch is no strain, because my brother and my dad have made several billion dollars together. And they did it by being the two most paranoid men in Manhattan.
I glide slowly higher, past five floors I’ve never visited. But presumably they’re filled with busy employees. My father started this company when I was eleven years old. Before that, he had a couple of successful decades as a naval intelligence officer, and then as a police chief on Long Island, where I grew up.
In my father’s hands, The Company was an ordinary private security firm. Back then it even had a name—Bayer Security. If you had some money and needed to keep your family safe, you could call Carl Bayer to set up a discreet security detail.
But then, about ten years ago, my brother left his government job. Although he was never allowed to say so, I’m pretty sure he used to be a CIA analyst specializing in cyber security.
So Max joined Dad’s firm, offering to help Dad branch out into e-security as well as physical security. I thought their partnership wouldn’t last the week. It’s generous to say that Dad and Max both have strong personalities. The less generous version is that Dad’s kind of a cheerful tyrant and Max is a broody asshole.
Besides—Dad’s gumshoe security work and Max’s hacker skills didn’t seem to have much in common.
But what do I know? The firm took off like a rocket and never looked back. They made their billions by chaining Max’s genius brain to Dad’s New York connections.