Claim Me(51)

Cindy returns to reception and Bruce starts down the hallway, easing farther into the bowels of the company. He’s moving fast, and I hurry to keep up. If the fight with his wife is weighing on him, I don’t see it. He looks like a man with a work problem, not a marital one.

“If this is a bad time,” I begin. “I mean, I’m pretty sure Human Resources is expecting me.”

“I talked with Trish. She’ll take care of your paperwork this afternoon. Right now, I’ve got something I’d like you to handle.” He comes to a stop outside an office, its closed door covered with taped-on cartoons and various band logos. “I hope you don’t mind getting thrown to the wolves.”

I eye the door curiously. The truth is that I have no idea what he’s talking about, but what I do know is that the proper response to such a question from your new boss is “Not at all. What’s going on?”

“Calendaring screw up and I’m double-booked. I need you and Tanner to head downtown to meet with the IT team at Suncoast Bank. They’re interested in the 128-bit encryption algorithm we’ve been beta testing. You’ll be stepping in to head up marketing on the product anyway, but I had hoped to give you a little time in-house to get your feet wet. Sorry to bring all this down on your first day.”

“Not a problem,” I say. My voice is calm, but inside I’m doing cartwheels. Bruce told me about Innovative’s cutting-edge encryption software during my interview, and I know that it is shaping up to be the company’s gold-standard product. I hadn’t expected to actually land such a choice assignment right off the bat, but since I have, I fully intend to use this meeting as a chance to prove to my boss that I can do this job, and do it well.

“It shouldn’t be too hard a sell,” Bruce adds. “The product is exactly what they need, but we’re going to want to put our own team on-site to make sure their IT group gets trained properly and that we have eyes on and a fast response to every bug and every glitch.”

“Of course.”

“That’s why I’m sending Tanner in, too,” he adds, tapping lightly on the cartoon-covered door. “He worked on the development of the project and, frankly, I think it would be good for him to work six months in-house with a client.”

“Why?”

Bruce frowns. “If you don’t mind mixing business with pleasure, we can go into that when I see you tomorrow. Right now, I’ll just say that when I was talking about the wolves, I didn’t mean the client.”

“Sure,” I say, realizing with a mental head-thwap that of course he’s going to be at the party. The first hour will be intimate—just our friends who know that it’s me up there on Damien’s wall—but then Damien is opening the third floor to a whole slew of Blaine’s clients.

A voice filters out from behind the still-closed door. “I said ‘come in,’ already.”

Bruce pushes the door open, and a blond man with a surfer’s tan and the air of a salesman looks up at us. His desk is buried under an array of papers, and probably twice as many sheets are splayed out across the floor. He looks up at us and smiles widely. I know I should wait until I have more to go on, but I instinctively do not like this man.

“Bruce!” he says, his voice full of friendly bluster. “Just got off the phone with Phil. He’s sending up the information on the Continental Mortgage proposal. I’ll make sure he stays on top of it.”

“Sounds good,” Bruce says, but I have the feeling he’s only half-listening. “Tanner, this is Nikki.”