Great Exploitations (Crisis in Cali)
GREAT EXPLOITATIONS (Crisis in Cali)
Copyright © 2014
Nicole Williams
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events of persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without express permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
Cover Design by Sarah Hansen of
Okay Creations
Editing by Cassie Cox
Formatting by JT Formatting
Table of Contents
LIFE WAS A dice roll. On rare occasions, a person might win the game, but for every person who won, a dozen others lost. I considered myself, along with billions of others, in the losing category. Sure, I’d won some battles, come out the victor in a few hard-fought wars, but if one added up the sum total of my wins and losses in life, mine would fall deep into the losing side.
So I was one of life’s losers—it wasn’t such a difficult thing to accept. I wasn’t the first, nowhere near the last, and I wasn’t in the minority by any means. My life hadn’t been easy or anything close to effortless. My birth into this world without a family or a name to call my own had introduced me to the losing side of life. The rest that followed hadn’t much improved. I’d enjoyed fleeting moments of beauty, some lasting long enough I almost started to wonder if my luck was changing. But I was quickly reminded that while a person’s perspective might change, the game never does. I would lose, that was a certainty, so instead of trying to fight the odds, I concentrated my efforts on mitigating my losses.
Or at least that was what I’d been concentrating on until I’d let Henry Callahan back into my life. Instead of merely blurring the lines between personal and professional, I’d taken a machete to the lines, hacking them to ribbons and bits until I couldn’t even remember where they had once been.
Which was why I was sitting in the Mustang, parked in the public beach access parking lot early on a Monday morning, watching a small dark spot get bigger as it journeyed along the surf. His four-legged companion was steady beside him. The longer I watched Henry, the more I realized what I was watching was like a metaphor for how he’d come back into my life. At first, he’d been a dot on the horizon that had been so small and inconsequential, I’d barely even noticed him . . . but step by step, day after day, that dark dot had grown until what was in front of me felt like it took up my whole field of vision. I might have been able to see what was around him, but I viewed it through a different lens. The lens of decimated lines, past regrets, and future hopes. The lens of a foolish girl instead of a wise woman.
As Henry ran by the Mustang, I scooted down in the seat just in case. He was a good hundred yards from the parking lot, but on the off chance he glanced in my direction, and on the off chance he recognized my car, I didn’t want the additional off chance of him identifying me watching him. Henry’s and my relationship was already too muddied by confusion and mixed signals; I didn’t need to add another to the murky waters.
Thankfully, he kept jogging, his pace steady and effortless. Even Molly, who’d seemed able to sniff me out from a mile back when Henry and I were together, didn’t pause to lift her nose. At that moment, they might have been in my life, but I wasn’t in theirs. I was a ghost, forced to watch the lives I’d once played a part in go on living while I was lost to the world around me.
With that positive affirmation, I fired up the engine and left the parking lot, promising myself I wouldn’t return. It was a work day, and I liked getting to Callahan Industries before the rest of my team did so I could wash down a cup of coffee or two before the official start of the day. Plus, I got a closer parking spot when I showed up just past the crack of dawn.
Callahan Industries was quiet when I pulled in. Only a few other cars dotted the parking lot. The barista stands situated every ten feet weren’t open yet, which would have put a serious cramp in my get-caffeinated agenda had I not been a plan B kind of girl. I kept a mini coffee pot in my office for just these kinds of situations.
The first thing I did when I powered into my office was prep the coffee machine and flip the power switch over—even before I flicked on the lights. As the coffee percolated and my computer powered on, I realized my thoughts had found their way back to Henry. Again. Thoughts that ranged from how I could close this Errand to how I felt when I caught him looking at me when he didn’t think I noticed. Thoughts that ranged from how he’d betrayed me all of those years ago to how if he asked for every last bit of it, I would have placed all my trust in his hands that very second. Thoughts that swung on a pendulum so far ranging, I started to feel dizzy in my ergonomic office chair.
Thankfully, that was when the coffee machine hissed as the last few drops rained into the pot. I flipped over a clean cup, filled it to the brim, and drained half of it in one long drink. I was sips away from finishing my second cup when I heard the door to the lab open. Several team members came staggering in, bleary-eyed and clutching their own coffees like it was their very lifeblood.
It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that R&D Developers were a special breed, as Henry had warned me back when I’d started. Most lived in a rotating wardrobe of worn jeans and T-shirts, existed with permanent hollows under their eyes, and on any given day, could be seen appraising their computers like they vacillated from wanting to throw them out the window to wanting to make sweet love to them. Their social skills were lacking, their love lives non-existent, and their likelihood of keeling over from a stress-induced heart attack astronomical. But they were a good bunch to oversee. Mainly because they kept themselves on track, didn’t require a hint of micro-managing, and didn’t do drama in the workplace . . . probably because drama required some degree of social skills which, back to the beginning, were in short supply in this corner of the CI campus.
The day passed like the majority of my days there, quickly and riddled with emails and progress update meetings. I felt like I’d only just finished my lunch when team member after team member started poking their heads inside my office, saying goodnight for the evening. That was at seven, and it was eight by the time I’d managed to get through the rest of my emails.
I was about to check my slew of phones to make sure I hadn’t missed any calls—that I hadn’t heard from G in a few days was strange since she’d been checking on me daily—when I heard the door to the lab whine open. I was turning to see which developer had forgotten their laptop or bus-pass when I realized that no developer in this lab walked with such confident, assured footsteps.
“See, Max, I told you she’d still be here. From the hours she puts in, you’d think she owns the company.” Henry’s voice filled the lab, his half-smile evident in his tone.
I dimmed my smile before spinning around in my chair. “You might own the company, Mr. CEO, but it’s all of us minions who keep it running.” When Henry paused in the doorway, his gaze skimmed down me in a way that made me want to shift in my seat. I sat up straighter instead, crossed my legs, and peaked a brow. I might not have felt like the most confident woman in the world, but he didn’t need to know that.
Henry lifted his own brow, still appraising me in a way that put my every nerve on high alert. “For your information I don’t think of you all as minions.”
“No? Indentured servants?” I suggested, not about to be the first one to break eye contact. Henry and I had had plenty of unannounced staring contests, and I was tired of losing every time. “Spineless lackeys? Dime-a-dozen peons? Wit-handicapped vassals?”
Henry sighed. “Invaluable colleagues.”
“Okay, if you’re not going to make the introductions, allow me. A woman who can put you in your place without batting an eye and keep a team of R&D lunatics on schedule is someone I have to shake hands with.” The guy who I presumed was Max squeezed through the doorway past Henry. In his chinos and wide-rimmed glasses, he looked every bit the techie that Henry did not in his narrowly tailored suit and sanguine aura. “And one day in the future exchange ‘I do’s with.” Max tempered his words with a wink that Henry couldn’t see.
“And I’ll remind you that sexual harassment is something Callahan Industries takes quite seriously, Max.” Henry’s voice wasn’t quite cool, but almost. His easy stance changed so it tipped the rigid scale. “You might be second-in-command, but that honor doesn’t come with being above the rules.”