She mentally stepped back from the ledge and thought this through. They wanted to get ahead of the bad press. It made sense. It devastated her to admit, but it made business sense. Good business sense. Damn it. Instead of fighting it, she had to be smart about how she spent the rest of her time before the meeting. She had to put the need of her company ahead of her own.
She also had to tell Whitney before she read it on some gossip site. Bree trusted Gleason about as far as she could throw him. “Whitney, sit down. There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Okay.” She did and leaned in, waiting. “Talk to me, Bree. What’s really going on?”
“There’s money missing. A lot of money. They think I took it. That’s why they’re calling for my resignation.”
Whitney swallowed several times and brushed the bangs from her face. “I, uh…”
“Whitney?” Dear God, please don’t let her have anything to do with this.
“I already knew about the money. All the directors knew.” She winced and waited as she watched Bree, clearly bracing herself. “We were the ones to hire TREX to find it.”
Bree fell back in her chair and could only stare at her best friend. She knew? She knew and never told her? “How could you not tell me?”
“We all signed confidentiality agreements when we were appointed to the board. You know that.”
“And you and I break that damn agreement every time we talk,” she snapped, the hurt and betrayal too much to keep in.
“I’m sorry, sweetie.” Her eyes shined. “I’ve just been sick about it. That’s why I wanted you to get away, go find Jeremy and have the weekend of your life. I knew when you got back, it would be hell as soon as Gleason rounded up all the directors for an executive session.”
Bree blinked at her, shocked. The truth twisted in her stomach. “You knew they were going to do this?”
“I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you.” Whitney lowered her head as tears streamed down her face.
“We talk every single day. You should have found a way to tell me.”
“I’m so sorry, Breanne. Please don’t hate me for this. You know I love you.” She rushed out of the room, sobbing into her hand. “Sorry,” she said outside of the office, catching Bree’s attention.
“Is everything okay?” Jeremy’s distinctive voice sounded. “Whitney? Hey, are you…” He hurried into Bree’s office, his gaze immediately snagging hers. “What’s going on?”
“She knows about the missing money. The entire board knows.”
He growled deep in the back of his throat and thrust his hands in his trouser pockets. “This just got a whole lot bigger.”
That didn’t make her feel any better. “How so?”
“Your board is made up of twelve people. Gleason hired TREX and said only a handful of other directors knew. He promised to keep it that way so we could do our job. Twelve is a hell of a lot more than a handful. Why is this coming up now? I thought you said you weren’t going to tell her.”
“The board is calling for my resignation.”
His features grew hard, cold. He didn’t like the news any more than she did. “Did they say that?”
“Not exactly.”
“What did they say exactly?”
“They want to remove me from the board and cut my pay. What am I going to do?”
He moved to her side and knelt, taking her hands in his. Those intense eyes held hers. “I’ll tell you what you’re not going to do. That’s give up. Breanne Willows is a fighter. Always has been.”
“I’m not Breanne Willows anymore.” And she missed her. She wanted to be Bree Willows again. Eager teen, ready and willing to take on the world and leave no prisoners. Her software found people. Could it find the old her? Could it bring her back?
His kiss caught her off-guard. She wrapped her arms around his neck and opened to him. This was exactly what she needed, to be loved. She had to know someone wanted her. She had to feel it.
And Jeremy made her feel.
When he tried to break the kiss, she held on a little longer, tasting him, losing herself in his touch. “You were right.”
“I was?”
“Kissing you pulled you right out of your meltdown. I know it breaks my rule, but I panicked.” She laughed and hugged him tighter. “Baby, you’re shaking.”
Was she? When she drew back, he grasped her wrists and held them against his chest as his gaze lingered on her face. “I’m scared,” she admitted in a whisper, terrified to say it any louder. She was about to lose her company.
“I know. I’m going to find the money, and when I do, I’ll be able to trace it back to whoever’s doing this to you. I promise.”
She believed him.
“I stopped by to tell you I’m heading out. I’ll get more done at home.”
Home. He’d called it home. Not his place. Home. She loved the sound of that. It wasn’t a condo on First Avenue, and she didn’t want that. Not anymore. She wanted a home, away from the city, away from everything else. “I’m jealous.”
“Come with me. You can listen to me ramble on and on about numbers. I know how much you love that.”
“As much fun as that sounds, I can’t. I have two more meetings and a mountain of paperwork to get through between them before I can even start to prepare for my execution in front of the board tonight. Go on without me. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
He snapped his brow into a frown as a flash of disappointment clouded his expression. “I don’t like leaving you here without me.”
“What are you going to do beneath me?” As soon as she said it, she cringed. “That didn’t come out right. I meant a floor below me.”
“I happen to like being beneath you.” He stole another kiss before straightening. “Enough breaking the rules. I’ll send Rand to get you at six.”
She knew better than to argue with him about the car and had come to accept the escort. Besides, she liked Rand. “That’s the same time as the meeting. Can you make it seven?”
“If they are voting you out, it won’t take an hour. Six-thirty.”
“Done.” He walked out of the office, leaving her alone to contemplate her next move. She got to work on her defense.
“Your two o’clock is waiting for you in the conference room,” Whitney announced through the intercom half an hour later.
Bree hovered her finger over the button. What should she say? Sorry for making you cry? Convince her it would be okay even though Bree didn’t believe it? Not knowing what else to say, she simply replied with, “Thank you.”
Whitney didn’t so much as look up as Bree marched past her desk and into the conference room. For an hour, she sat through several proposals of the next generation of Goggles software and hated every last one. None of them embraced the whole reason she and Peter had created Goggles in the first place.
“How are any of these designs going to enhance our existing layout?” She shuffled the cardstock, looking for the least hated one.
The three men from development exchanged glances. The two in expensive suits nodded at the one in the clip-on tie and short-sleeved shirt. It didn’t take a profiler to know the bosses from the subordinate.
“Go ahead, Clark.” Dorian Graham, the head of the department, nodded again.
“Carlos,” the subordinate who’d just broken out in a sweat corrected. When Graham glared, Carlos returned his attention to Bree and cleared his throat. “We thought Goggles could use a makeover.” All three held their collective breath and waited.
“A makeover is one thing,” she responded, setting the samples on the table and folding her hands over them. “Redesigning the functionality is something else entirely.”
“Goggles is tired.”
“What he means is,” Mr. Graham jumped in. “There are several browsers that use the same technology as ours. We’re no longer unique in the market. We need a new competitive edge.” He then glared at Carlos, who colored deeply and dropped his shoulders.
It immediately pissed her off. Who was Dorian Graham to make Carlos feel inferior, first by getting his name wrong in front of the CEO and then for simply stating his mind? No doubt, the department head and his second-in-command Beasley gave Carlos this opportunity to present the new designs to the boss. That way, if she hated them—and she definitely hated them—they’d blame the developer. If she loved them—and she didn’t—they’d take the credit.
“Carlos, tell me why you feel Goggles is tired.” She relished in the scathing glares both Graham and Beasley now wore.
He lifted his gaze and dropped his jaw. “I, uh…”
“You see—” Graham started in, but stopped when Bree brought up her hand.
“I asked Carlos.”
“Most phones have location services now, which tags the photos with the exact location of where they were taken. The user uploads the photo to social media and boom. You have a searchable image on any browser. We need more. We need something new before we’re buried by the monsters we’re in competition with. Rumor has it the Zonpire is releasing a browser in the next year.”
The Zonpire. She liked that. “And you know what that something is?”
“Patterns.”
Bree narrowed her gaze as she thought about that. “Don’t we already do that?”
“Yes and no. We track if a person goes to the same market every day at the same time. Or buys the same magazine every week. What we don’t track is why. What drives a person who hates fast food to go to a fast food restaurant? Or someone wear blue when they hate the color?”
She had to admit, it made sense. Eight years ago when they’d designed the first release of Goggles software, they were one-of-a-kind. Now, everyone had the ability to search images based on facial recognition. None of them programmed why. It was impossible.
Not judging by that gleam in Carlos’ eyes.
May I?” He pulled the cardstock out from under her hands and peeled off the top sheet before holding up the first card. Clearly, he’d approached this meeting with ulterior motives.
“You expected me to turn down your ideas, didn’t you?”
“Guilty,” he said with a nod.
“That’s enough.” Graham stood and fastened the front button of his suitcoat. Beasley mimicked the gesture. “I apologize for the misstep, Mrs. Harrington. I was told he was ready.”
Beasley colored hard when Graham directed that venomous look on him. In turn, he redirected his embarrassment and anger on the subordinate. Shit rolled downhill. “You’re dismissed, Carlos. Wait in my office.”
“I’d rather hear what he has to say.” Bree nodded at the chairs. The uptight men sank down and pouted. “Go ahead, Carlos.”
“Thank you.” He grinned wide and showed an image of a woman holding a child’s hand as they waited in line at a grocery store. “Note the way the adult is holding the child. Hand in front means she’s in control, the one in charge. Fingers curled. She’s got a firm grip on the boy’s hand. Arm bent at the elbow shows she’s ready to react in a moment’s notice. She’s on edge. The child is close but not too close and has his arm extended straight. He doesn’t want to be next to her. He wants her to let go. Now, in this next one...”
He dropped the first one face down and pulled the top layer off the next card. It had the woman holding the child’s hand the same way, this time in line at a fast food restaurant. “Same side. She’s right-handed, which explains why she holds the boy on her left side. It keeps her dominate side open, ready to react. She’s defensive, like she expects someone to confront her. This time the kid is closer, not fighting her. Both are wearing the same large sunglasses.”
“I see that.” She’d missed that on the first image.
“See how her fingers are more relaxed in this one?”
Bree nodded. “This would have never come up on Goggles. The only pattern is an adult holding a child’s hand in a sea of the same.”
“Do you have a behavioral science degree, Mrs. Harrington?”
“Now, just a minute.” Graham attempted to break in yet again.
“That’s okay.” It really was. She wanted to know where Carlos was going with this. “No, I don’t.”
“I do,” he pointed out. Not pompous, but simply stating a fact. “I noticed something while completing my dissertation.”
He was a PhD? He didn’t look old enough to have a college degree, let alone a doctorate. “And that is?”
“The professors handed out the same syllabus year after year. They taught the same subjects from the same textbooks year after year. In essence, they were programming the students. I found I could predict what the professor would teach from day to day. So, I thought, if we can program people to understand human behavior systematically, we could do the same with computers. We could actually create a program that predicts a person’s next steps based on behavioral patterns.”
That was scary as hell and amazing at the same time. If Goggles released a special software that predicted next steps, authorities would be able to track down abducted children, runaways, escaped convicts… The possibilities were endless.
Bree studied the two images side-by-side. The woman looked anything but happy to be at either place. Why go anywhere if it made her miserable? And wearing giant sunglasses inside? On closer inspection, she studied the groceries in the first one. Junk food? Finger foods? Microwavable if it required cooking at all?
The second image told even more. Three meals. “She’s on the run with that little boy, and she’s not alone.”
“Meet Murray Williams. Missing for two days with no leads. The family was camping when the boy wandered off. Authorities had SAR searching the entire campground. It was a waste of time. What three-year-old wanders off in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods, in a place he doesn’t know? He was taken and by someone he knows or he would have screamed. Running all the patterns through my prototype returned a few false positives before I found these two and gave them to the FBI.”
Bree straightened. “Did they get him back?”
“Picked up the babysitter and her boyfriend two states over. Murray is back home, safe and sound.”
“Your software found him?” Wow. She was beyond impressed.
“No,” Carlos said with a shake of his head. “Your software did. I simply added another layer of algorithms to the existing design. That’s what I’m proposing now.” He slowly lowered the cards and bit his bottom lip as he stared at Bree, his eyes wide.
This enhancement was beyond incredible. They’d be able to sell it to police departments, the FBI…
TREX.
She stopped, her mouth dry. Rand had told her on Monday she was practically family since her company designed the software the agency used to gather their intel. Time to put that to the test. “Imagine if a government agency like TREX was able to use this kind of technology.”
“TREX is privately-funded,” Graham corrected, his tone full of condescending attitude. “Mr. Harrington knew that.”
Pissing me off is not the way to upsell me. Regardless, he’d just confirmed it. TREX really did exist. More than that…
TREX used Goggles on their finds.
TWENTY-FIVE
The meeting with Carlos and the windbags turned out to be the highlight of Bree’s day. She wanted to tell Whitney about the idea in the design, but didn’t know how to approach her. They had a wedge between them they’d never had before. Even when they’d met, they were instant friends. The only other person she’d ever bonded with that fast was Jeremy.
Jeremy. What was she going to do about him? He loved her. She had to believe that, had to believe it was his love for her that had him pushing her away. While she didn’t like it, she understood why. Their jobs were everything to them. While hers wasn’t a matter of life or death, his was.
Literally.
Panic set in when she noticed the time. She only had an hour left before she had to go in front of the board and justify why they needed to keep her as president
and CEO. It seemed so unfair to have a board of strangers decide her fate, especially since she owned the company.
Strike that. She didn’t own it, not entirely. She was the majority shareholder. She’d given up the title of owner as soon as Peter took the company public. Pleading with the board would do her no good. She needed cold, hard facts and focused the rest of her time finding them.
“Earth to Bree.”
She blinked and lifted her gaze, surprised to see Whitney standing there. “Did you say something?”
Whit thinned her lips and swallowed tightly. “I said, it’s almost time.”
“Thank you.” As if she needed anyone reminding her.
“Is there anything else? I’d like to cut out early.”
“What about the vote? You’re going to be there, aren’t you?”
“I abstained.”
Bree wanted to scream. She needed Whitney’s support, now more than ever. How could she abstain from a vote that determined Bree’s future? “I really need you right now.”
“Yeah,” she laughed hollowly, clearly not believing the statement.
“Whitney? Please stay.”
“I have to go.” She turned and almost made it to the door.
“Stop.” She’d been avoiding her since their fight. That ended now. “Talk to me. What’s going on with you?”
“With me? That’s really rich coming from you.”
“Me?” Her breath caught. “What did I do?”
“Fine. You want to know? I’ll tell you.” She propped her hand on her hip, a classic Whitney move. She was about to unleash. “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”
“Figure out what?”
“You know what.”
“Oh, my God. Whitney, if you don’t tell me what the hell has you about to blow, I’m going to throw something at you.”
“Jeremy! He’s in love with you! When did that happen? How did that happen?”
Bree paused. How much did she want to say? It was against employee policy for managers and subordinates to engage in any type of romantic relationship. As the CEO, she served as the head of all departments. That included accounting. That included Jeremy.
It Takes Two Page 23
