Hardwired (The Hardwired Series) (Volume 1) (3 page)

* * *

“He asked you out?” Alli gushed into the phone. New York City hustled and bustled in the background.

“I guess so.” I was still reeling from the morning events.

“Did you wear your power suit? With the teal blouse?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, stripping the very garment off of me and collapsing onto our futon back at the dorm.

“Well, no wonder. You look amazing in that. Was he hot?”

Blake Landon was one of the sexiest men I had ever shared airspace with, but he had no respect for women in business, which put a serious damper on my attraction to him. Unfortunately, he was perilously close to being in my top ten of people I most despised.

“It doesn’t matter, Alli. I’ve never been so humiliated.” I winced, reliving his challenges and the subsequent rejection.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, I wish I could have been there to help.”

“Me too. Anyway, how was the interview?”

Alli paused. “It was good.”

“Yeah?”

“Really good, actually. I don’t want to jinx myself, but it sounds pretty promising.”

“That’s great.” I tried to hide my disappointment, knowing she was excited about this one. She would be working under the marketing director at one of the biggest labels in fashion. I had known for months that Alli would be looking for a full-time gig after graduation, but the thought of running the site without her depressed me. Unless we could afford to hire a new marketing director, I would become the new voice of the company, and networking had never been my forte.

“Nothing is set in stone though. We’ll see.”

“We should celebrate,” I said. Heaven knew I needed some sort of reward for surviving my hellish morning.

“We should celebrate our new best friend, Max!” she squealed.

I laughed, knowing Max was just her type too, if she only knew. She fell apart over three-piece suits. “Hopefully he isn’t just extending his favor to Quinlan by hearing me out for this follow up.”

“People don’t dangle two million dollar carrots in front of people as a favor.”

“True, but I don’t want him to invest unless he’s actually interested.”

“Erica, you’re overanalyzing, as usual.”

I hoped she was right, but I couldn’t help running every possible scenario through my mind in an attempt to plan and prepare for all of them. My brain never stopped.

“I’m getting on the Acela in an hour. I’ll be back before dinner and then we can grab drinks,” she said.

“All right, see you then.” I hung up and forced myself to get up so I could locate my comfy sweat pants, the ones I reserved for breakups and hangovers. Today had drained me beyond belief.

I stopped to appraise myself in the full-length mirror in the room Alli and I shared. I loosened my French twist and my wavy blonde hair fell down my back. I was thinner than usual, thanks to the past few weeks of stress, but my matching bra and panties still clung to my subtle curves.

I ran my hands over the soft lace hugging my hips, wishing someone else’s hands were there to make me forget all about today. I wasn’t expecting to go weak in the knees over some cocky investor at my first boardroom pitch, but my physical reaction to Blake was a serious indicator that I needed to revive my social life. I needed to get out and meet more people. Get away from my computer, at least on Saturday nights. That was usually when we did maintenance on the site because the traffic was slow, but at this rate I wouldn’t have a relationship in my twenties.

I got dressed and shot off an email to Sid with the news. He wouldn’t be awake for another few hours. In addition to being nocturnal, as many programmers were, he had come down with the flu the day before the meeting. He wasn’t much of a public speaker either, but strength existed in numbers and I could have used his support.

The past few months had been particularly intense, between normal college stressors and drafting an in-depth business plan for today’s meeting. While profitable, the site had a long way to go before it could support all of us in the long run. The business kept Alli, Sid, and me afloat, covering costs and our modest expenses as college students, but there were high expectations for where our Ivy League educations would land us fresh out of school.

While Sid and Alli had been job hunting like any responsible college senior, I had gone all in on Clozpin, convinced after our initial success that I could turn it into something far better than a nine to five job for all of us. Getting Max to invest might be my last hope before I had to sideline that dream and get a normal job. In the meantime, I had less than a week to move out of the dorms and find a place to live.

* * *

I woke to the smell of coffee quickly followed by a dull throbbing in my head. “Damn the wine.” I rubbed my temples and willed the pain away.

I sat up on the futon, wrapped myself in my comforter, and thanked the gods for the precious gift of coffee as Alli handed me a steaming cup and two ibuprofen on cue.

“Whatever, we had a blast.” She sidled up next to me with her cup of joe. Her long brown hair was pulled up into a messy bun and she looked effortlessly cute in an oversized off shoulder top and black leggings. “I haven’t seen you have so much fun in ages. You deserved a little break.”

“That meeting put me over the edge,” I said, thankful despite the headache that my nerves were no longer as frayed as they were yesterday.

“So tell me more about Max, and when can I meet him? According to drunk Erica, we’re soul mates.”

I laughed as details of the night came back to me. No night of dinner and drinks was complete without girl talk.

“I pretty much only know what Professor Quinlan told me. He’s smart but always ended up digging himself out of some trouble at school. I don’t think he would have graduated without Quinlan’s help, and a degree was one thing his daddy couldn’t buy.” I shrugged, wanting to give Max the benefit of the doubt now that he’d saved me from total humiliation. “I’m sure it’s not easy to fly straight with a billionaire father though. Some people can’t handle that much freedom.”

“Well it just so happens I’m in the market for taming billionaire playboys.” She gave me a sassy smirk over her shoulder.

“I have little doubt you are.” I rolled my eyes.

“So he just does this investing thing now?”

“I’m not really sure what he does now outside of Angelcom. With that much money, he’s probably into all sorts of things.”

“Okay, the Internet search begins.” Alli bounced up and settled back with her laptop, narrating Max’s benign resume of charity associations and Internet investments. “Let’s see what we can dig up about Blake Landon.”

 
I fisted my hand around the mug handle, vaguely remembering my drunken rant about what an offensive ass Blake had been at the meeting. That he assumed he could derail my presentation and take me out after was unbelievable, but with looks like his, he probably had most women eating out of his palm with very little effort. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t most women. The seething rage I felt toward the man was tempered only by the unholy way I felt under his gaze.

“Oh, please, I could care less.” Of the warring emotions, I tried to focus on my anger, but in truth, I was secretly curious about what Alli might find. Until yesterday I hadn’t heard of Blake, but judging by the way they let him run the show at Angelcom, he must have some influence. Alli stared intently at the screen, reading with obvious interest. I finally caved. “Well, what does it say?”

“He’s a hacker.”

“What?” She must have had the wrong Blake Landon, though he’d hardly looked like an upstanding corporate citizen this morning.

“Well, he used to be anyway. He has rumored connections to M89, a U.S. based hacker group that compromised over two hundred high-profile bank accounts about fifteen years ago. It doesn’t say anything else about it though. Officially, he’s the founding developer of Banksoft, which was acquired for twelve billion dollars. He’s the executive director of Angelcom and is an active investor in a number of early-stage Internet companies.”

“Self-made billionaire, then.”

“Sounds like it. He’s only twenty-seven. Says his parents were teachers.”

The information did little to diminish the anger I felt toward him sabotaging my pitch, but it did fill in some of the blanks. I had to admit, I respected him more knowing he wasn’t handed his fortune, but between him and Max, he still acted like the privileged brat of two. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters much now. If I’m lucky, we’ll never cross paths again anyway.”

It had been drizzling rain for hours. Streams coursed down the windowsill beside my desk where I overlooked one of the many courtyards on campus. The dorms were quiet as most of the students had already left for the term, so I decided to catch up on work. I was checking the traffic statistics on Clozpin when a new mail alert popped up on my screen from a name I didn’t recognize. The subject line read, “TechLabs Conference Panelist.” A thrill of excitement coursed through me. It was a request to fill in for a last minute cancellation at TechLabs, the biggest tech conference of the year.

“Alli...”

She grumbled something from under her blanket where she had been napping.

 
“Do you want to go to Vegas?”

“I thought you were hung over.”

“I am, but I just got invited to speak at the TechLabs Conference this weekend.”

Alli threw the cover off and sat up. “Are you serious?”

“Very. They had someone cancel on their social network CEO panel, and they want me to fill in.”

“We should do it, no question. This could be an amazing marketing opportunity.” She clapped her hands excitedly.

The trip would be expensive, but how could I pass up an opportunity to potentially launch us into the spotlight?
What the hell.
I couldn’t justify going half way at this point.

“Let’s do it,” I said, immediately giddy at the thought. Sure, networking could be great, but the idea of going to Vegas was pretty exciting all by itself. If I stayed away from the casinos, we’d be fine.

“Awesome, we need to start packing now,” Alli said.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Erica Hathaway, you’re the CEO of a fashion social network, representing your company in Las Vegas, the capital of glitz and glamour. We have serious work to do.”

I rolled my eyes as Alli snapped into action, losing herself in our miniscule closet, throwing what looked to be every mini dress she owned onto the bed.

“I’m going for the CEO look, not the call girl look, okay, Alli?”

“You’ve never been to Vegas, sweetie. Trust me.”

We spent the next few hours negotiating outfits while I booked flights and prepped material for the conference. In a little more than twenty-four hours, we would be in Vegas.

* * *

By contrast, Friday was warm and sunny, an invigorating promise of summer which, in New England, could make its appearance anytime between May and July. One more reason to go to Vegas, I thought.

Just past noon, I started across campus to meet with Sid. It was about time for his wake up call.

Not surprisingly, Sid and I met online first. I had the concept, the designs, and a small investment for start up costs, so after mulling over my original idea for a few weeks, I put out the call to the student body for a programmer to help build the site. Sid had been the first to reply. After a couple meetings, we decided to partner on the project, allowing me to put the money I had saved toward marketing instead, which had been critical for our early growth.

I banged on his door for a few minutes before he finally opened it. Sid was tall, well over six feet, and literally the skinniest human being I had ever known. With his dark skin and big brown puppy dog eyes, he was adorable in his own special way, but he’d been painfully single ever since I’d met him. I wasn’t the only one who needed to get out more.

This morning his eyes were bloodshot and tired, and I silently wondered if a new video game had come out. That usually had an effect on his already erratic sleep schedule.

“Here, I brought breakfast.” I tossed him an energy drink, and he grumbled a response before heading back into the cave—a messy suite he shared with a handful of other hermits. I followed him in and sat down on the couch.

“What’s up?” He cracked open the can and settled in at his desk covered in empty cans and pop tart wrappers. I resisted the urge to start cleaning.

“I’m going to Vegas to speak at the TechLabs conference, so I wanted to touch base with you before I left tonight. We might get a spike in traffic from the exposure. I just want to make sure we’re prepared for that.”

“How big of a spike?”

“I have no idea, but there are forty-five thousand people attending the conference. Alli is coming, so she’ll be doing PR too.”

“Okay, I’ll monitor the stats and have some load bearing servers set up for overflow.” He scribbled something into his notebook and booted up his machine.

“Do we have those already, or do we need to buy more?” I asked, hoping that we could avoid downtime with minimal funds.

“We can always use more. Is it in the budget?”

“Uh, not really. This trip is going to be a stretch.”

“How long until this money with Angelcom comes through?”

“
If
it does at all, I have no idea. I’m hoping to get a better sense of that when I meet with Max in a couple weeks. I think it usually takes a few months, but I have a feeling he might be able to get it pushed through more quickly if he’s really interested.”

“Okay, we’ll figure it out, I guess. I have a few old machines around here I can put together in a pinch. Let’s just hope the college network doesn’t go down.”

“Work your magic.”

I only understood about twenty percent of what Sid actually said, but I had no doubt he was a genius in his own right, so I trusted he would figure it out. He couldn’t wake up before noon, ever, but the man could build a computer out of ram chips and motherboards in a few hours. Plus, Clozpin had become his baby too, and like me, he worked on little else these days. I was thankful for his dedication, even if it meant working around his quirks.