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Looking around the room, the entire group seemed to back away from engaging me in this debate.
“Well?” I asked Syd.
“It’s worse than that. They think Jennifer wrote the stories under the Sigurd name at your direction.”
Suddenly the situation looked a whole lot more complicated. Because Jennifer had confessed to me, I knew something the rest of the room didn’t that made this SEC mess all the more dangerous. And I had no intention of sharing it with the group. In a long conversation, she’d come clean on her involvement with Sigurd—the person she knew as Hydra—and it was my call to forgive her for that. Nobody else needed to know, and I was keeping it that way.
Once again, only Syd was willing to speak up. “They expect to find evidence on Jennifer’s computer or yours that will prove it.”
“And when they don’t?”
“Then it goes away,” Syd answered.
Jay leaned forward. “It’s not that simple, I’m afraid.”
“Go ahead,” I urged.
“This whole process will take way too long. It won’t get settled before the proxy vote. Cartwright will use the news to his advantage, and he’s right that a lot of our shareholders will move to his side with this stink hanging over you. This smells like a setup by Cartwright.”
I prided myself in being able to keep a positive attitude, but this was too much. “So you think we’re fucked?”
Jay’s hesitation said it all. “Unless Larry has some rabbit to pull out of his hat, I don’t see any way this plays, except to Cartwright’s advantage.”
Larry ignored the magic act comment. “He was probably hinting at a surprise coming during every meeting last week.”
I nodded, agreeing with Larry. “It’s what I would have done if I knew a bombshell was about to drop.”
I let the group go and locked myself in my office.
Cartwright had been sneakier and smarter than I’d given him credit for, and now it was game, set, match.
He would win, and I would lose.
Everything had gone to shit, and I needed to talk to Jennifer, the one good thing in my life today. I tried to dial her, but my cell phone did its stupid reset thing again. I called out my open office door. “Cindy, I give up.”
She appeared at the door. “What’s the problem?”
I held up my phone. “You said we had a whiz kid in IT that could fix this thing?”
She walked in, hand out. “Yeah, I’ll get it to Oleg.”
“Is he the one who looks like he’s fourteen?”
She took the phone from me. “That’s the one. He’s actually twenty-three, and he runs the group.”
“Thanks.”
I suddenly felt old having to get help from kids. The entire IT group looked like they belonged in high school. I dismissed the thought as wasted energy. I didn’t need to be a phone genius to run the company. And maybe they weren’t getting younger—maybe I was getting older.
“And, I need another fucking computer.”
A scowl was my punishment for swearing at her.
“I’m sorry. Would you please ask IT to get me another computer so I can do my work?”
The scowl was replaced by her happy face. “Gladly.”
I still needed to check on Jennifer. She’d been dragged into this mess as well. After closing my door, I dialed her number on my desk phone, but didn’t get an answer. I didn’t leave a message, face to face would be better.
