“Can’t say I miss the giant puffy coats,” Maia said, sighing. “Being able to dress in whatever I want all year? Yes please.”
Ajax laughed. “Well, we’ll see how Landon feels about that when it does get cold. It might not snow, but that doesn’t mean it’s warm all the time.”
“I’ve got all the wool coats I’ll need,” I promised. “After Boston, it’s definitely going to be better. Anything short of Maine would be.”
He bowed his head in concession, but then his phone rang. He sighed, muttered something that sounded like Japanese to me, and Maia winced and led me out of the room. “He’s working on a merger. Maybe. I have doubts, but you know how it is.”
I looked at her, then back at his office, and bit my lip. “Honestly? Not even a clue, and I’m kind of glad for it. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate not having been called tech-monkey yet, but I’d rather be that than have to worry about everything to do with running a whole company.”
She laughed uproariously at that, shaking her head. “Well, hopefully no one will call you that. Tech-cat, maybe? But if anyone is a problem, come to me. This isn’t a regular human company where the bottom line matters more than people. We formed as a pack, and we’re damned well going to stay a pack.”
And that was... nice. Cats didn’t really have packs, but it was a nice thought, people sticking together. Being loyal to each other.
I could get behind that.
“Okay,” she announced, chipper as ever after hours of introductions. “Time to take you to your own lair. You share a floor with the rest of the techies. IT, the programmers, and the people handling our servers. And the servers themselves. Is that offensive?”
“I don’t see why it would be. Those people need IT services most often, so having us nearby makes the most sense.”
She beamed at the response and took me out into tech central. She introduced me to the tiny woman who was in charge of keeping the website up and running, her team of programmers in a bunch of cubicles laid out in a bullpen. I’d never had anyone happier to see me. “I’d hug you if I did that kind of thing,” she said. “We’ve got a pile of scrapped computers that need repairs and parts, and your boys are trying to keep up with it, but they’re disorganized as hell. It’s like the ticket system just sends into the void suddenly.”
Maia frowned. “You didn’t say anything.”
“Not your problem,” the woman said. “We’ve been making do, and I knew you’d get a new person in.”
“Is the former head of IT’s email address still running?”
The programmer blinked. “You don’t think . . . ”
“That they were having all tickets run through them? Yeah. It’s not unheard of, if they came from a smaller company than Crescent.”
She huffed a long-suffering sigh and nodded. “I’ll see if I can find it. And then I guess we try to find a more sensible way to handle tickets.”
“If you can get me access to the system and their email, I can handle it.” I told her. “My last company, on the handoff to a new head of IT, deleted the previous guy’s email, and they were just being sent into the void, so they were gone.”
She shook her head in wonder, then turned to look to her left. “Hey, Lucas?”
A good-looking young man with ink-black hair stood from a cubicle and wandered over, offering both Maia and me an easy smile. “’Sup boss?”
“This is Landon Smith, the new head of IT. You’re with him this week, for as long as he needs to get his section untangled. Help him get into Gomez’s old email and sort this mess out.” She talked like a drill sergeant from a movie, and despite his laid-back demeanor, he didn’t hesitate to return it with a sharp nod.
“Sure thing. Be back as soon as I can.”
“Right then,” Maia said, clapping her hands and rubbing them together. “You might think we’re completely incompetent given this, but I think you’ll like your setup, promise.”
She turned toward the other side of the building and motioned for us to follow her. The other side of the elevators looked like a long hallway with a few doors on either side, and not much else.
Then she opened the first door on the left, and inside was... well, it looked almost like a warehouse, full of computers and parts and frankly, it looked like heaven.
Finally, we were off to the races.
Between the shelves were a dozen or so desks, each with someone sitting at it, working on something. One on a laptop, sighing in frustration, another carefully disassembling a desktop tower. They all looked up when we came in.
“This,” Maia announced, motioning to me, “is your new boss. Landon Smith.”
Shit, that felt weird. I was the boss. Well, the boss of some people. Eleven people, to be exact, who all stood and came over to shake my hand, welcoming and pleased to meet me. Not a single annoyed expression in the bunch. Frankly, I felt a lot of relief.
“Think you can figure out where all the repair tickets are going?” one of them asked.
