“No!” Kyle slams his palms down on my desk. “I’ve given this company two years of my life. Days and nights. Weekends. Holidays. This is bullshit!”
“The logs don’t lie, Kyle. You know how sensitive this project is. You’ve done great work for us, but this…you knew this was against policy, and you did it twice.”
“I was worried, Evianna. Something’s not right with the code. I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure, and this was the only way.” Kyle’s voice turns pleading, but there’s still a hint of anger under his words. “I haven’t shared the code with anyone. It’s safe.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the code. All our performance indicators are just where they should be. Error rates far under benchmarks. Alfie’s solid.”
“Oh my God—” Something shifts in Kyle’s voice, and he balls his hands into fists. “You know…don’t you? You’re part of this. Evianna, if you fire me, when everything goes to shit, you won’t have anyone who knows how to fix these…problems. The launch will fail. And your reputation…the whole company’s reputation…”
Sucking in a quick breath, I reach for the phone. “Stan, please send Security to my office.”
“Security? Evianna, come on!” Kyle throws up his hands, and my heart starts pounding against my ribs. He’s just a kid. Twenty-four at most, and probably all of one hundred and fifty pounds. But right now, he’s looking at me like I just killed his puppy.
As soon as two beefy guys wearing dark blue suits enter my office, I open a secure browser connection with a few keystrokes. “Log in to your cloud storage, show me where you uploaded the code, and hard delete it. While I watch. No backups.”
“Evianna, listen to me—” He lunges for my hand, but Jimmy, the older of the two security guards, grabs Kyle’s arm.
“Easy there, kid. Don’t do anything you’ll regret,” Jimmy says.
Fear creeps into Kyle’s eyes, and his shoulders slump. “I wasn’t going to…”
I nudge the keyboard closer to him. “Delete the files and hand over your access card. We’ll have any personal effects at your desk sent to you.”
I hate firing people. The betrayal in Kyle’s eyes makes my heart hurt as I watch him navigate to a secure cloud server, enter a long string of letters and numbers, and show me the directory he created.
After I verify the size of the folder is the same approximate size as the data he transferred, I nod. “Delete it. And all the backups.”
He turns off automatic data recovery, purges the directory, and empties the temporary trash files. “Satisfied?”
His sneer spurs the Security guys to take a step forward, but I wave them off. Kyle won’t hurt me, despite his anger. God, he’s the best damn coder I’ve ever met. I hate having to do this. “Yes,” I say softly. “I’m sorry, Kyle. I didn’t have a choice.” Holding out my hand, I try to force some strength into my tone. “Your badge, please.”
Grumbling something unintelligible under his breath, Kyle jerks his badge off his belt clip and throws it down on my desk. “Fuck you, Evianna. Fuck this whole company.”
This time, the building’s security guards won’t be placated. Jimmy wraps his hand around Kyle’s arm again. “Enough, kid. Don’t make a scene. We’re going straight to the elevator. Anything you need from your desk, you tell Laird here and he’ll get it for you. Understand?”
Jimmy has a good hundred and fifty pounds on Kyle, and the kid nods, keeping his head down as Jimmy escorts him into the hall. After I shut my office door, I sink down onto the edge of my desk, my legs not quite steady.
Taking over as CIO for Beacon Hill Technologies three years ago allowed me to move back home to Boston from Silicon Valley. To take care of my mom for a while—until her condition progressed to the point where she needed round-the-clock care.
The brisk raps on my door force me to pull myself together, and I shake my head quickly to rid myself of the lingering feelings of doubt. I didn’t have a choice. He broke company policy, and that’s a fireable offense.
“Yes?” Before I can stand, the door opens a crack, and Ulysses peers in.
“Everything okay, boss?” The compassion in his almond-shaped eyes and his quiet demeanor are why I hired him a year ago as my administrative assistant. When this job threatens to steal the last of my sanity, Ulysses shows up with a cup of tea or a cannoli from Mike’s Pastry shop. Or a sympathetic ear. Sometimes all three.
“No.” With a dramatic sigh, I wave him in and wait for him to shut the door. “I had to fire Kyle.”
“Well, I figured that out. Everyone figured that out.” He moves to my little electric kettle and starts the water, then fixes me a cup of jasmine tea.
The soft, floral scents calm me, and I sink onto my little overstuffed chair in the corner by the window. “I can’t tell you why.” When he frowns, I hold up my hand. “You know how tight our NDAs are. But let’s just say it was so blatantly against company policy, I didn’t have a choice.”
As the tea steeps, Ulysses pulls up my calendar on my laptop. “You don’t have anything for the rest of the day, Evianna. Why not go see your ma for a couple of hours? Then maybe the spa? You can come back tomorrow and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“Maybe. After I talk to the troops. They need to know.”
He checks his watch. “Okay. I’ll call the Waxing Spa on Newbury and see if they have anything available tonight. They’re open late. Now, drink your tea and have a little breather. Then you can make your announcement, stick around for questions for an hour, and be at your ma’s by 6:00. ‘Kay?”
“You’re a lifesaver, Ulysses,” I say as he hands me the mug. “What would I do without you?”
