“Are you ready for your presentation?” Salisbury asked Chester, barely looking at his own son.
“Ready as I’ll ever be, sir,” Chester said with a fake smile.
“Good,” Salisbury nodded. “Come.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up as Salisbury escorted Chester away from me and Jack and across to the stage. The lack of any sort of confrontation between Salisbury and Jack, the way the two of us were more or less ignored in favor of Chester and the presentation, didn’t sit right with me at all.
“I have a really bad feeling about this,” I said, gesturing for Jack to go with me to the side of the room where Steven and the control consol were.
“Why?” Jack asked. “Has something happened?” Before I could answer, he went on with, “German is here. That’s good.”
I shook my head. “I’m not so sure. German and your dad were talking earlier.”
“Oh.” That was all Jack said, and the single syllable did not sit easily on his lips.
“Are we about to watch our salvation or a train wreck?” I asked, subtly taking his hand, even though I had to hide the fact that I was holding it.
Jack looked down at me, all kinds of emotion in his eyes. Some of it was intriguingly hopeful, but mostly he looked as worried as I was.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention,” Salisbury said from the stage, which he’d mounted with Chester while Jack and I had taken up our positions.
The room was quick to quiet as everyone took their seats. Steven dimmed the room’s lighting a little so the screen on thestage showed up better. It made Salisbury the focal point of the room, which gave me about twelve different kinds of bad feelings.
“Welcome to the keynote presentation of the Barrington Technology Expo,” Salisbury said with a wolfish smile. “I suppose you’re all curious about why a state senator cares so much about technology.” He got a small, eager reaction for that. “I have always been fascinated by technology and the wonders that computers can perform for us,” he went on. “This sort of technology holds the keys to making all of our lives easier, to ending joblessness and food insecurity, to improving our skill sets and creating a better future for all.”
“He doesn’t care about any of those things,” Jack muttered beside me. “He just wants to make himself rich.”
“I am championing Mr. Chester Monk, today and as his business grows,” Salisbury went on, “because I believe his ideas and the applications he has for those ideas are the future of Barrington and beyond. And so, it is with great pride and honor that I present you with Mr. Chester Monk and his Fast Track app.”
Salisbury stepped back, and the crowd applauded as Chester stepped forward, waving to his audience. Even with all that approval and interest, Chester was awkward and tense.
“Thank you, Senator Salisbury,” he said, gripping the podium with white knuckles once he got to it. “Believe me, I couldn’t do any of this without the good senator’s assistance. Salisbury for governor, am I right?”
Chester laughed uncomfortably. About half the audience shared his awkward, stilted laughter.
Salisbury stood off to the side with a frown.
Everything within me bristled with urgency. German could use Chester’s awkward comment and the way he kept glancing to Salisbury as he began his presentation with an overview ofhis ad targeting app. It would be easy for the reporter to ask for clarification about the relationship between the two men, and then to go on from there.
German sat at the end of the second row in front of the stage. I could just make him out from where Jack and I stood. Schubert sat with him, the glow of his phone lighting up his face. From the look of things, it didn’t seem like German was going to budge, let alone start asking pointed questions.
I forced myself to concentrate on Chester’s presentation.
“As you can see, the app works silently in the background of your phone,” he said, clicking through a few slides that were pretty, but didn’t really explain much. “It tracks your previous activities and saves items that you’ve browsed across multiple platforms. The fact that it can curate a shopping list of items across a wide range of sites makes it unique among apps of this sort.”
I didn’t really see the point of an app like that, but a lot of people in the audience gazed up at the screen as if they were seeing a revelation. From the look of things, they understood the technical wizardry of the whole thing way more than I did.
“We expect to roll out implementation of this app before the end of the month,” Chester went on.
“Just in time for the start of the election cycle,” Jack muttered beside me.
I danced nervously from one foot to the other, staring at German and willing him to raise his hand and ask the pertinent questions. The farther Chester got into his presentation, the more my anxiety rose as the reporter just sat there, doing and saying nothing. This was supposed to be our foolproof plan.
This was supposed to be the way Jack and I gained the leverage to be together, whether Salisbury wanted us to or not.
I couldn’t just stand there watching my future slip away. German wasn’t going to do anything. He was clearly friends with Salisbury and not on our side at all. I had to do something.
Chester reached his final slide and started into a summary of everything he’d just said with, “And because of this, I believe, and Senator Salisbury believes, too, that the Fast Track app will revolutionize the way we consume and the quality of our lives.”
