Kelly was breathing hard; she could feel her heart thumping in her chest; her thighs ached.
She came to the bottom of the hill and the trail immediately started to rise again to another hill where she watched Steve crest and begin to disappear down the far slope. She had to stop, and leaned over with her hands on her knees, catching her breath.
Steve was right: Crothers Woods was beautiful. Gentle slopes rose out of ravines, with tall hickory, beech and maple trees scattered all around providing a leafy canopy, through which the sunlight turned leaves and ferns a radiant, verdant green.
There were groomed trails throughout, some leading all the way downtown, with pretty, wooden bridges crossing the river and a few steep sided slopes – and plenty of hills.
Steve loved to hike, and she had been all for a Saturday morning excursion to get a little exercise when he had suggested it. From the idyllic view at the trailhead, it seemed easy enough; now, still short of breath, she stood and started up the next slope just as Steve’s head disappeared beyond the crest. Steve was in superb physical condition; it was painfully obvious to her just how out of shape she’d allowed herself to get.
As she trudged to the top of the rise she saw Steve, well ahead on the path, stopped and looking her way, clearly waiting to make sure she hadn’t collapsed. He waved and started running – running – back toward her. That only increased her self-annoyance, and determination not to let him think she couldn’t keep up. She paused and waved him on.
“Keep going!” she called. “I’m fine.” She started to move again but he was now on the slope, trotting up to meet her.
“I could use a break,” he said. His attempting to spare her discomfiture felt patronizing and only made her petulant.
“I’m fine, Steve, c’mon, let’s keep going.”
There was a large boulder at the left edge of the trail; Steve sat on it and took a drink from his water bottle. He offered it to her.
“You don’t have to stop on my account, Steve. Really, I’m fine. I want to keep going.”
“Okay,” he said. “Go on ahead if you want to. I need to rest a minute. I’ll catch up.”
She frowned at him, then turned to look ahead down the trail, ready but reluctant to continue. She suddenly felt Steve’s hand grip her wrist, then felt herself tugged toward him and landed on his lap.
She started to protest but he started kissing her, making it impossible to get anything coherent out of her mouth. Finally, she just gave in, and started to giggle, feeling like a jackass.
She took the water bottle Steve offered her and drank most of what was left then handed it back to him.
“I think we need some refreshment,” he said.
“No, I’m good thanks, I almost finished the wa--”
Kelly felt her leg lifted high as Steve leaned back to swing her leg around until she was sitting astride his lap, facing him, and he buried his face between her breasts.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head and said, “Steeeve…” making a perfunctory protest that they both knew was futile. “I’m all sweaty.”
She didn’t bother going through the motions of resistance, knowing full well that acquiescence was inevitable.
Still nuzzling her breasts through her t-shirt, he said, “Horses sweat, men perspire, and women glow.”
She sniffed the air. “Is that what glowing smells like?”
He raised his head and smiled at her, then kissed her deeply. Her nipples were already hard when his hand slipped up under her t-shirt and his fingers lifted her sports bra up and off her breasts and he fondled them each in turn, then he lifted her t-shirt up and started kissing and suckling them. She looked both ways along the path – where they had come and where they had been headed. They had only encountered one person on the trail – an elderly gentleman in a Tilley hat and walking stick with a small dog on a leash. He had smiled pleasantly as he passed.
Of course, anyone could come along but they would see them from a fair way off; that stretch of the trail was up and down but straight. And the idea of discovery only added piquancy. Since that time on the deck of Sans Peur, which Kelly had fantasized about many times, the thought of making love out of doors again – with the risk of discovery - had slowly built to a longing that was about to be fulfilled.
She was wearing comfortable fit, cotton/lycra hiking shorts, with enough stretch in them that she was able to hook her fingers into the crotch and her panties and pull them to one side. Two minutes ago, she had been standing in the middle of the trail in a pout, with sex the last thing on her mind; now she was wet and very ready as Steve found her opening with the head of his penis and plunged insider her.
Moaning, she ran her fingers all through his hair, and kissed him greedily, pressing herself against his pubic bone, wiggling to intensify contact with her clitoris.
The spontaneity and location had amplified the excitement for both of them and Kelly could feel Steve driving against and into her and felt his shoulders tighten then he gripped her like a vise and she felt the pulsating warmth of his climax. After a few moments, he relaxed his hold on her; she moved, just a little, to squeeze and savour the lingering feel of him. She herself hadn’t climaxed, but it felt so good and it was so exciting that she didn’t mind. In any case, they had all day, and all weekend.
She kissed him and slowly stood, pulling herself off of him and he handed her a tissue which she folded into a temporary pad as she slipped her undies and shorts back into place.
“Well, that was refreshing,” she said. She looked away along the path ahead and where it curved she saw through the trees, a man on a mountain bike moving quickly toward them.
Steve followed her gaze.
“That was close,” she said.
“Nah, he’s moving too fast. He’d have whipped right by us and wouldn’t notice.”
“Yeah, right.”
He lifted his hands to her, and she pulled hard against his weight, bringing him to his feet.
They started down the trail – Steve now moving at a much more leisurely pace – and the mountain biker raced past.
“Sorry, to leave you behind back there,” Steve said.
“It’s okay, I was being a baby.”
“I was distracted; I wasn’t paying attention. My mind was somewhere else.”
She knew what was weighing on his mind.
“Let me guess: Athena.”
Steve stopped and feigned amazement. “Whoa, you can read minds?”
Kelly chuckled. “It wasn’t that hard.”
They started walking again, and Kelly slipped her fingers into his.
“Kelly, we’re not going to make it.”
His tone was downcast, defeated. He continued, “Even with Tyler’s simulator, we have to finish the coding before we can do the final quality assurance and use case testing. Niki and I have gone over and over it. To make a September launch date, we need people – right now – to finish coding, with the time we have left before we have to release the code to manufacturing.”
Steve had discovered Tyler’s simulator four days ago but hadn’t informed any of the executive team -- and it was a ray of hope in an otherwise gloomy outlook. What instinct was holding him back?
“Fucking Robert,” Steve said acidly. “Everybody else in the company is working their asses off to get Athena out on schedule and turn the company around. He’s seems to be doing everything possible to prevent Athena from launching on time.”
“You’d almost think he’s trying to make the company fail,” Kelly mused, commiserating.
Her mind wandered as they walked. Maybe Robert thought he was doing what was best for Pyrotech, trying to make the best of a bad situation to make whatever profit they could by cutting jobs and freezing hiring – except in his own department - to prevent the stock price from falling further, but he just seemed to make things worse. He was almost guaranteeing the failure of the Athena product launch. It was tempting to think that Robert would try to cause Athena to miss the launch, just out of general spite, or just to see Steve fail. That would certainly explain Robert’s bullshit behaviour. But, could he really be that petty? His cost cutting had been well underway by the time Steve arrived at Pyrotech, so it couldn’t just be about hurting Steve. And would that really be a reason to do what he’d been doing? If not, then what? Why would he seem to be acting against the efforts of the rest of the management team – except Linda, of course, who wasn’t making an effort to do much of anything. What possible benefit would he get…?
She stopped walking.
“Wait a minute…maybe he is,” she said.
Steve stopped and took a step back to come beside her. “What? Trying to wreck Pyrotech? He’s a dick, but that’s taking it kind of far even for him.”
“But, what if he has a reason to screw it up? What if he benefits somehow?”
“Well, you could be right. For a guy who gets off on making people miserable, sinking the company would be a grand slam.”
“No, I mean actually benefit. What if…what if someone were paying him to sabotage the Athena project?”
Steve looked at her, with a skeptical expression.
“Well, wouldn’t that explain it?” Kelly said defensively.
“You’re being serious.” It was clear from his tone that he thought she was being nonsensical.
Kelly was starting to feel silly. It was kind of ridiculous.
“Okay, okay, I’m reaching for straws.” But, her mind kept working as they walked.
She stopped and grasped his arm. “A competitor!” she blurted out the instant it occurred to her.
Steve’s brows knit, and he looked off as he considered this possibility.
“We’re up against some big ass players,” he admitted. “But would they really resort to industrial espionage?”
It was a little paranoid, but Steve had gone to battle with these companies before, and it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.
Kelly’s mind was now riveted on the idea that Robert could gain by Athena’s failure.
“Wait! What about”– complex investments weren’t her thing, but she combed her mind for the right possibility--“what about a hedge fund? You know, a company that short sells stock? Judy told me there are all kinds of short positions on us out there, people expecting our stock price to fall, circling us like buzzards. What if one of them wanted to eliminate their risk and make sure the stock price fell?”
She saw that now there wasn’t a trace of skepticism in Steve’s expression. His brow was furrowed, and he was staring into space, his fingers were lightly drumming his upper lip – what she had come to know as his thinking posture – and he was nodding.
Then a thought hit her like a lightening bolt.
“What if it’s not a hedge fund?” she said. Steve looked at her and listened.
“What if it’s Robert?”
“You mean, what if he’s selling the stock short and trying to drive the price down so he can make a fortune from fucking us up?”
Kelly nodded.
“Well, he has the smarts, and the financial chops - and the deviousness – to try to pull that off.”
He looked at her, smiling grimly and nodding. “Kelly, I think you may have solved the mystery of the CFO’s dickishness.”
Kelly laughed, uneasily; it was such a horrible idea. “Was that an Agatha Christie novel I missed?”
Steve was looking off again, considering her theory.
Partly gratified, but partly doubtful of her deductive powers, Kelly said, “But, could he pull it off?”
“There are some individual traders that hold short positions but it’s mostly companies holding them. But, there are probably thousands of companies – large hedge funds, small investment companies – it would be easy to sneak a fake corporation – or a whole bunch of them – into the crowd.” Steve began nodding again. “Robert, you sly son of a bitch. What are you up to?”
Something was pawing for attention at the back of Kelly’s mind. Something Judy had said.
Steve’s lips were pursed. “That bastard. It would be just like him to run us into the ground, then fuck off to a Caribbean Island.”
Kelly’s head jerked around to face Steve. “That’s it! The Caymans. Remember what Judy said? Judy told me, on the day Robert fired her, she found a stack of papers in the photocopier with Robert’s name on the top sheet – and it had an address in the Cayman Islands. Isn’t that place known for setting up companies to hide money away?”
“It’s known for that, and Stingray City.”
Kelly scrunched her face. “Huh? Stingray City?”
“It’s amazing. We’ll go there some day. But, for the moment, let’s see if we can figure out if Robert’s a stock manipulator – or we’re crazy.”
Kelly again started to doubt her reasoning. “Are we crazy? I mean, seriously: numbered companies, exotic tax havens, cloak and dagger? Does this stuff really happen? Could it really happen here, to us? I could certainly see Robert tucking his money away somewhere to avoid taxes but is he really”--she sought the right descriptor–-“an evil genius.”
She started to giggle. It was too outlandish.
They started walking again.
Damn, Steve thought. If only they could see the paper Judy had found in the photocopier. He had an image of himself with a crowbar breaking open Robert’s desk drawers, but would Robert keep his private documents in the office, or had he just brought them in to make copies? Steve chuckled. It would be just like Robert, the cheap bastard, to save a few quarters and bring the evidence of his criminal activity to work to use the office photocopier.
Kelly had moved a few paces ahead of him. Her figure in silhouette against the afternoon sun brought him a moment of pleasant distraction. She looked good in her tight little shorts perfectly conformed to her round, shapely –
“Your butt!” Steve blurted out.
Kelly looked back at him over her shoulder.
“’S’cuse me?” She then glanced down to see what was going on back there.
Steve stopped. The sudden comprehension had thoughts coming faster than he could form them into words. “No, your butt – the photocopier -remember when you photocopied your butt? – and boy, you showed me a thing or two about you not being modest” --he dutifully added—“your butt, the image was in the photocopier memory.”
The memory of her embarrassment momentarily blocked the meaning of whatever it was that Steve was getting at.
But, then she got it.
“You’re right! The photocopier memory! Those documents must be there!”
Then she remembered Steve had the photocopier memory cleared and she was suddenly crestfallen. “But, you had the technician erase the memory, Steve.”
Steve gave her a sly smile.
“Yes, I did. I had the technician remove all traces, for all time, of your perfect, round, delightful – “
Kelly crossed her arms and gave him a look.
Steve cleared his throat. “But, I had him copy the photocopier memory onto a thumb drive first. It’s sitting in a desk drawer at the office.”
Kelly uncrossed her arms and a huge grin filled her face: Robert’s documents would be on that thumb drive. If he really was trying to sabotage Athena, Steve had the evidence.
Then it occurred to her that he hadn’t kept the USB drive in anticipation of Robert Bokitis’s criminal wrong doing – that had just occurred to them. He kept it for – that little monkey.
“What a happy coincidence that you kept a copy of my butt – when you swore to me you wouldn’t.”
She re-crossed her arms.
But, Steve didn’t look nearly contrite enough. Some slight misgiving of her moral advantage made her relax her arms a little.
“As exciting as keeping a copy of your rear end would be,” Steve said evenly, “I kept a copy of all the pages in the photocopier memory to make sure there were no Athena documents that might have been vulnerable to exposure outside the company.”
Kelly uncrossed her arms for a second time. “Right, of course, I knew that.”
They looked at each other and then both started to laugh.
“I’ve been putting if off, but I’d planned to skim through all those thousands of pages on that drive to make sure there were no confidential documents in there. Now I have something else to look for.”
Kelly’s curiosity couldn’t wait. “Let’s go get the drive and take a look.”
Steve nodded, equally anxious to look for the incriminating documents.
They turned around and headed back to the trailhead.
Kelly suddenly stopped and grabbed Steve’s arm.
“Linda! She’s in on it, Steve, she has to be – I mean if Robert really is the criminal mastermind we’re thinking he might be, he couldn’t do it alone. He’s just a VP. He’d have to have the co-operation of the CEO.”
Steve looked at her, then nodded, connecting dots, reasoning it out.
Kelly continued. “If all the crap he’s been doing is to sink Pyrotech, not save it, then he has to have Linda’s complicity. Even with her apparent disengagement, Linda would have to clue in to what Robert’s doing. Any CEO - even Linda - would challenge him, she’d question his rationale, she’d make him demonstrate that he was doing the right thing for the company. Her total lack of leadership, her giving him carte blanche to make whatever decision he wants – that’s her colluding with him.”
She started shaking her head in disbelief. “Jesus, Steve, they’re both in on it.”
Steve considered her logic; she was right: Linda would have to be Robert’s accomplice – assuming they weren’t just imaging a grand conspiracy.
They looked at each other then turned and walked, then jogged to the trailhead to get to the car and the truth.
Steve gazed out the window of his fourth-floor office in his house in the Beaches as his laptop started up. It was a beautiful day and the breeze was up; he could see several sailboats nicely making way. He would much rather be out there, but – he looked at the USB drive he held between his thumb and forefinger – he had to find out if Kelly’s theory was right, that Robert and Linda were in a conspiracy to ruin Pyrotech and then get rich short selling the crashing stock.
On the drive from the Pyrotech office to his house - after he had run up to his office to get the thumb drive - their initial excitement had cooled. It seemed so far-fetched, so bizarre, had they just seized on this crazy idea as a way to cope with their profound disappointment that Athena would fail? Was it just wish fulfillment?
What if the documents were just Robert’s sleazy attempt to avoid paying taxes by squirreling his money away in the Caymans? Or, maybe he was an international arms dealer or art thief? These things had begun to seem as probable as an elaborate stock swindle.
There was only one way to find out.
Steve entered his password and the laptop was ready. He aimed the drive at a USB port but hesitated before snapping it in. What if it were true? What then? What would they do exactly?
Would they confront Robert and Linda? Turn the documents over to the Ontario Securities Commission and the RCMP? Robert and Linda would surely end up in prison. But what would the scandal do to Pyrotech and to Athena? It would cause the world to discredit Pyrotech and disregard Athena.
They’d be pooched either way.
Steve puffed out his cheeks and blew; one way or the other, he had to find out. He fitted the drive into a USB port and clicked on the photocopier image file. Based on the size of the file there would be thousands of pages.
He took one more longing look out the window at the beach and lake and sunny day and began paging through the scanned documents.
After showering and changing into white denim shorts and a clean pale blue t-shirt, Kelly sat at the kitchen table grazing her email. She was more or less caught up, but if Steve was going to spend the next few hours grinding through all those scanned documents, she decided she might as well try to use the time productively.
Her in-basket had industry newsletters that she rarely had time to read: she read them now; there was an employee morale survey that MJ had sent out: she completed it and rated every question a 5 out of 5 – she was always happy to tell a little white lie to make a friend feel better; some young person from a digital marketing start up had sent her an enthusiastic and effusive email about how their platform could actually ‘use social media to sell! – no, seriously’: she smiled and although she would normally not respond – better to not raise their hopes – she replied saying ‘let’s set up a call in the next few weeks’. Steve had once been a young, enthusiastic member of a start up, and someone had given him a break.
As she trudged through her email, she contemplated Linda. Linda had arrived at the pinnacle of career success – for a man or woman – as the CEO of a major, albeit, beaten down, global technology company. So many women – and she had to be honest, herself included – would accept this role with a mixture of disbelief, gratitude and gritty determination to make it succeed. It was more than just a matter of fulfilling the obligation of the job; success meant demonstrating to the world – men and women – that a woman could take on a huge challenge that everyone expected to end in failure and pull it off. It would be a matter of personal pride and accomplishment and the rewards that went along with that, of course, but it also meant blazing a trail – for Chloe and Caithness and all the daughters of all her friends and all women everywhere…
As the VP of Marketing of a global, technology firm, she had risen much farther in her career than she had ever expected to when she’d graduated from business school almost 20 years ago, and she felt enormous gratification in what she’d achieved. Could she go higher? Could she be the CEO of Pyrotechnique or some other firm? Did she have what it took? Not just intelligence and a strong work ethic – but it had to be something she really wanted. Did she?
Kelly realized she had read an email from top to bottom and hadn’t registered a single thing. She pushed her laptop away.
Linda. She had one of the best jobs in the country and she was sitting back, barely even observing, as the company floundered, desperately needing leadership. What was wrong with her?
And if it turned out that she was holding a highly coveted office – and using it to--to let some asshole – because that’s what Robert was – destroy it to make a few more millions…
Linda was already rich. Her net worth was probably several million dollars. It was likely true that Linda had had so much of her wealth tied up in Pyrotech stock that Kelly figured she had probably lost a significant amount of money as the stock price tumbled over the past several years.
But Linda would still be rich by almost any measure. In fact, it was a puzzle why she even stayed on at Pyrotech as the CEO when she was independently wealthy and could do whatever she wanted with her life – travel, sit on the board of any number of charitable organizations, teach at a business school, volunteer at a start-up incubator to help the next generation of entrepreneurs…
Well, one explanation could certainly be that she remained the CEO of Pyrotech to have the authority to deliberately sabotage the company for personal gain.
How much more personal gain could she possibly need?
Kelly’s musing about the enigma that was Linda was interrupted by the sound of Steve stepping down the stairs. She looked up as he strode into the kitchen holding his laptop, with a look of grim satisfaction on his face.
Which meant he’d found Robert’s documents – and they were proof that Robert and Linda were colluding to subvert Athena and cripple Pyrotech.
She raised her eyebrows and he nodded, then swung in beside her on the breakfast nook bench. He set the laptop down in front of her.
“First of all,” he said, “you wouldn’t believe the shit people bring in to the office to make copies of – recipes, kids’ homework assignments, divorce decrees, and the photos – oh my god…do you know there are people who like to dress up in furry animal costumes and --”
“Okay, okay, I know peoples’ personal lives and professional lives give schizophrenia a whole new meaning – but can you show me Robert’s documents, please?”
Steve tapped the space bar and the laptop screen lit up.
Kelly leaned in and scrutinized the document on the screen. It was a Certificate of Incorporation: the company name was Cyclops Hedge Fund Limited; there was an address – likely a post office box; the directors were Robert Bokitis and Linda Hines; the shareholders were Robert Bokitis and Linda Hines; at the bottom was a seal and a signature of the Registrar of Companies, Cayman Islands.
Kelly tapped the PgDn key and a balance sheet appeared. Under Assets it showed cash of $273,240; under Liabilities it showed $273,240 in securities – described as 27,000 shares of Pyrotechnique.
Kelly looked up at Steve. He pointed to the screen.
“In order to short sell our stock, Tweedledum and Tweedledee had to borrow shares from a broker, which they sold at the price the stock was trading at that day, which was $10.12. As you know the stock has been stuck at around $10 for two years or more. So, they have $270K in cash in a bank account in the Caymans – but they can’t touch it because they still have to return those 27,000 shares to the broker they borrowed them from to sell. Hence, they’re “short”. They’re on the nut for that $270 grand.
“The way they profit is if the share price falls. At some point, they have to buy 27,000 shares of Pyrotech stock and return it to the broker. If the stock price falls to $9.00 they only have to use $243,000. So, they have a profit of $30,368.”
Steve paused. “Not a bad payday – unless you’re Robert and Linda. No, they need the stock price to plummet. So, if the stock price goes to $2.00 – with a little help from the dastardly duo – and they buy the 27,000 shares to return to the broker at that price, their profit goes to $219,368.”
That’s a lot of money for most people, Kelly thought, but a pittance compared to Linda’s wealth. It was clear there was more to come. She listened.
“So, that’s the profit Robert and Linda might reasonably expect from one of their hedge funds.”
Steve tapped the PgDn key and another Certificate of Incorporation appeared. The company was called Poseidon Hedge Fund Limited. Kelly couldn’t help but appreciate Robert’s irony in using names from Greek Mythology – just as the product development team had in selecting “Athena” as the code name for their game changing product. The directors and shareholders were Robert Bokitis and Linda Hines. He tapped the PgDn again and a balance sheet appeared. It showed Assets of $436,469 in cash and the same in stock of Pyrotechnique.
Steve tapped the PgDn key, again and again, pausing for a second or two at each page. Page after page of Certificates of Incorporation and page after page of balance sheets flashed by.
After 10 or 15 had flipped by, he paused.
“There is a total of 27 hedge funds, with varying amounts of cash and borrowed Pyrotech shares, which have a total of $25 million in assets. If they drive the Pyrotech share price to, let’s say, $2.50, they’ll net over $18 million.”
“Wow,” Kelly said.
“That’s $9 million each,” Steve said, shaking his head.
“Wow,” Kelly said again. “I think I could get by on that spare change.” She considered what Robert had done. “And, each company has a different quantity of short shares, so there’s no pattern for a securities regulator to take notice of. That sneaky little bastard.”
“Right, and after the stock price tanked, they’d cover their short positions, one company at a time, over a month or two – also, not sending any signals or displaying a pattern that might get a regulator’s attention.”
Kelly was nodding, thinking it through. “They would each resign, a few months apart – a sinking company, moving on – nothing unusual in that.”
“And, they’d each have a big, fat Cayman Island bank account.”
Kelly considered Linda again.
“I wouldn’t have thought Linda needed it,” she said, “but $9 million would certainly add to her pile.”
Steve nodded his head. “It sure would. Robert, on the other hand, now just a middle-class working stiff, would become a wealthy man. He could enjoy his misanthropic misery in luxurious comfort.”
Kelly was taking it all in. She was suddenly struck with the realization that they could neutralize Robert and Linda.
“Steve! We can go to the police. The two of them would be arrested; they’d be out of the way and we could finally do what’s needed to finish Athena.”
“I thought about that, but if we did that, the media frenzy and the scandal would destroy the market’s trust in Pyrotech. It would completely overshadow Athena. Lot’s of people wouldn’t buy it – no matter how great it is – because of the black mark those two assholes would bring down on the company. No, too many good people have put too much work into Athena, and too many people - employees, shareholders and customers - would be harmed.”
Kelly considered this. He was right, of course. But, they nevertheless had power over Robert and Linda now.
“Okay, but we have leverage. We can confront them and threaten them and force them to do spend the money we need, and to hire the engineers and programmers you need – “
“But, then they could unwind their short positions by buying back the stock at the current price, pay back all the borrowed shares to brokers, shut down their hedge funds – and it would be like nothing happened. Linda would still be rich – but considerably less rich than if they’d pulled it off; and Robert would still be poor and miserable – rather than rich and miserable. But, there would be no consequences for the shit they’ve put us all through. Although, you’re right: they’d no longer be in the way.”
He looked at his watch: 3:32. If they left now, they could make the 4:00 o’clock tender to the marina.
He smiled. “I have a better idea.”
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