So I’m here. Because I might see her. And at worst, this climbing gym has a V15 pitch which will be a good workout and release some endorphins, but not kill me when I fall. Which is always my preference.
“You find her yet?” Pierce’s voice.
“What? Who?”
“The thief. The violator. She who is without ethics.”
“No, man. Not yet. I’d tell you if I had. I promise I’m not holding out on you.” (I’m kind of holding out. Sort of.) “We’re, I dunno, maybe days away from being able to run some tests on the app. Then all I have to do is cross-match what we come up with against the database and I’ll be able to tell you what we find.”
“Cross-match against your secret NSA database, you mean?”
“Please don’t. Just, don’t, please.”
“OK. So, you staying or going?” Pierce asks, huffily, for some reason. He’s being oddly passive-aggressive.
“I’m staying, OK? Why are you being weird?”
He smiles, grabs me by the arm, and says, “Come with me.”
He drags me to the front of a climbing wall, stands me beside him, and says, “Everyone! Everyone, may I have your attention, s’il vous plaît!”
Pierce rented the place for the day, so the only people there are the couple hundred Le Man employees. They cease milling around and come to gather in a loose semi-circle around where Pierce and I are standing.
“What are you doing?” I one-third whisper, one-third sigh, and one-third weep.
“Yep, yep, that’s it! Gather round!”
I scan the group to see if I can spy Eden, but I don’t. I wonder if she may have come in while I wasn’t looking, seen me and taken off. But then I decide that I’m just being paranoid. I do spot Myrtle. She’s hard to miss. Everyone else is in shorts and t-shirts, or like me, cargo pants and tank tops or whatever, but she’s clad in these yoga-pants/tights kinds of things that have strategic cut-outs where there’s just transparent mesh running all along the inside and outside of the thighs, exposing her skin in a peek-a-boo way. And the top she has on… Well, I kind of thought tube tops were a thing of the past, but apparently they’re making a comeback.
She winks at me and waves by fanning her fingers in my direction starting with her pinky. She looks like a mountain lion swiping at me with her claws. Except that I’ve encountered mountain lions before and they don’t scare me nearly as much.
Then Myrtle winks just past me. At Pierce. And he gets this look on his face. I’ve seen it before. It’s like—
“Everyone, let me take just a moment to say welcome, and thanks for coming out today!” There is some head nodding as Pierce speaks, a couple of people give polite yet awkward golf claps, and somebody sneezes, causing a collage of muttered “bless yous” and “gesundheits.”
Pierce continues, “I’m sure that many of you, when you saw the subject line—Emergency Team-Building—wondered, ‘Emergency? What could be so emergent that it would require a team-building day?’”
Oh, dear God, do I know where this is going?
“Well, my fair Le Manians”—(Le Manians?)—“we are under attack.”
Yep. I did know where this was going. Fuck.
“How many of you have heard of this internet personality known as the Sexpert?”
Pretty much every hand shoots up in unison. There’s one guy wearing a Cannibal Corpse t-shirt standing in the back who looks around like he doesn’t know what the hell the Sexpert is. Maybe he works in the mail room. I dunno.
“Indeed,” Pierce goes on. “And let me ask this. How many of you were aware that this was our idea? Meaning MY idea? Meaning Le Man’s idea? An idea that has been stolen from us?”
More muttering now. I may hear a gasp, but it’s probably just my imagination.
“Dude, what are you—?” But that’s all I get out.
“This man to my left”—to his left? Oh, Jesus, I’m to his left—“is my dear friend Andrew Hawthorne! Some of you may have seen Andrew around. Andrew is the founder and CEO of Aureality Enterprises.”
Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t…
“And Andrew is going to help us figure out who this person is who has pilfered OUR intellectual property and assist us in bringing them to justice!”
The golf claps are even more scattered and cautious, and it feels like a bright light is suddenly shining on me, although I know it’s just the flush of blood pumping through me that makes it seem that way. I get a tight smile and raise my hand to the group.
“Hi. I’m Andrew.” I then step back and kind of press against the rock wall, noticing it’s only a V2 behind me. I could scale it, top out, and probably escape through the skylight in the ceiling in under a minute.
“But why we are here today,” Pierce continues, “is because I believe”—he takes a dramatic pause—“that we shouldn’t have to seek outside aid in uncovering this felon.” Felon? I wonder if Derek knows about what’s happening right now. “Because I believe that whoever is responsible for stealing this idea is an enemy within!”