Fast & Wet (The Fast 2)

“What took so long?” I’ve missed my session in the simulator and will have to make it up later.

Screw it.

“That was amongst the strangest interviews I’ve ever done,” Edmund scratches his gray beard from behind his desk.

“What does that mean?” I plop down in a chair in front of his desk and lean forward, waiting impatiently.

“Well, she’s either a total ball-buster or she doesn’t want this job,” Edmund crooks up his head and looks out the window.

I was afraid this was going to happen, that she’d turn the position down to avoid me. She probably has hundreds of companies recruiting her. Though she is also now perfecting the art of ball-busting, which is new.

“Did you offer her the position?”

Edmund inhales deeply, “Well, we’d be stupid not to. Mechanical engineering bachelor’s from MIT, Chancellor’s Excellence in Engineering Award at Cambridge, her Master’s thesis in tire composition could bring the specialty experience we need. God knows we can’t figure out why the bloody Concordia tires are such rubbish,” he throws his pen onto the desk. “Roger Tillman says she’s brilliant.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know—did you offer her the position?” I roll my hands for him to get on with it. Everyone knows Emily is brilliant. I know every accomplishment and degree and award she’s won for the last six years.

I know them by heart.

“I did, even though she was twenty minutes late, and it was like pulling teeth to get her to talk about her achievements.”

She wasn’t late. She was downstairs hiding at 9:00 am.

“And then she demanded nearly double the salary,” Edmund rubs the bridge of his nose.

I grin proudly at that attempt. Good one, Em.

But I’ll pay her salary demands out of pocket if Emily thinks that’s going to get her out of working here. Now that she’s this close, now that I have spoken to her again, there’s not a decision left in my mind. I have no choice.

“I think I got her, though,” Edmund grins like the Cheshire cat.

“How?”

“Took her for a tour of the factory and the lab. It’s what sold me on F1 when I was recruited out of university. Her eyes lit up,” Edmund makes dazzle hands with his fingers.

Our labs and factory would make anyone’s eyes light up. It looks like a spaceship with all the computers, instruments, and manufacturing equipment. The wind tunnel in the aero lab, all the beakers and chemicals in the fuel lab, the molding and injection lab where we make most of our parts and 3D print components. I should have thought of that.

“Then what?”

He laughs, which sends him into a coughing fit but then recovers, “Then we went through the composites lab. She seemed to like the carbon fiber process the most, though she told me we can get the resin curing time down if we raise the atmospheric pressure in the autoclave, and she wanted to know the exact chemical structure for our materials. She’s got balls.”

That’s my girl.

Edmund twirls around in his chair and steeples his hands, “I like her. She’d fit in. Imperium needs bright, young minds and big balls. I’m an old man. I can’t keep up with all this technical shit anymore, and I won’t be around forever.”

“So, is she hired, or what?” I ask and wish he’d get to the point already.

“Ball’s in her court,” Edmund shrugs. “I made the offer, she has until Monday to accept, or we’ll keep looking.”

Monday.

That leaves just the weekend for me to convince Emily Walker to take this job, to stay in London, to stay with me.

I did my part, don’t run now, Em.

Six

Emily