One Blazing Night. Jo Leigh

       18

       Extract

       Copyright

       1

      AS THE MUSIC from her headphones blasted the sound track from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Samantha O’Connel narrowed her eyes in her attempt to read a note left by her newest part-time employee, Tina Albert. Tina was an MIT student, just like the other six people Sam employed at her company, SOC Electronics. Tina was cute, bright, witty, completely dedicated to doing a good job. And she had terrible handwriting.

      It wasn’t her fault, really. By the time Tina was born, there were millions of teenagers who hardly ever needed to write. They came of age at the dawn of smartphones. But Tina would have to learn to write more clearly.

      Sam rubbed her eyes and took another look. Maybe she could have read the chicken scratches if she hadn’t worked until midnight. She’d skipped dinner and hadn’t looked up until just past midnight. Again.

      She was getting old. At twenty, sleep had been optional, but at twenty-nine, there were only so many nights she could get five hours and feel refreshed the next day. She certainly needed to be alert.

      Ah. The note was a reminder that the new hard drive had been delivered to the smart apartment. Sam didn’t have time to install it and wouldn’t for at least a week. Neither would Clark, though she wouldn’t have asked him to anyway. The prototype apartment was her baby—she’d bought the building in Boston’s Financial District with her personal money and designed all the electronics herself. Luckily, the new drive wasn’t actually necessary for the apartment to function, but it would help with the intermittent sensor problems she’d noted on her logs.

      So far, the apartment was a raging success but needed some refinements. No paying guests had stayed there yet, only her friends and family. Each one had given her a critique and made suggestions—some of them really good—but she was too busy for a hobby that was so complex. Sadly, that was the only kind of hobby she liked. Well, except for gaming. Which was more part of her DNA than a hobby.

      Clark, who’d been her assistant since her senior year at MIT, had told her they needed to hire people to help with administrative duties, man the booths at trade shows, and more important, take over some of the testing of new parts and equipment, the writing of instruction manuals and the handling of customer support lines. Which meant whomever they hired had a steep learning curve from day one.

      She’d always hated delegating, but when Clark pointed out the new employees would be taking over things both of them hated to do, she’d jumped all over it. With the exception of Tina, the students all worked on the second floor, under Clark’s supervision, so that Sam had minimal contact with them.

      It wasn’t that she was a snob; she just wasn’t the most social person. She’d started working on her own in high school, and with one notable exception, her solo work habits had solidified at MIT. By the time she’d graduated, she’d decided, against her parents’ firm objections, not to accept the invitations to join Google or Apple or Microsoft and to just do what she liked. So she’d started SOC Electronics—not only her initials, but also the acronym of a computer miracle device called the System On Chip, which integrated all the components of a computer into a single chip.

      She’d become a corporation before she’d turned twenty. It had been difficult to work with Clark in the beginning, but now he was like another pair of her own hands. In the end, Sam was in charge of the tech creation and problem solving. Clark was in charge of the rest. Tina was a one-off. She was really smart, but dammit, she was still afraid to jump in during brainstorming sessions.

      Sam sighed. She was probably being too harsh on the girl. Tina had a lot of potential, and in time, Sam believed she’d turn out to be a real asset. If Sam had got enough sleep last night, she probably wouldn’t be feeling so cranky.

      Lesson? For God’s sake, go to sleep at a sane hour even if it meant not completing a drawing or leaving a task for the next day.

      She grabbed her phone and set the alarm. At eight o’clock she’d stop working, no matter what. Then she’d make sure she was asleep by eleven.

      Her cell phone flashed with a new call, making her jerk as if she’d been slapped. It was only Clark getting her attention. After pulling out her right earbud, she turned to find him coming from the clean room at the back of the building.

      By the time he’d passed the computers and large schematics workstations occupying the middle of the workshop, he’d pulled off his clean-room whites, leaving him in his regular jeans and T-shirt. “I’m doing a run to the stationery store after lunch. If you want anything—”

      “Yes.” She swiveled her chair so she could look straight at him. Her gaze caught on the nifty new 3-D resin printer that she couldn’t even play with until this job was done. Tina was going to learn everything there was to know about the machine so she could show Sam how to use it. “I need more mechanical pencils.”

      “Already? You do know that most people don’t use a pencil a day, right? What am I saying. You want more pencils, I’ll get them for you. Anything else?”

      She winced but said it anyway, as quickly as she could. “A combo falafel-and-shawarma plate with a side of baba ghanoush?”

      Clark gave her a very judgey look. “Sam. It’s almost lunchtime. Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take me to find a parking spot?”

      “We could send Tina.”

      “Tina isn’t here this morning. Remember? Dentist. She has a thing about Novocain... Never mind.”

      Sam almost suggested sending someone from upstairs, but she was sidelined by Clark’s comment. He knew Tina had a thing about Novocain? Huh. Clark often talked about the troops, but this was a new level of detail. “Admit it,” she said as she smiled. “You want a falafel, too, don’t you?”

      He looked very put-upon even though it was more out of habit than any real issue. He really was the safest human she knew. It helped that he had no interest whatsoever in her social life.

      “Yes,” he said. “Dammit. You’re evil. And you have to call in the orders. But you’re still evil. A pox upon thee.”

      “Oh, my...you had the D&D tournament last night, didn’t you? It must have gone well or you’d have already bitched to me about it.”

      “I’m still in.”

      “Cool. Watch out for that guy, the blond with the—” She wiggled her fingers near her ear. She hated those big black plugs in the middle of the lobe. They made her skin crawl.

      “Oh, he’s out. He’s out so far he has to wear an oxygen tank.”

      “Well played, Dark Mage of Harrow Glen.”

      He bowed, then took off his bootees, but that didn’t make his courtly gesture any less goofy. Hell, she was just as bad. Her love of computer games and the cosplay that came with it had been the genesis of her whole career, one that was more successful than she could have ever predicted.

      In the past four years, she’d revolutionized spyware with her new sensor technology and signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the US Department of Defense. But it was her coding skills and the development of two different antihacking programs that had brought in the big money. She rarely thought about that, though. She was happy with her little house and her huge lab. They were on adjoining plots of land in Bay Village, and being so close to the heart of downtown Boston made everything so simple. That she was a wealthy entrepreneur felt so discordant with the image she held of herself. Truth was, she was happiest playing “Ms. Pac-Man” on the vintage arcade