| |
WE LEFT ROWE’S OFFICE, and took the elevator to the fortieth floor, where Ann, Tank, and Lisa were waiting to greet us.
“Are you all right?” Ann asked.
“Never better,” Alex said. “That’s a man on the run. Now we just need to sit back, bide our time, gather whatever evidence we can against him, and then run him down.” He looked at Tank. “After the conference, you and I will debrief on what happened and on what I’m seeking going forward. As you can see, Jennifer and I now have offices on this floor—Rowe has overtaken the forty-seventh floor for himself. What you might not know is that he fired Barbara.”
“He did what?” Lisa said.
“The son of a bitch fired me,” Blackwell said with a roll of her eyes. “Tossed me to the sidewalk as if I were runway roadkill.”
“I can’t believe it,” Lisa said. “You can’t leave Wenn.”
She put her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Because of this man, I’m not. Let’s just say that after Alex kicked down the door to Stephen Rowe’s new office, where the little bastard was hiding like some sort of hoodrat—and yes, by the way, I do watch Empire—one thing led to another and I was allowed to keep my job.”
Lisa looked at Alex. “You kicked down a door?”
“I did. Tank would have been proud.”
“Sometimes you just need to kick shit down,” Tank said.
“You should have seen it,” Blackwell said. “It was like an action movie. After the splinters flew and the dust settled—and I mean that literally—it all went south for Rowe. Alex was amazing. For a city boy, he made his Wild, Wild West entrance for sure, but it’s the coolness and the confidence in which he held himself afterward that was the real show. Alex drew a line in the sand and dared Rowe to overstep it. He isn’t stretching the truth when he says that Rowe is a man on the run.”
“Which concerns me for reasons we’ll talk about later,” Tank said. “When we debrief.”
“Those same reasons concern me,” I said to Tank. “Rowe told Alex to watch his back. He said that he didn’t like to be threatened. Was he just rattled by having his door kicked down and being reactive, or was he threatening Alex?”
“We don’t know, but we can certainly take precautions,” Tank said.
“But who is ‘we,’ Tank?” I said. “I have a feeling that Rowe is going to demand that you be part of his security detail. I’m certain of it. And without you there to protect my husband, what are we to do then?”
“Tank could quit,” Alex said. “I’d hire him myself on my own dime. There’s nothing that Rowe can do about that. If Tank needs more men, we’ll bring them on board, even if we need to pilfer them from Wenn. Not my problem. Once I’m CEO again, Barbara will see to it that Tank and the others are brought back to Wenn in their original positions.” He looked at Tank. “Does that work for you?”
“Why don’t we just cut to the chase and do this now? Because Jennifer’s correct. He’s going to go there.”
“Done,” Alex said. “Sorry to see you go, old friend, but you no longer work for Wenn. That said, I’m glad to hire you to work exclusively for me, and at a significantly higher salary that we’ll discuss later in private. Hopefully, Cutter will be coming back to us soon. We all heard on the flight that he’s no longer in a coma, but that it’s still going to take time for him to get back on his feet and be ready for work. What I’m hoping is that all of this will be behind us before he does return to Wenn.”
“What’s your first priority?” Tank asked.
“Find Janice Jones as soon as possible. To do that, you’re going to need a staff. So hire whomever you need to get the job done as quickly and as efficiently as possible. I don’t care what it costs—hire the best. Hell, like I said, hire from within. I’m giving you an unlimited budget to get to Jones, and to get her to talk. If she won’t, others will—we just need to find out who. They’re out there. The question is this—who saw her and Rowe on a regular basis and in a way that suggested they were more than mere friends? We need to find those people and talk to them—like Jones’ doorman, for instance. Or the staff at that diner in the Village they frequented. And whatever other leads you can find. What we need to do is build a case against Rowe that proves he is morally corrupt and thus unfit to run Wenn. Can you make that happen?”
“By the end of the day, I’ll have a team assembled and we’ll get to work.”
“Perfect. When we have something that reeks of scandal, I’ll threaten Rowe with it. If that isn’t enough to get him to step down so I can have my old positions back, we’ll leak the information to the press and let that soap opera play out in public. What I’m going to do to him at that press conference is going to assist in all of this. I’m going to undermine him in ways he’ll never see coming.”
“What you are talking about?” I said.
“You like surprises, don’t you, love?” Alex said.
“You know I hate surprises.”
“You won’t hate this one,” Alex said. “Just watch.”
