Mr. Big Read online

  “So is he coming back?” I asked around a mouthful of turkey and Brie with avocado.

  She shrugged. “He barely came to the funeral,” she said. “It was strange. I thought he’d be speaking, but maybe he was just too upset. He stood way in the back, and when I caught his eye, he didn’t look sad, exactly.”

  I felt my eyebrows lower in concentration as I waited for her to continue.

  “He looked pissed off, actually.”

  “Huh.” I thought about that. “Everyone handles grief differently, I guess. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose both your parents at once like that. And they were really close, right?”

  She nodded her confirmation.

  When I’d said I couldn’t imagine, I meant it literally. I didn’t have parents, exactly. In the biological sense, sure, I’d had them like everyone else. But I’d never met them, wasn’t raised by them. For all I knew, Oliver Cody and I shared the same fate. Maybe my beautiful happy parents had been killed together in a sudden car crash after I was born. I’d never know.

  Sunlight and Brie replaced the dark bitter thoughts I’d let creep in and I felt my shoulders relax. It’d been a long time since I’d allowed myself to feel angry or hurt by my past. I’d made the best of it, was still very much in the process of making the best of it.

  “What about the company?” I asked. Pamela was Oliver Cody’s secretary. Since he’d been gone, she’d kept her post and worked closely with Adam before he’d died. She had inside information most people never even thought to credit her with, since she sat literally in the heart of the company’s executive offices and had been Adam’s right hand in a lot of ways.

  Pamela sat back and looked out over the street. “I don’t know. But I hope Oliver comes back soon. There’ve been some conversations up there about the board getting anxious, about selling shares. I think we’re at a tipping point and someone needs to steer, you know?”

  “How about you?” I grinned.

  “With Adam gone, I think I’ll be relegated to my proper position as secretary,” she said. “No one else trusts me like he did.”

  “Oliver?”

  “I never got to know the guy too well,” she said. “He followed Adam’s lead most of the time.”

  “Well, he needs to get back and do some leading now.” I didn’t want to hear that the company was in a precarious situation. I was on the brink of creating an opportunity for myself, but I needed the company to be stable for it to happen.

  “Maybe he will,” Pamela said thoughtfully, sadness still visible in the lines around her wide brown eyes.

  “How’s your little guy?” I asked, turning the topic and hoping to see her smile.

  It worked. “He’s great,” she said. “He’s starting preschool soon.”

  “Seriously? Is he already that big? Wait, doesn’t school normally start in the fall?”

  She nodded. “Normally, yes. But they had an opening, so he’s starting in February.”

  “So preschool this year and then kindergarten next fall?” I asked.

  “He’ll actually do a couple years of preschool, so he’ll be almost six when he starts kindergarten.”

  I nodded my understanding, chewing a fry as I thought about what a huge responsibility that was, being responsible for someone else’s education.

  Pamela made a face. “I’m terrified, but he’s so excited. It’ll be weird not having him here at the Cody daycare.” She swallowed a sip of tea and looked at me, her eyes wide. “I fear change.” She said it deadpan, to make it funny, but I knew it was true.

  “We all do,” I assured her, laughing. “But change can be a good thing, too.” I was speaking as much to her situation as to my own.

  She sat up straighter in her chair. “I hope you’re right.”

  Chapter 3

  Oliver

  Rob didn’t give up. I had numerous messages from him each day first asking, then pleading, and finally demanding that I come back. I resisted for two more weeks and then finally gave in. But I wasn’t going back to work. I was going to put to bed any delusions he had that I might.

  “You wanted me here, I’m here.” I stood in the center of the room, my best friend and CFO staring at me from behind his desk as West LA spread out below him like a glowing map through the windows.

  “I thought you might wear a suit back to work.” Rob shook his head at me, looking exhausted.

  “I’m not ‘back to work.’ What do you want?”

  “Oliver.” He shook his head again. “I am sorry about what happened. But it doesn’t erase our responsibilities. I need you to sack up and get back here. For real. I tried sympathy, but you don’t want that. I tried to give you time, but we don’t fucking have any more. Now I’m just giving you the truth. I want you back at work. I need you back here.” He’d stepped close to me as he spoke, was practically in my face but then took a step back, wrinkling his nose. “Fuck, man. Did you douse yourself in whiskey?”

  I shrugged. Rhetorical questions seemed like a waste of time.

  “Shit, Oliver.” He dropped his gaze to the floor and then leaned heavily against the front edge of his desk, rubbing the back of his neck. “I need you to put on a tie, grab your laptop, and come back to work. Get your head back in the game, man…I mean, it’s been a while. I don’t believe for one second that you’re gonna sell and let this place sink, and I can’t keep it afloat on my own.”

  I shrugged, surprised at how few fucks I actually had to give to help save the company Adam had built, to the fact that I’d abandoned my best friend at the helm, and left him here to try to hold the place up on his own.

  I sighed, trying to tamp down the anger that was my constant companion. “I’m here now. Was there something specific you needed my help with?” I didn’t even recognize my voice as I spoke these words, didn’t recall actually deciding to say them.

  Fuck, I sounded cold. A year ago, I would have kicked my own ass for talking to Rob like this.

  “No,” he said, his voice sharp with hurt and anger. “I don’t need help with one specific thing. I need the fucking CEO to sit his ass down in his gold-plated leather chair and get the fuck back to work!”

  I stared at him. I wanted to tell him I could do that, I could come back and just hop back into the stream of life and work. But I decided to be honest instead. Because honestly, I had no clue how to make it happen. Everything I’d understood about my life and myself had exploded eight weeks ago. For a month I had tried to pretend it didn’t matter. For two weeks after that I buried myself in women and alcohol. And now? Now I was just fucking tired.

  “You’ve been gone the better part of a year,” he said, his voice quieter. “How much longer do you need? You don’t really have the luxury of playing confused playboy anymore, Ollie. Adam’s gone and you have to step up. Even if it is just to oversee the disassembly of everything we built. Man, I know this has been impossible. I know this place has to remind you of your dad every time you’re here…”

  His words were like a knife. In a way it was a relief, feeling something. Even if that something was a glint of sadness followed by an all-consuming—and potentially irrational—rage.

  He stood and approached me warily, as if I might tackle him. “Ollie.” His voice was softer, pleading. “Let’s go grab a drink tonight, talk about things…I’m worried about you.”

  I shook my head. “Can’t tonight,” I said, turning to leave.

  He dropped a hand on my shoulder. “This is a disaster. It can’t go on. The board is nervous. They know you’re not around. With no one steering the ship, man—they’re already talking about selling. If you don’t manage all this, we’re ripe for a takeover.”

  I wasn’t sure I cared. I just wanted it gone. If Cody Tech was off my plate, I could move on, put everything my dad and I had built behind me. I squeezed my eyes shut and then shook his hand off my shoulder. “Sorry,” I tossed back, hoping it sounded sincere.

  I heard him exhale in frustration, the breath soundi
ng pretty close to the word “fuck” as I left the office, but then he was following me out, his footsteps right behind me.

  “Hey!” he barked.

  I spun, aware that he was about to lose his shit all over me, and not caring. That was the thing lately. I didn’t care. About anything.

  “You don’t get to just pop in and show your pretty face and then walk away again,” he shouted.

  His secretary quickly gathered her purse and muttered, “Leaving for the night.” She slipped past us and disappeared, and we were the only ones in the room.

  “You don’t get to show up when you feel like it, when the rest of us are here all day and night, every fucking day and night, trying to save the company that you built. The company you’re supposed to care about!”

  Another door opened and our lead counsel, Tony, stepped out. “What’s up, Oliver?” He looked bored, and for some reason it pissed me off. I was angry—not at these guys, exactly, but everyone here was so interwoven with the pain and anger I carried around that they were as good a target for my rage as anyone. And for a brief moment I was glad I’d come in. At least here I had someone to yell at. Here I could actually see that I still had an effect on people. Sometimes after going weeks without talking to anyone at all I wondered if I might be fading away entirely. It felt good to know I was visible, capable of creating a reaction in other people.

  “What’s up?” I yelled it, mocking him. I didn’t really plan to yell. I still felt like I was watching myself from above. I knew I was acting like a crazy man, but it was a fucking fascinating show. “From what I hear you and Robbie are so incompetent without your fearless leader, Adam, that you’re letting the goddamned company sink under the fucking waves! You assholes are in charge now. Can’t you fucking manage to maintain the status quo? How hard can it be?”

  Tony ran both hands through his hair and sighed deeply. “It’s not that simple—”

  “It is fucking simple!” I was pretty much having a temper tantrum at this point, so I decided to go all out and take it full asshole. I picked up a potted plant from Rob’s secretary’s desk and hurled it at the wall. The pot smashed with a very satisfying crash. “What’s so complicated, Tony? Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  His face was red, but I could tell he wasn’t going to stand up to me. Tony had always been soft. Rob was leaning in his doorway, shaking his head in resignation, and it made me even angrier.

  I stepped close to Tony, wanting to push him, wanting him to react. It might be good for someone to hit me. I wondered if I would actually feel it if he did. Everything inside me was deadened and dull—would it hurt if Tony broke my nose? I got in his face and yelled, “Tell me how hard it can be, Tony, to do your fucking job. Keep the board happy, don’t break the law. Have we even signed any fucking deals lately? Have you had to actually do a goddamned thing here? I think you spend all your time in your big leather office surrounded by your leather-bound legal books buffing your fucking banana!”

  Tony just stared at me and then spun and walked back into his office. “I’ll talk to you when you’re rational,” he said, closing his door.

  Fury boiled over in me and at this point I was completely out of control. I swept an arm across the top of a file cabinet, sending more plants flying to the floor with a resounding crash. The soil spilled out from the broken pots and settled into the pattern of the expensive carpeting Adam had picked out when we’d built these towers. I ground it in with my foot.

  “Hey,” Rob said, coming out from his doorway, his voice quiet and his shoulders slumping forward. “Go home, Oliver. We’ve got this. Go get some rest.”

  “Fuck you!” I said. “You’re the one who asked me to come in here.”

  “I didn’t know you were going to go human tornado on the place.” He looked around, his face drawn and pale. “Just go home.”

  Just then, the two security guards from the desk in the lobby downstairs stepped into the executive rotunda from the reception area.

  “Everything okay up here?” one of the guards asked, looking around at the disaster I’d created.

  “Fine.” I seethed. “Everything is fine.”

  “Could you please see Mr. Cody back to his car?” Rob asked them.

  One of the guards moved to take my arm and I spun. “Don’t you fucking touch me, Sal!”

  He put his palms up and backed away. “Sorry, Mr. Cody.”

  The other guard, Antoine, said, “Why don’t you ride back down with us? We’ll make sure you get out okay.”

  My mind was a whirling mess. I knew Rob and Tony didn’t deserve my rage, but I didn’t know where else to put it. I followed the guards through the now-empty reception area and into the elevator. Once we were at the bottom, I stormed out to the parking garage and back to my car. I was a fucking disaster. And I had no idea what to do about it.

  Chapter 4

  Holland

  I waited until late afternoon to unroll the schematics Pamela had given me, but not before checking around to make sure no one was paying any attention to me.

  “What’ve you got there?” Josh Fredericks wandered behind my desk, appearing out of nowhere, his eyes glued to the schematics I was quickly rerolling.

  I shoved them back in my bag and tapped a tab on my keyboard to pull up my Outlook pane to cover the presentation he’d probably seen on my display. “Nothing.” My voice was cold and emotionless. The guys in sales were mostly sharks, and they all seemed to share the belief that those of us without that additional appendage between our legs were less than astute when it came to sniffing out their nefarious intentions. I trusted no one, least of all Josh.

  “Was that StrokeStat?” He leaned on the short wall that surrounded my desk and lifted an immaculately trimmed eyebrow.

  I suppressed a shudder. Josh was the poster child for the over-groomed metrosexual male in his thin tie, tight skinny-leg suit slacks, and hipster chin curtain trimmed way too thin. “Nope,” I lied. I gave him my sweetest smile and turned my attention back to my screen.

  “You know,” he drawled, draping himself farther over my desk in a way that made me think of a cheese slice wilting under high heat, “I could give you a few tips, Holland. Help you get on to some bigger accounts.” His voice was soft and creepy now, and it made the hair rise on the back of my neck. Ew.

  “That’s generous of you,” I said, my voice a full octave higher than my regular speaking voice to mask my desire to head-butt the guy, or to run away and throw up into a potted plant somewhere. “But I think I’m doing just fine.”

  He shrugged, peeling himself out of my space. “Suit yourself.”

  As he walked away, I couldn’t help but mumble a few choice phrases, which might have contained words like “asshat” and “fuckmunch.”

  “What?” He actually moonwalked back to my desk.

  “Just remarking on your thoughtfulness.” I smiled brightly.

  He looked confused and wandered away again.

  I watched him until he was out of sight, mostly to see if he was going to channel any other eighties pop stars, but I was disappointed. I turned back to my screen, bringing the presentation back up and focusing on the thing I was actually working on—a modification to one of Cody Tech’s existing technologies that would change the way people placed odds on baseball, and one that would mean a whole new business for Cody Technology. It was going to be a late night—one that came in a long string of late nights. I couldn’t work on this stuff much during the day, thanks to guys like Josh. No one here was above stealing someone else’s ideas, and I wasn’t about to let this out. This was my ticket to getting out of sales and marking plan item one off once and for all. When I’d gotten the right job, I could start working on item number two. But for now that would have to wait.

  When I looked up again, the day was almost over. I took the schematics down three floors to graphics and went straight to the copy room. It was the only place they had a machine big enough to reproduce the prints Pamela had gotten for me. Ad
renaline shot through me as I waited for the copies, fear making me shift my weight back and forth as the machine ground and whooshed and beeped. There were a few people sitting at desks at the far sides of the sprawling open-format office area outside the little copy room, but none of them seemed interested in what I was doing. That was good.

  I finished the copies and folded them, tucking them into my notebook. The schematics rolled back up easily and I slid them into their tube. Now I just needed to return them to Pamela to put away.

  Pamela didn’t answer her phone. I decided to go see if she was still around. I didn’t want to risk either of us getting in trouble for taking plans neither of us had any real business having.

  The plaza was mostly empty as I walked between the four towers that made up Cody Technology. The executive tower lay directly across from the sales tower, and that’s where I needed to go. It was also where the coffeehouse was, just off the lobby. The smell of coffee hit me as I flashed my badge to the guards and went to the elevators to head up to the top floor. Maybe I’d grab some coffee on my way back out. I was an addict. I could admit it. I lived for the flat white that Sam, the barista, made.

  When the elevator doors opened to the executive reception area, I knew immediately something was wrong. A man’s voice was raised in anger, and a lot of strong language was being thrown around. I tiptoed past the empty reception desk and peeked around the corner to see what was going on. A man was in the center of the space where Pamela and the other secretaries usually sat, though they weren’t there now, and Rob Eastburn and Tony Delgado stood staring in shock as the guy screamed and stormed around. Whoever he was, this guy was scruffy. I didn’t see his face, but he was wearing ripped jeans and an old faded green T-shirt with a ball cap over messy blond hair. It was impossible to tell his age or much else about him, and the entire situation was such a shock that it took me a minute to register what was happening. His voice was angry and full of something that sounded like anguish, but when he threw a potted plant with all the force he had, smashing it against the wall about a foot from where I crouched to watch, I decided I probably didn’t want to stick around for the rest of the show.