Page 32 of Enemy Boss

“You can keep quiet if you somehow found out something you perhaps shouldn’t know right?” Derek asks.

I nod my head, intrigued where this is going.

“Good,” he says. “I should be going now. If I happen to drop something on my way out, you should probably shred it. But have a good look at it first, just to make sure it isn’t something I might want back.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but he stands up and extends his hand and the only polite thing to do at that point is to shake his hand. I’m starting to think he’s gone a little bit senile, but then when he turns to leave, he puts his hand in the pocket of his suit jacket and pulls out a folded up piece of paper and lets it drop to the floor.

“Oops,” he says, not stopping to retrieve the small piece of paper.

I don’t know what the hell is on it, but I get what he meant now. I’m to see whatever is on that piece of paper and then shred it and not tell anyone about it. Ok, I can do that.

“Thanks Derek,” I say as he reaches the door to my office.

“No worries. Hopefully we’ll be working together soon,” he says and then he is out of the door and gone. I get up and go and retrieve the sheet of folded up paper that he has dropped.

I sit back down at my desk and unfold it and my jaw drops. What he has given me is absolute gold. It’s a full breakdown of everything Mr McPherson has in place security wise and a full costing of it all. I can use this to decide what is working for him, what isn’t, and what else he needs plus I can even make sure that my quote is as competitive as it needs to be.

I call through to Max and tell her to clear my schedule for the next morning and to clear her own too and to replace our morning with the McPherson Finance Solutions meeting. Once that is taken care of, I tell her not to disturb me unless it’s urgent and I spend the next four of five hours putting a prospective offer together for the next day. When I’m done, I remember my promise to Derek, and I am a man of my word, so I go and shred the original sheet he gave me to work from. If we get this contract, I am going to owe Derek a serious favor.

Chapter 23

Cullen

“Fuck,” I say.

“What’s wrong?” Max asks me.

We arrived at McPherson Financial Solutions a little over ten minutes ago. The receptionist informed us that Mr McPherson was just finishing up something, but that we were to make ourselves comfortable and get ourselves and our equipment set up for our meeting. She has brought us to a small conference room with a table that looks like it would seat ten people comfortably, and all of the necessary equipment for a slide show stands at the front of the long table.

I haven’t prepared anything like that at this point – this is more of a testing the waters style meeting, but of course I do have some charts and figures to show. I have set the laptop up and hooked it up to the screen and that has all gone well. But then I had taken out the other laptop I had brought; the one I wanted Max to use to take notes on.

“The battery is dead on the laptop for you to use to take your meeting notes on,” I say.

I am so angry at myself for not checking the battery level before I had left my office.

“I’ll use my cellphone,” Max says.

“Will that work?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says. “I can take the notes the same as I would on a laptop and then when we get back to the office, I’ll just email them to myself, so then I have them on the computer to type up properly.”

“Ok, yes, that’s great. Do that,” I say.

Max gets her cellphone out and taps a few buttons and she smiles.

“Actually, I can go one better. I’ll turn the voice recorder on and just record the whole meeting and then it’s just a matter of transcribing it rather than trying to put it back together from notes,” she says.

“Even better,” I agree.

She smiles at me, and I’m glad I brought her today. Originally, I brought her more because it looks more professional to turn up with an assistant, but now I am really glad I did it because she has solved what could have become a major problem for me.

After another five or so minutes, the door opens, and a man comes in. He looks like he’s likely in his middle to late fifties and he has a neat grey beard and short grey hair. His eyes are blue and bright and alert and the way the man carries himself tells me he is someone important here and I think he is most likely Mr McPherson. He is wearing a tailored grey suit that fits him to perfection. He smiles at me and then at Max.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m Steven McPherson,” he says.

I’m already on my feet as he speaks, and we shake hands.

“Cullen Monroe,” I say, and then I nod towards Max. “And this is my secretary, Lucy Granger. Thank you for agreeing to see us.”

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