Page 22 of The Interns

Heat flashed through her upper body, and she clutched the phone to her chest in a panic at the thought of Reed seeing it.

“Does he? Already?”

“What?” She looked up to see Reed watching her, then took a quick breath and pressed her lips into a smile. “Nope. So far, so good.”

“Good. It’d be a shame otherwise. They seem like nice guys.”

Her lips remained pressed into a smile as she tilted her head and nodded. She honestly did not know how to process his reaction which was just sweet. Why was he like this? She lowered the phone from her chest and dragged her eyes away from his, then fired back a response.

Then you two can fight over him if you don’t hit it off.

She locked her phone and no sooner did she put it down on the table, a response came back. She picked it up and read it against her better judgment.

Don’t think we’re his type, but you might be. ;-)

She should have trusted her gut, she thought as she rolled her eyes and put the phone down, then looked up to find Reed patiently waiting for her to finish up. “Sorry about that. So, what have you got?”

“Well, I showed that picture to my friend,” he started as he pulled it up on his phone. “It’s a tool that allows you to crimp copper pipes instead of soldering and brazing them.”

“I’m sorry?” she asked, staring blankly at him and then the picture.

“You can press the pipes together instead of having to weld them,” he explained. He pointed at the tool in the picture thinking it would somehow illustrate how it worked. “Saves time and there’s less exposure to fumes and chemicals.”

“Okay…” It was clear as mud to her because she had zero base knowledge of plumbing, so she’d take his word for it. Bless his heart, though, because despite how lost she was, he looked like he was about to buckle down and try to explain it to her again.

She stared at the picture, thinking maybe it would click this time, but her focus was broken by her phone buzzing again. She looked down at the screen and knew it would be trouble. Sydney. She opened it, once again, against her better judgment.

You have a guy over?!

And just as quickly, she turned the phone screen side down on the table and shoved it under some papers, then returned her attention to Reed who, if he had even noticed her distraction, didn’t seem to mind as he carried on.

“It’s a fairly new technique, and my friend hadn’t ever seen one that looked like that until a few weeks ago when someone came into his shop trying to sell him a tool that looked just like it. A Freddy Prescott.”

“The son,” Maya said, having recognized the name from some of the reports she had gone over.

“Yep. He was shopping a prototype. He said they were taking orders for production sometime in the fall. My friend was interested, only he didn’t end up placing an order because he said the guy couldn’t answer simple questions about the product.”

“Because the young guys don’t know a snap cutter from a rotary cutter,” Maya finished, remembering Johnson’s remark from the day before.

“Exactly.” Reed leaned back in his chair, bending and resting one leg on his knee, and folding his hands behind his head, all while looking quite pleased.

“You think Johnson made it?” she asked.

“I think there’s a good chance he did.”

“And they unceremoniously fired him right around the time they started shopping this tool around.”

He nodded. “Guess they figured they could make more off of his invention than his work.”

Synapses fired rapidly in her brain, making connections, and bringing the pieces of this case together. They were absolutely onto something, but there was one obvious question.

“But if Johnson was the one who was wronged, why wouldn’t he just tell us that from the start?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Reed shrugged and dropped his hands from behind his head, smoothing one over his scruffy chin. “Maybe he didn’t know his rights? Maybe he doesn’t even realize what they were doing.”

Perhaps Johnson didn’t mention it because he was still in the dark himself. Her eyes went from Reed to the computer screen in front of her, and the wall of words about employment law which were better than criminal law, but still not where her heart was. She sighed as she looked at Reed again, his lips pursed into a grin that made his chiseled cheeks dimple. It was the same grin that got under her skin the first day they met because she figured it was his get-out-of-jail-free card, but she was starting to think she was very wrong about that.

“I am trying not to get ahead of myself until we talk to him, but—”

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