Page 83 of Free Agent

“I’m only familiar with the ones who make sure your jewelry isn’t fake.”

I laughed. “Well, it’s in that same vein. It’s a cybersecurity thing. Making sure a person isn’t fake.”

“Ahh, so it’s got something to do with logging in.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “That login is what connects you to whatever data you have in the app, your account. And you have to have an account, paid or unpaid, because everything in the app is so specific. For the vast majority of companies building an app, it’s simpler to just contract with a service that already does this.”

“But that leaves you at the mercy of what they’ve got going on, right?”

“Exactly. If they have an outage, we have an outage. And ideally, something like that does not have outages. Like, it’s part of the business model. One of the selling points is literally uptime.”

Tatum cringed. “I don’t like where it seems like this is headed.”

“Because it’s headed somewhere fucked up.” I nodded. “I was trying to give a smaller company this opportunity, since I was building a business too, and knew how hard it was. So we’ve basically grown together. I didn’t think too much of it when the business sold, because I’ve not had many issues with the service.”

“But not zero issues…”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “Not zero. And apparently the new front office doesn’t know what customer service is, because when their shit went down, meaning my shit went down, they basically played me off. Instead of being normal, apologizing, telling me they would put all their best efforts into putting a fix together, etcetera, etcetera—which is what we told the BabyBee customers—they got an attitude with me. Acted like I was infringing on their time, I wasn’t their biggest client, and so on.”

“That’s…”

“Fucked up is what it is,” I said. “You want to guess how much authentication costs me on a month-to-month basis for an app that services nearly a million people?”

Tatum scowled, thinking before he shook his head. “Man, I don’t know, twenty-five hundred a month?”

“More.”

“More?”

“Yep,” I said. “About three times that. It’s expensive because it’s important. The important stuff is always expensive. So…”

“Shit.” He nodded. “I get it, but like… shit. I’m feeling like you’re about to tell me you don’t work with them anymore.”

“And don’t,” I confirmed. “Which is part of why I had my head down for all that time. We did a marathon coding session, and I had to write several bonus checks. Developers, security techs, etcetera, etcetera. And I’m not even sure we have a perfect solution. But, I got my app back up, and I’m not dealing with people who clearly don’t see the value in me and my business. Hollis and Shan are watching out for any kinks that need to be worked through, and we’re on high alert for bugs. But I’m happy with the solution.”

“That sounds like you’re telling me you’re going to need to be on call this week.”

“I wouldn’t say on call,” I corrected. “A bit more available than either of us would probably prefer. But, Shan wouldn’t interrupt for something frivolous.”

“Oh, you don’t have to convince me,” Tatum replied, as we turned off onto a side road from the main path to the airport. We weren’t flying private, but the airline did have options for enhanced privacy, like a separate lounge, security, and boarding area for “Elite” level flyers.

It meant that even though we were getting on a commercial flight, I didn’t have to worry about cell phone cameras in my face, being stared at, none of it.

I could start relaxing now.

The journey through security was a breeze, and we weren’t in the lounge very long before we were able to board the plane. My ass had barely hit the seat before a flight attendant was putting a glass of wine in my hand, and a whiskey and coke in Tatum’s.

After that, we pulled the privacy screen and tuned everything out.

Or maybe that was just me.

I’d been going, going, going, since the app outage occurred, and the wine served as a quick reminder that I hadn’t gotten caught up on sleep. I blinked, or so I thought, and the next thing I knew, it was time to get off the plane from the two-hour flight.

Off the plane, we got into a Range Rover Tatum arranged to have waiting for us, for another two hours of travel time to get to the ranch.

The wine was still on my ass unfortunately, and I promptly fell asleep again.

In my defense, the sun was going down.

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