Chapter 23: Kehoe Labs

At 10:07 on Wednesday morning, Halloway Systems lost the right to run Beacon.

Nobody pushed a button.

The thirty days simply ran out.

Dani stood in the middle of a brick warehouse by the lake.

Forty-one engineers stood around her, with a hundred cardboard boxes at their feet.

The windows were bare.

The floor was concrete.

There were no desks yet, only folding tables, and the whole place smelled of fresh paint and pizza.

A banner hung over the door, hand-lettered in marker, and crooked.

KEHOE LABS.

Glenn stood on a chair with a laptop balanced on one palm.

"Three," he said. "Two. One."

On every screen in the room, the same line appeared.

Beacon online. Licensed to Kehoe Labs. By Dani Kehoe.

The engineers did not cheer.

They went silent first, forty-one people holding their breath.

Then somebody at the back whispered, "She's on the screen."

And then they cheered.

It was a loud, ugly, joyful noise that bounced off the brick and out over the water.

Dani put both hands over her face.

She heard Glenn say, "I'm not crying, I'm dehydrated," and she laughed into her fingers.

Her phone buzzed on the table.

Then it buzzed again, and again.

By half past ten it was a swarm.

The first message came from a freight company in Ohio.

We got your notice. Where do we sign?

Then a grocery distributor in Georgia, then a port authority, then a bank.

Each of them said the same thing in different words.

We've used your engine for six years. We never knew your name. Please let us stay with you.

Glenn read the count out loud every few minutes.

"Four hundred. Eight hundred. Fourteen hundred."

By noon he had stopped talking, because the number had passed two thousand and he had started to wheeze.

By two o'clock it stood at 2,911 of 3,000.

"Who's missing?" Dani asked.

"Eighty-nine small ones who haven't opened email since Tuesday," Glenn said. "They'll come. They all come."

At three, a man in a charcoal overcoat walked in through the open door.

He carried two paper cups of coffee and he did not look like he belonged in a warehouse.

The Gulf Capital partner set one cup down in front of Dani.