Love After Layoffs novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Pitch

The audit committee met Monday at nine in a glass room on the thirty-eighth floor.

Yvonne and I sat on one side of a long table, in the best clothes we owned.

Across from us sat five people in dark suits.

At the head of the table sat a gray-haired woman who ran the company's finances and did not smile at anyone.

Brooks stood at the back wall with his arms folded and his eyes on the floor.

He was recused from our file, and he'd told me so on the elevator.

"I can't help you," he'd said. "I can only watch you win."

Justin sat at the far end of the table beside a stack of folders, in his good gray suit, looking calm.

He was too calm.

"We'll hear Strategic Sourcing first," the finance chief said. "Mr. Doyle."

Justin stood.

"Thank you."

"The file on Larkin and Dietz Marketing."

"Over the last twenty-four months, their lead conversion rate was sixty-one percent against a vendor benchmark of eighty."

"Their cost per lead ran well above peers."

He clicked a remote, and a slide appeared on the wall.

It showed a bar chart with our name on it, in red.

The bar was short.

I leaned forward.

"That's not our number," I said.

"Ms. Weller, you'll have your turn."

"I don't need a turn. That chart is wrong."

The finance chief turned her eyes to me, flat and gray.

"You may speak."

I opened my folder.

I had spent all of Sunday night at Yvonne's kitchen table.

I had Ketterman's own vendor dashboard open on one screen and our old reports on another.

"Our conversion rate was ninety-four percent," I said.

"Our cost per lead was thirty-one percent under benchmark."

"Ketterman's own system produced those figures."

"Your dashboard stamps the pull date on every report."

I slid a printout across the table.

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