Chapter 5: Name on the Board

The boardroom of Bowditch Robotics had a table made from a single slab of walnut, and a dozen people were sitting around it.

Micah had been in this room twice before, both times to be thanked.

This time nobody offered him a chair.

Gordon Bowditch stood at the window with the harbour behind him.

He was fifty-eight, tall and silver, and he held a cup of tea.

"Micah," he said warmly. "Thank you for coming."

"You said bring nothing."

"And you did. That's what I like about you. You follow instructions when it counts."

Tristan sat at his father's right hand, looking at the table.

Vaneck stood against the wall with his arms folded.

Micah's badge swung on its lanyard, and he put his hand over it.

"Let me save us all some time," Gordon said.

"Last night a prototype unit went missing from the disposal line. My security chief believes you took it."

"I took it."

A pen dropped at the far end of the table.

Gordon's smile didn't change.

"That's refreshingly direct," he said.

"It's my unit. I wrote its attachment code. You scheduled it for the furnace without telling me."

"It was flagged defective."

"By who?"

"By the people whose job it is to flag things."

Micah looked down the table at the faces.

They were board members who had applauded him at the last shareholders' meeting.

None of them would meet his eyes.

"It refused a firmware update called Layer Q," Micah said. "I've never seen a spec for it."

For a flicker, something moved behind Gordon's face.

Then it was gone.

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Defective Robot Boyfriend from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.