I Love You, Miss Genius novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Bounty

Dash offers a public reward for the ghost while the COO bluffs through a simple question.

I walked over slowly, because fast would have looked like fear.

Bettina Crowe held her phone against her chest and smiled at me from a very short distance.

"Who else was on this floor last night?" she asked, low.

"Just Gus, I think," I said. "I left around midnight."

"You think."

"I scan contracts. I don't look up much."

She studied me.

"Good. If you hear one word about who ghost is, you tell me first. Not Dash. Me."

"Okay."

"Temps hear everything," she said. "It's the only thing you're good for."

She walked away, and I let out my breath.

The copier ate my first page, and I fed it the second.

At nine the lead investor arrived, a gray-haired woman in running shoes who carried no bag and no phone.

Dash steered her into the glass conference room.

I stood at the back with a water pitcher, because that was my job.

On the wall, Loop glowed green.

Bettina took the clicker and began.

She was wonderful for six minutes.

She had the numbers, the story and the smile, and she said "our proprietary architecture" four times in a row.

Then the investor raised one finger.

"Last night your system locked up," she said. "Two jobs fighting over the same slot. How did you break the tie?"

Bettina's smile did not move.

"We optimized the sequence," she said.

"Optimized how?"

"With a, uh, priority scheme. It's proprietary."

I looked at the water pitcher.

I knew exactly how I had broken the tie.

Dash laughed a half second too fast.

"She'll walk you through the code on Friday," he said. "Whole board, live."

The investor looked at him for a long time.

"I'll fund the person who wrote that fix," she said. "I'm not sure that's the person standing at your clicker."

The room went very still.

Then she stood and shook his hand.

"Friday," she said. "Bring the author."

After she left, Dash walked out onto the floor and stood in front of the big wall screen.

He typed rapidly for a moment.

Then he turned and read it aloud to everyone, hands in his pockets, hoodie sleeves pushed up.

"Ghost. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the head of engineering, no interview. Come find me."

The whole floor made a sound like a held breath.

He looked at every face and kept going.

"I mean it. It's up on the jobs page in an hour. I'll find you either way."

Nobody looked at me.

I had fourteen empty coffee cups on a tray, and I picked it up.

"Hey," Dash said.

I stopped.

"Is one of those mine?"

"The third one," I said. "You left it at ten last night."

He took the tray out of my hands and set it down on a stranger's desk.

"You're new," he said.

"I've been here eight months."

"Huh."

"You asked me for photocopies this morning."

"I did?"

"Twice."

His mouth twitched, and he pulled the stack toward himself.

He flipped through it with his thumb, fast, the way he read everything.

Then he stopped on slide nine and his face went flat.

"Where did this number come from?" he said.

"The total of trials in the database."

"It says four thousand."

"It's four thousand one hundred and twelve," I said, before I could stop myself. "Somebody rounded down. You'll look weak to someone who counts."

The floor was quiet again.

Dash looked at the slide.

Then he looked at me, properly, for the first time.

"Everyone else tells me I'm brilliant," he said.

"You are," I said. "You're also wrong on slide nine."

He laughed, a real one, short and surprised, and it changed his whole face.

"What's your name?"

"Juno."

"Juno," he said. "You're mine for investor week. The agency can have you back after."

"Why?"

"I need somebody who tells me when I'm wrong."

Across the floor, Bettina's smile finally slipped.

I stood there holding an empty tray, and I did not say no.

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