Another few seconds of quiet.
“Just forge her signature,” Mia said. “I won’t tell anyone anything.”
There was a long period silence this time, enough that Shields started to worry
“You do what you have to do, Michael,” Mia said, her voice teeming with exasperation. “But I’ll definitely be letting my team leader know about this when they ask why it took so long for the Sydney Tech repairperson to get here.”
Mia hung up, her anger almost palpable on the coms.
“Is everything all right?” Shields asked.
“No,” Mia said. “Michael wants you to go back to the gate and sign in. But I say screw it. Just know you might encounter some resistance. Flash that badge we made, and you should be fine.”
When Shields reached the entrance to the building, a security guard flagged her down.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’re going to need to return to the main gate,” he said. “Michael needs you to sign the visitor’s log.”
Shields glanced at her watch. “I’m not going to have enough time to do my job here. I’ve got another one lined up in forty-five minutes a few blocks away, and I can’t miss my check-in time. Not here or there, do you understand?”
“I sympathize with your situation, but I can’t let you on the premises unless you’ve signed in.”
Shields shook her head and started walking. “Not my fault.”
“Miss, please,” he said.
“If you want to explain to your boss that he lost a half-million dollars during the time it took me to come back here because you wanted the technician to sign her name on a sheet of paper, be my guest. It’s going to be on you when I fill out my report.”
She looked at his badge dangling from a lanyard around his neck.
“Sam Hillshire,” Shields said aloud. “I’ll have to make a note of your name for my report if you really feel like protocol is worth that much money.”
“Well, no, but …”
Shields didn’t look back, throwing her hand dismissively in the air. “In that case, I’ve got a job to do, Sam.”
She marched off and headed toward the stairwell. She ascended to the second floor and found the server room. While Shields wasn’t certain, she guessed that there was enough space to put several football fields in there.
“This place is massive,” she said in the coms.
“And that’s why we need to move fast,” Mia replied. “Head to the northwest corner of the room and tell me what you see.”
Shields hustled in the direction Mia had indicated before skidding to a stop. The back corner wasn’t just comprised of machines, but there were rows and rows of workers staring at monitors. Shields gasped audibly, enough so that Mia heard it.
“What do you see?” Mia asked.
Shields eased around the back of a bank of servers and slinked to the ground. “There are people watching videos.”
“Can you tell what’s on them?”
“Unfortunately, I can. And I can’t believe it.”
“We need evidence,” Mia said, “not just your testimony. Look for the main server nearby.”
Shields shuffled along the rows near the bank of monitors until she identified the machine she was looking for.
“Got it,” Shields announced.
“Okay,” Mia said. “You know what to do. I’ll take it from here.”
Shields inserted the device into the back of the machine, allowing Mia to connect to it.
“Don’t go anywhere in case I run into trouble,” Mia said.
“Roger that,” Shields said.
After about a minute, Mia clucked her tongue. “You weren’t kidding about this footage. Unbelievable.”
“Yeah, get as much as you can,” Shields said. “We need to get this back to the team as soon as possible.”
“Making backup copies as we speak,” Mia said. “There’s no way anyone will have anything to do with Sinclair and his companies after this becomes public knowledge.”
Shields walked back to the lobby. When she saw Sam, she stopped and gave him a coy wink. “I’ll put in a good word for you with the higher ups.”
He glanced down at her leg. “I appreciate that. So, what happened?”
“Got attacked by a German Shepherd,” Shields said, resuming her walk. “Damn thing gnawed my leg to the bone. Cheerio.”
She pushed open the door and hustled down the steps back to her car.
“Do you always tell stories like that about your leg?” Mia asked.
“I do to people who are real schmucks,” Shields said. “But we’ve got a real story to tell now about Falcon Enterprises. And I can’t wait to share it with the world.”
CHAPTER 47
Los Angeles, California
FALCON SINCLAIR TIGHTENED his grip on the transcript of his presentation as he bumped along in a golf cart. He glanced around at the facades decorating the streets of Paramount Studios, some of the buildings partially exposed as construction teams redesigned the sets. After drawing in a deep breath, he started to focus on his upcoming performance, musing how this event couldn’t have come at a better time for him.
With the news of Nazari’s failure in New York City two days earlier, Sinclair had one final pitch to make to the world. If he was successful, his Freedom Homes would dominate the news cycles for days to come. And then he’d be on the precipice of achieving his ultimate goal.
He’d picked Paramount Studios as his location for the event because he needed the kind of space and audio-visuals a studio warehouse could afford him. While videos were effective for introducing concepts, Sinclair had long since discovered walk-throughs were more awe inspiring. Touching the technology and seeing it at work could launch the type of brand ambassadors that could influence a new wave of prospective consumers. In his rise to the top of the business world, he knew the “cool factor” was just as important as a product’s function. And the experience he was about to offer a
