Bonnie Winn - Rules of Engagement

Mark Cannon. They’d worked together for years, developing both a friendship and deep level of trust. Enough that he’d felt secure when the call to serve in Iraq had come.

Dan Nelson was the newest face on his team but also the oldest. He’d worked for the competition. But he was talented, accomplished and had never given Cole a reason to distrust him. And he was, at most, the numbers man. Not someone who ever touched the creative. Or shouldn’t, anyway.

And the missing man, Jim Fredrickson. He and Cole had worked side by side as budding software designers. Logically Jim had the easiest access, but Cole couldn’t believe his old friend would betray him. They went back too far. But there were plenty of young designers Cole knew little about in Jim’s department, since they tended to come and go frequently. Each one hoped to be the next Bill Gates. Cole had wanted to keep his company small, run it with a hands-on mom-and-pop sense of caring, but the reality of business success was growth. He employed more than two hundred people. He knew a lot of them, but not all.

Cole phoned for Jim to come up. As he waited, he stared out the huge picture window at his plant, which made processing equipment for companies that produced everything from candy to plastics to electronics. His was a hybrid business. One that had to be constantly evolving, thus the importance of the cutting-edge software designs. There was potential for enormous profit. And it enticed corporate raiders like triple-layered, chocolate-decadence cake wooed sugar junkies.

Cole had been protecting his firm since the day he’d opened the doors five years earlier. But its condition had never been this dire. His deployment had lasted nearly a year. And in that time his profitable firm had nearly gone bankrupt.

Bankrupt! Because of the lost bids to Alton Tool. He could still hardly believe it. Although he’d stayed in touch by e-mail, he’d left the firm’s management to Mark. He couldn’t second-guess it from a combat zone.

He heard a knock. “Jim. Come in. Shut the door.”

“Calling me on the carpet, boss?”

Cole took the chair angled next to Jim’s. “The missing designs, Jim.”

“They aren’t missing. I told you. They’re old, so they must’ve been—”

“Scrapped. I know. How well do you know the people in your department?”

Jim shrugged. “I work with them. They’re an efficient team.”

“No one stands out as overly eager? Anyone working more overtime than you’d expect them to?”

He frowned, thinking. “No one stands out. You remember how it was when we first began. They’ve got lots of energy and ideas.”

Cole nodded. His own surplus energy and creativity had strayed far from the typical, leading him to develop this business. “We’re tightening security. That begins with your department. You’ll have to keep watch. It’d be easy enough to slip out a CD or a flash point disk loaded with the designs.”

Jim scratched his forehead. “Maybe you ought to hire a guard to sit in our department.”

“That would boost creativity.” Cole ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, already growing out of the military cut. “Good thing I have a copy of the designs on my laptop. Except I can’t seem to find that, either. Just do what you can, Jim.”

“Sure.” His friend stood. “And don’t worry so much. This will work itself out. You’ve got the golden touch.”

“Yeah.” Golden.

THE MAIN AUCTION ROOM buzzed with hushed voices and the rustle of people. The auction had begun, but browsers continued to walk the narrow aisles. Everything from antique sideboards to elk antlers crowded the large room.

Tess and her cousin, Sandy, eyed the new lot the auctioneer was describing, a two-drawer wooden file cabinet and desk. “I need a small file cabinet for home,” Tess mused. “But I don’t have room for the desk.”

“If you get it for a good price, I’ll go in with you. The little writing desk Grandma gave me is pretty but I can’t fit all my computer stuff on it.”

“Okay.” Tess was an experienced buyer for furnishings of the Spencer restaurants. The opening bid was low, then two bidders jumped in, vying for the lot. Tess held back until it was down to what seemed to be the last bid. But just as she held up her numbered card, the bidder who’d dropped out reentered the match. Tess lowered her hand.

Sandy immediately jabbed her arm. Hard.

“Fine,” Tess muttered, putting her number back in view. “Geez, it’s office furniture, not diamonds.”

“Sorry,” Sandy replied without remorse, tucking her short blond hair behind her ears. “But it’s a great desk. I’d have paid that much without the file cabinet.”

Accepting Tess’s as the final bid, the auctioneer hit the podium with his gavel and she turned her eye to an early nineteenth-century oil painting next on the block that would be perfect in Spencers’ Galveston restaurant. Winning the bid at a reasonable price, she leaned over to whisper. “Is that enough for you?”

Sandy grinned. “I’m happy with my haul.”

Making their way back to the service counter, Tess appreciated Sandy’s upbeat companionship. Sandy and Tess were the same age, thirty, and they’d grown up together, more like sisters than cousins. Tess didn’t have any sisters of her own. She and David were the only children in her family. Tess swallowed against the swelling in her throat. Each day since he’d died had been a roller coaster. She could be on a relatively even keel when the smallest thing triggered a rash of memories capable of flattening her.

She couldn’t count the times she’d turned to the phone, or walked into his office and for the briefest moment believed her brother would be there. Then the instant remembering, the sudden, fierce pain. Their lives had been so intertwined before his deployment that she’d seen him every day.

As they waited in line, Tess caught Sandy’s concerned gaze. “What?”

“How are your parents coping with the restaurant?” Thomas and Judith, Tess’s parents, continued to run the original downtown venue, considered the top spot to be seen in Houston.

“They say it keeps them busy. But they’re trying to do too much.”

Sandy was skeptical. “Unlike you?”

When David’s reserve unit had been called up, Tess had taken over the second Houston location David had captained. “I’m just doing my part.”

“Overseeing all three locations? You’re working yourself to death.”

Tess grimaced.

Instinctively Sandy grasped her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think before I spoke.”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you ready?” the young cashier asked as the customer in front of them departed.

After paying and arranging to have the desk delivered, Tess picked up the painting. One of the porters loaded the file cabinet on a dolly and walked with them to load it into Tess’s Lexus SUV. As the heavy-set man lifted the cabinet into the rear of the wagon, it rattled.

Sandy leaned closer. “I wonder what that is?”

The porter opened the top drawer and reached inside, pulling out a portable computer.

“The owner must have forgotten it was inside,” Tess said.

“Doesn’t matter,” the man replied. “Rules of the auction. It’s yours now.”

Tess frowned. “That doesn’t seem quite right.”

He shrugged. “The seller knows the rules when he consigns the lot.”

“It is a business lot,” Sandy pointed out. “It’s not as though the computer belonged to some poor widow. The company probably had so much excess stuff they just didn’t bother to catalog it.”

“Yeah. You’re right. And it is pretty beaten up. Okay.” Tess put the computer in the front seat and then reached for a blanket to wrap the painting.