Kill Process (33 page)

Her phone buzzes again. She must have received at least a dozen calls since she got here. “You going to be okay? Because you’re looking better, and I walked out of a client meeting, so eventually I must answer the damn phone.”

“I will survive.”

“Good. Go get dressed. I’ll take this call from your living room. I’m not leaving until I see you on your way to work.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Yeah, I do. Now go powder your nose.” She swipes at her phone and lifts it to her ear. “This is Emily.”

I finish getting ready in the bathroom to the distant sounds of Emily arguing on the phone. It’s comforting somehow, like rain pelting against the roof.

She’s on the phone literally the entire time, and we walk out of my condo together. She sees me to my car, gives me a quick peck on the cheek, and mouths “Love you, girl,” before she turns and walks to her car.

*     *     *

On the way into work, I leave Thomas a voice message.

“Hey, I’m sorry about this morning and last night. I’m not even sure what I said before. I had a mini-freakout until Emily talked me down. Yesterday, I needed a day away from it all. I’m sorry if I worried you. I love you.” I waffle back and forth before I hang up, first thinking I should say something about being excited about getting married, then thinking maybe marriage will never work
—
I’ll never totally be able to give up my side work, because who knows when something like this will happen again. The pause goes on too awkwardly long even if I knew what to say, so I hit End.

I walk into the building and make a beeline for my office, hoping to sneak in so I can catch up on all my messages. I walk in to find Owen and his lawyer, Stella, having a conference call in
my
office.

Owen says, “Let me call you back, she’s here,” and hangs up.

“We need to talk about the offer.”

O
WEN
’
S WORDS
ring in my ears. “The offer? What offer?” I can’t imagine what he’s talking about. Owen knows no part of my plan includes selling Tapestry. Even so, the next words leak out. “From who?”

“Before we discuss that, where the hell were you yesterday? The entire board and everybody’s lawyers convened to sign the financing paperwork. In sixteen years I’ve been in the business, never has a founder failed to show up to sign their own paperwork.”

I’m vaguely aware this is the second time today someone has questioned me about where I was, but that takes back seat to the money and getting the funding. So it’s damage control time. What the hell do I say?

“I had a critical emergency to take care of.”

“What kind of emergency?” Owen asks.

“A personal one.”

“Dammit, Angie. That’s not good enough. You make me look bad, you make the company look bad, you make yourself as CEO look bad. What was it? Someone die? Gimme something.”

The best lies are partial truths, Repard always said.

“A close friend was in an abusive situation and I had to drop everything to help her.”

“Jesus.” Owen swallows. “Sorry. Is she okay?”

“She is now.”

He shakes his head. “Well, maybe it’s for the best the signing got delayed. There’s been a development, and you need to know about this new information before you do anything.” He nods to Stella.

Stella stands up from where she’s sitting at my desk and passes over a sheet of paper. “First thing this morning, the board of directors received an acquisition offer. It went to everyone, including the would-be new director appointed by CompEx. In other words, it probably went out based on the assumption we signed the paperwork yesterday, which is not finalized because we don’t have your signature.”

“It’s an exceptional proposal,” Owen says. He sits on the edge of my desk facing me. “The investors want to accept. The terms generously represent the current value of the company and compensates everyone for their risk and involvements, generating a significant income event for every employee, especially you.”

Nowhere in what they’ve said was the name of a person or company, and that can only mean one thing. “There is no damn way Tomo will get their hands on this company.”

“They’re offering three hundred million,” Owen says.

Stella nods to confirm.

“The investors get the return they want, and you walk away with sixty million. We haven’t even launched yet. Do you know how insanely great this deal is?”

“It’s not about money!” I’m yelling and belatedly turn around and slam my office door shut. “The whole point of this is to compete
with
Tomo, to give people an option, a way out.”

Owen looks at me like I’m crazy. “It
is
about money. That’s why investors invest. Boulder wants to take it. CompEx wants it.
I
want it. You’ll walk out with enough to self-fund your next company. Your next two or three companies. You’ll never need an investor again. You know how many entrepreneurs would kill for that?”

“I’m not engaging in a debate with you. This is not open for discussion. The answer is
no
. I don’t care what their offer is. The point of this company is to give people the ability to walk away from their relationship with Tomo. To give them a safe haven where their rights are respected, they own their own data, and possess full agency over what happens to them and their data and their relationships with people.”

Owen waves a hand at me. “I understand, I do. I get the whole social mission part. It’s compelling. That’s part of the reason why I invested, and why I pulled the Boulder investors in on the Series A funding. You must see it from our perspective, though. Your vision is ambitious, almost to the point of being impossible. We believed and invested anyway. But here’s the thing. Nobody has any idea what’s going to happen at launch. Tapestry could utterly flop. A month after launch it could be a ghost town, and your valuation could drop to zero. If we look at three hundred million in our pockets now, prior to that inflection point . . . no risk-adjusted valuation could equal that.”

“It’s not about the fucking money!” I’m losing my shit. Owen knows it, and from the glimpses of my employees through the interior window in my office, they know it. I clench and release my fist several times. When I try to take a deep breath it catches in my throat and almost turns into a sob. Almost. I will not show one scrap of weakness. Do not betray me now, body.

I turn around and face Owen. “I don’t care whether you and the other investors want the offer. I will not accept the offer. The amount of money is not part of my decision process.”

Owen gazes down at his shoes, and when he looks back up at me, he seems genuinely sad. “I figured you would say as much, but I had to try. I’m sorry it’s come to this. Excuse me.”

He walks past me, opens the door, and leaves my office.

What
the—?
Where is he going?

Stella clears her throat, reminding me of her presence, sitting quietly in my seat at my desk. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

She talks rapid-fire in dense legalese.

“Stop. Just give me plain English.”

She sighs. “If you sign the contract paperwork enabling the funding round to close, the other investors will vote to accept the offer and you don’t control enough votes to stop them. If you don’t sign the paperwork, then the funding round doesn’t close, and you don’t get any money.”

“I can’t make payroll. I need that money.”

Stella closes her laptop lid. “Sorry, Angie. I really am. The investors want to act in everyone’s best interests.”

“Get out.” I point a finger to the door, in case she’s forgotten where it is.

“It would be best if your counsel responds within twenty-four hours. I’m on your side in this, really.”

She’s face to face with me now, and I don’t know if she’s telling the truth or not. She seems earnest enough. Then again, I trusted my husband, and look where that got me.

“Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t,” I say. “For now, I want you out of my office, okay?”

She nods and leaves. Before I’ve even reached my chair, Amber walks in.

“I can’t talk right now,” I say. “I need to call Schwartz and Associates. I’ll debrief you later.”

“What should I say?” Amber asks.

I look out through the window and every employee of the company is staring at me, identical anxious expressions on their faces. For the second time since coming into the office, I want to cry. I clear my throat and force some rigor into my voice. “Tell them to please get their work done, and I’ll hold an all-hands meeting as soon as I have something to share.”

*     *     *

I call our lawyers, explain to the receptionist what’s going on, and a minute later I’m talking to an associate partner. I relate the situation again, and five minutes after that, in what little capacity I have left in me to be surprised, find I’m speaking to the head of the firm, David Schwartz.

“This offer is counter to everything I believe in and what the company stands for,” I say, when I’m finished retelling the story for the third time. “But I must get money in the door, and soon. Do I have any options?”

“Let me review everything,” David says. “I’ll need to go over the contracts with a fine-tooth comb.”

I’m immediately soothed. I’ve got somebody in my corner.

“Can you give me some indication of how serious the situation is? Should I be worried?”

“I don’t want to give you either false hope or worries,” he says. “I’d rather read through everything first, and give you a definitive answer.”

“How about a number on a scale of one to ten, ten being everything is okay?” I need some sort of reassurance.

“Every contract is different, but it’s unlikely you’re going to be able to obtain the funding and also stop the acquisition. If that’s the only outcome you consider success, then I’d give you a two.”

“
Two
? Damn it,” I say. “I’ll panic then.”

My mind races. How much is left? Can we move funds around to make payroll this week? Even if we do, what happens in two weeks?

*     *     *

I lean back into my chair, utterly drained. It’s barely been an hour since I said goodbye to Emily at my condo. Shit, Igloo and her sister. Theo the bastard. What’s happened to him?

Checking the news from here would leave a trace back to me. Really, how likely are they to investigate a scumbag like Theo deeply? He’ll confess to blackmailing the rest of the girls under that much pressure and evidence, even if he denies any involvement with the Prime Minister’s daughter. I’m too tired to hunt down an anonymous network to read the news.

It’s been twenty hours since my tip to Folha, so I go straight to their website, hoping for an article. I can’t help smiling when I see a front page picture of Theo, side-by-side with the photo I planted on his hard drive of the Vice President’s daughter. I click on the article and let my browser translate it to English. The second paragraph says the Departamento de Polícia Federal are holding him in custody. Problem solved.

I need to let Igloo know and make sure she keeps quiet about the whole thing. Unfortunately, I don’t have a secure way to communicate with her. I tap my fingers on my desk. Actually, there is a way. I could use her public key from Github with rsutl to encrypt a message. Alas, sending an encrypted message is like firing off a flare gun to the NSA. It’ll increase the likelihood of the NSA monitoring me. Still, I don’t have much choice. On the other hand, I have no idea what security she’s using for her private key, which means I really can’t trust that at all.

Fudge. I send a chat message to Amber: “I want Tapestry to support encrypted chats and voice calls with 3-layer encryption. Encrypt everything.” That’ll piss off the NSA. I ignore Amber’s reply.

I install Redphone, a fairly well-regarded encrypted telephony app, and send an invite to Igloo to connect with me. I stare at my screen until I receive a notification she accepted my invite. I establish an encrypted call with her.

“Hey Igloo, we fixed your image retrieval bug in the codebase.”

“Uh, okay?” She sounds confused, but I don’t want her to say anything incriminating.

“It’s probably safe now. Nobody will hold it over your head anymore. All the same, it’s best we don’t talk about it. Let bygones be bygones.”

“I can come back?” Igloo asks. “Everything is okay?”

“Yup. Totally taken care of.”

“Thank you so much.”

“No, it’s fine. Please,
don’t mention it
. I need to go deal with some other issues. Take care of yourself, Igloo.”

One small good deed done. Now back to work. I’ve got to talk to everyone in the office, tell them something of what’s going on. I catch myself grinding my teeth. I’m wound so tight and for a brief moment I daydream of a cigarette and the rush of nicotine from that first hit. Oh God, that wouldn’t be good. It took years to quit. I’m not going to restart now. I jot down a few notes, then gather everyone in the office together in the largest conference room.

I stand there looking at a sea of expectant and worried faces. I never learned what the deal would have offered my employees, although from a guess at our stock distribution, the deal might be in the ballpark of a million dollars per employee. The investors might not be the only ones who want to take the deal.

Everyone I hired was in line with our values, but that’s a lot of money, especially to everyone here that’s a year or two out of college, struggling to pay their student loans and Portland’s astronomical rents. I’d better not say anything about amounts.

“I’m sure you all saw, and probably heard, the scene in my office this morning. Tomo made an offer to purchase us. Our investors want to take the offer. I do not.

“Tomo has no interest in Tapestry the federated social network. They want to buy the company because that’s the easiest way to gain control. They want control because they’re scared of how Tapestry decentralizes power. Consider this validation of everything we’re doing
—
our privacy and data ownership features, our partnerships with other companies in the industry, the control we’re delivering to the customer. Tomo knows all of this threatens their way of doing business.