Page 181 of Nailing the Billionaire

I’d chosen this room so that with the vertical blinds open, Melissa could see them clearly.

She smirked. “In trouble with the SEC, I hear.”

I opened the folder and slid across the stapled copies of the emails I’d brought. “Yesterday the FBI served a warrant on your internet provider and found these emails.”

She pushed them away with barely a glance. “I don’t know anything about these.”

It was Jennifer’s turn to speak, and she aimed her words at the attorney. “I was approached by your client to steal trade secrets from the company. I passed them to her through a dead drop at a nearby park.”

Melissa attempted a calm demeanor, but her facade cracked. “Lies.”

Jennifer slid over the pictures of Melissa and her car. “The company surveilled the drop site after I left, and these are photographs of you picking up the material.”

“I brought this to the attention of the FBI, and with the emails here…” I pointed to the paper stack. “…which are all tied to your home IP address, that gives us enough to have you charged with multiple counts of trade secret theft. That’s up to ten years per count.”

Jenkins’s eyes bugged out. She put down the pictures and started to leaf through the emails.

“She’s the one who stole them,” Melissa complained, pointing at Jennifer.

“She did it at my direction, in order to find out who the real culprit was.”

“That’s a lie,” Melissa spat. “It was all her idea.”

“I don’t think you should say any more,” her lawyer cautioned.

“That’s not the story the emails tell,” I told her. “It’s all in black and white, and it doesn’t look very good for you. You recruited her, and you’re the one who wrote theTimesarticles.”

Melissa’s face couldn’t have been any redder.

I pulled out the documents Syd had prepared and slid them to Jenkins. “Either we come to an understanding, and you sign these, or I’m going to meet with those two agents, and we’ll see you in court.”

“But…” Melissa started to say.

I stood. “You have five minutes.”

Jennifer followed me out of the room.

I winked at Parsons. “Can you two give me a few minutes?” I said loudly enough to be heard in the conference room. I herded Jennifer down the hall. “Do you think she’ll go for it?”

“Of course. Did you see her eyes when you told her ten years per offense?”

Chapter 45

Jennifer

A half hour later,Cindy had finished notarizing the papers, and Dennis and I were free of Melissa—hopefully forever. One of the papers she and her lawyer had signed ended the post-divorce dispute with Dennis.

I walked into the boardroom, where the next meeting was set to start soon.

Cartwright was due, and Dennis’s fate hung in the balance. The Melissa legal dust-up was minor compared to Cartwright’s attack.

Syd sat in his usual chair near the end, reading some of the papers Melissa had signed, and grinning.

I waited until he’d finished the last one. “Are those good enough to get us off the hook with the SEC?”

“Probably, but the timing isn’t likely to be soon enough for the proxy vote. Even then, dropping the charges is not the same as the SEC declaring you innocent. Cartwright can still point to the original charges and claim that the SEC is just perfecting the case before they refile it. The whole thing casts a shadow over the company.”

Larry wandered in. “Somebody said Cartwright was coming in. Should I join you?”

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