Page 64 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

“I’m just saying, you’re more than your innovations,” she says.

I give her a dark look.

“What if it’s an address?” she asks. “Do you march down there?”

“I’ll know what to do when I see what you get. It would be stupid to decide how to act on information when I don’t know what that information is.”

“Sorry, Sherlock,” she says.

“I think of that approach as more Michael Faraday.” I refresh again.

“Four minutes,” she says.

I probably will march down there. I picture myself storming into the office. Or maybe it’s some asshole operating out of a shared workspace. Or a storefront in Brooklyn. I’ll see what I’m dealing with. Probably put my PI on it. I said I wouldn’t get involved, but I never said I wouldn’t put a private investigator on it.

She grins at her phone. “Gotcha!”

I check my inbox. The email is there. I click it. Terse, as usual.

Dear Mr. Drummond,

There is only one type of arrangement: the one you are on currently.

We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

The cheerful folks at Hello Morning

I look up. “Did you capture anything?”

She grabs her own laptop, hits a few keys. “Theo.” She sounds surprised.

“Don’t jerk me around. What?”

She lowers her voice to a dramatic whisper. “The email is coming from inside the building.”

“Are you sure?”

“Now you really do have to tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t have to tell you dick.” I get up and look over her shoulder. I don’t know as much about IT as she does, but it’s not rocket science to see the return IP is Vossameer Inc.

“It’s one of your employees acting as a wake-up service. It seemed fishy to you because it is. Let me guess, you’ve burned through every wake-up service out there trying to hold to that mad schedule of yours, and some desperate employee took it on herself to do it for you. I hope you didn’t abuse the person too much.”

“Not too much,” I say, head spinning. I’m thinking about how cagey Sasha acted when I asked for the information. An hour later the Craigslist ad was up. Is it possible it’s Sasha? But then, who else could it be? She’s the one who arranged the service.

“Mystery solved,” she says, eyeing me. “That’s what’s going on, right? You could tell it was a fake thing because it is.”

I sink into my chair.

“So who’s the unlucky caller?”

“Probably Sasha Bale. In marketing. You’ve never met her. Except the caller didn’t sound like her,” I say hopefully. “This caller has a more raspy voice.”

“Yeah, there’s an app for that. There’s a dozen apps for that.”

“It was so realistic—”

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