Page 37 of Collin: Episodes 7-9
Collin stood up laughing. “I have etiquette class until noon, then I’ll send up lunch.”
Ash reached into the piles of stuff on his desk and dragged out a pile of cash in twenties and hundreds. He shoved it at Collin. “I pay.”
Collin caught the money in both hands. It wasn’t organized, in the slightest, or even stacked.
“What?”
“Ellisandre said that I can afford to pay for my food but that you probably need your money, like you have a mom and all that.” Ash turned back to the keyboard. “Sorry.”
“Ash, um…I mean…it’s okay. I make enough money to buy lunch. I mean, I do now. Maybe not before. Uh, Ash?”
The younger man’s shoulders were almost up to his ears, and he was doing a good job of pretending the computer in front of him required all of his attention.
“Ash, do you have a mom?”
If anything, Ash’s shoulders went higher. “Go! You’re messing with my thoughts. I have spells to write and evils to kill.”
“I hope you mean that figuratively.”
Ash cackled.
Collin backed out of the doorway. And then immediately wanted to smack himself. He was supposed to talk to Ash about getting the camping supplies. He’d have to do it later. Like right before lunch or right after.
Mr. Reevesworth looked up as Collin jostled his way into the office carrying the wad of cash in front of him. He shuffled over to the small table meant for him and dropped it.
“What’s that, Collin?”
“Ash decided to pay me for the lunches I’ve been buying him. But I don’t think he understands how much lunches cost, or maybe he was just embarrassed, or he’s trying to pay for lunches in the future.”
Mr. Reevesworth sighed. “The kid means well.”
Collin nodded. “You should see him. He’s using my old laptop to set up a trap for whoever was hacking it. Or rather, he already caught them, and now he’s in their system, figuring out who they are.”
Mr. Reevesworth raised both eyebrows and straightened up. “He did that over the weekend?”
Collin shook his head. “Ash makes me feel both stupid and old. And I’m in my twenties.”
Mr. Reevesworth chuckled. “That he does. Thank you for handling the incident out front.”
Collin pulled a face. “Ash is trying to figure out who it was. He’s isolating the footage and running recognition software on it.”
“Good. Have him send it directly to me.”
Collin pulled out his phone and shot Ash a text. “Done.”
“Good. I’m pulling you off personal assistant duties and putting you on special tasks for this week. Ash doesn’t know how to do inventory. I’m assuming you know how to do that?”
“I can figure it out. I’m assuming there’s a system.”
“There was. But I don’t think Ash has been keeping up with it. And frankly, when we onboarded him, we were much more concerned about security at the time than keeping track of stuff. My old tech person here transferred to one of my other companies to fill in for someone we had to fire. He warned me to get Ash an assistant. That hasn’t happened yet.”
Collin tried to imagine Ash tolerating an assistant. Maybe if they hired someone to do boring stuff? “So, it’s going to be a job.”
“Yes. I run a very small staff here. Until about a year ago, this place didn’t exist. Centralizing my own personal staff here is new. There’s a lot of rough points to work out. Eventually, we’ll have to be more standardized, but I wanted the flexibility and intimacy of a startup. Someplace where I could run my own personal investigations and local investments but still keep my pulse on my companies. Risa, upstairs, has been organizing all the information coming from the companies owned by Reevesworth Industries. Someday I will have to introduce you, but mostly, I just run upstairs once a day and get her briefing.”
“I wondered about it. This place doesn’t feel very corporate. Why not have Risa come down?”
Mr. Reevesworth shook his head, giving a half smile. “I want to leave that all upstairs. Different headspace. Eventually, this office will be the main base of the projects I want to keep under my own personal eye. I picked these offices because it’s close to city hall and a few other entities.”
