The Underwriting (35 page)

The almost-full moon hung bright against a clear sky as Tara drove south on I-95 from Kennebunkport to Boston. It was almost two in the morning and she was still in the tight cocktail dress she'd borrowed from one of Lisbeth's friends to wear to yesterday's ceremony, which she now replayed in her mind as the car zipped down the empty interstate.

Everyone had been in bed by the time Tara arrived at the hotel Friday night, and she'd indulged in six hours' sleep before making her way to the bridal suite Saturday morning. Lisbeth had been laughing at something one of her bridesmaids had said when she opened the door, her face radiant with happiness. She'd stopped, though, when she saw her sister in the doorway, and Tara's heart stopped, too, worried that coming had been a mistake as she watched Lisbeth's eyes fill with tears.

But Lisbeth had cut Tara's apologies off with a tight embrace and they'd held each other, laughing and crying with the overpowering sensation of sisterhood.

The wedding had been everything a young bride could hope for—the sunset red over the ocean just as the groom kissed the bride. Tara had watched Lisbeth and her new husband spin on the dance floor and been keenly aware of the extent to which her sister's joy held a mirror to Tara's own lack of it. She'd sipped her wine and, before she could stop it, felt the truth of what she really wanted begin to articulate itself in her mind, seeping down to her heart and forcing her lips open in a silent vow to change.

And so now she was driving to Boston to rejoin the Hook road show with a surreal peace that she didn't quite understand but trusted to lead her down the right path.

When the car radio lost its signal, she plugged her iPhone into the auxiliary system and turned it on for the first time since she'd left New York. Before her Spotify could load, a notification of six new voicemails filled the phone's screen. She braced herself for messages from Todd yelling at her for leaving, but found that all six were from Neha, frantically asking Tara to call her back. It was almost two-thirty now but Tara knew the analyst would still be up.

“Tara!” Neha answered on the second ring. “Where are you? I've been trying to—”

“I went to my sister's wedding,” Tara cut her off without apology. “What's going on?”

“You know that guy's question in the road show on Friday, about Hook keeping identifiable information?” Neha asked.

“Yeah, Antony van Leeuwen,” Tara said, switching her brain back into work mode. “Why?”

“They do,” Neha said. “They do keep it.”

“They
did
,” Tara corrected, remembering what Rachel had told her. “They stopped, though, and erased everything. That's why Josh left.”

“No they didn't,” Neha said.

Tara felt her throat tighten. “How do you know?”

“Juan showed me,” she said. “And he found this third database that links all the private information and collected activity so you can see everyone's history. But that's not all.”

Tara gripped the steering wheel.

“Juan looked up Kelly Jacobson, and she was on Hook when she died, and she was with someone, but that user's profile was corrupted, and so Juan broke into it after the dinner on Friday, and found out that the person that was with her wasn't Robby Goodman, it's someone who hacked into Hook and I think he's the one who killed her, not Robby, and—”

“Wait, wait, wait, Neha,” Tara interrupted, her brain racing to keep up with the girl's voice as she looked out at the empty road before her. “Wait, Neha, start from the beginning.”

NICK

S
UNDAY
, M
AY
11; B
OSTON
, M
ASSACHUSETTS

“Is this why Josh really quit?” Tara snapped in a hushed voice, her long neck tense.

“What are you talking about?” Nick spat back.

She'd caught Nick on his way to breakfast and pulled him into her hotel room, where the sheets were crumpled back in the unmade bed. She'd been absent yesterday and missed the flight from New York, but apparently that hadn't kept her from sleeping just fine whenever she'd shown up in Boston.

“Why didn't you tell us about the third database, Nick?” she demanded.

“I don't know what you're referring to,” he said.

“Do not lie to me, Nick,” she growled, pronouncing one word at a time.

“As you told Antony in Friday's meeting, all apps can collect user information. And as I told Antony, we use that information responsibly.”

Nick hadn't told anyone, but he'd decided not to erase the third database, or delete user activity after twenty-four hours like Phil had suggested and Juan had failed to do. Antony was right: it was a gold mine of information. Companies and advertisers and the government would pay huge money for it, which would not only provide a revenue stream to ease Wall Street concern over earnings, it would catapult Hook beyond a simple dating app and into the realm of big data.

The same way Palantir helped banks catch fraudsters and the government catch terrorists, Hook could develop algorithms that mined their data sets to find patterns that . . . well, meant something . . . to someone. He hadn't figured out the details yet, but that's what the engineers were for; he was just the visionary.

“I want to see what you have,” Tara demanded.

“That's against our policy,” he said.

“I am underwriting this IPO, Nick.” Her eyes were wide, exasperated. “We are legally required to include something like this in our disclosures. I am not going to keep this up if I think you're hiding something.”

“First, underwriting an IPO is very different from leading a company that makes important decisions—”

“Do not lecture me on how your job is more important than mine, Nick,” she said. “I will go to the police, with or without you.”

“What? Why would you go to the police?”

“Because a girl died, and an innocent kid is about to go to jail, and you know who the real killer is,” she said, emphasizing the words with her manicured hands.

“What are you talking about?”

“Are you seriously going to deny it?” she yelled. “Jesus Christ, Nick!”

“Tara, I honestly don't know what you're talking about,” he said, his tone shifting. “All Juan found was that the girl happened to be on Hook, like a hundred million other active users that night. It doesn't make Hook responsible.”

“No.” Tara shook her head, a lock of hair falling in front of her face. “But the fact that another user was with her, and hacked into your system in order to find her, might be cause for concern, don't you think?”

“What?” Nick felt the blood in his cheeks drain. “That isn't possible.”

“It is,” she said, “and it happened, and we have to do something about it.”

“You have no way of knowing that happened,” he said, calming himself with reason. “How could you possibly? You're not an engineer.”

“Juan found it,” she said, “via the database you said you had erased.”

“When?”

“Friday night,” she said. “Neha told me. She was with him.”

Nick relaxed: that explained it. “Juan is no longer an employee of this company,” he said. “He's trying to make trouble.”

“What?”

“I let him go on Friday.” Nick shrugged. “He's trying to get back at me. It isn't real.”

This was why women were never going to be as good as men in business, Nick thought. They were too dramatic. They always jumped to the most exciting story of something, like Juan finding ludicrous information, instead of taking a minute to see the logical reason behind things.

“Why did you fire him?” Tara asked sternly. “He's your top engineer.”

“I can't trust him,” Nick said. “As is especially clear now.”

“Why would he lie about something like that?”

“Because he didn't exercise any of his stock options.” Nick guffawed. “So he loses them. He's bitter and he's lashing out.”

Tara looked like she'd just witnessed a shooting.

“Come on.” He laughed gently to lighten the mood, putting a hand on her arm. “This is good news! Juan was making it all up. There's nothing wrong with Hook.”

Tara pulled her arm away from his grip. “You're seriously taking away all his shares.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

“He violated his NDA,” Nick said innocently. “I can't have people like that working for me, Tara, not with all the scrutiny going on.”

“Bullshit,” Tara snapped. “What the fuck is wrong with you? That kid worked his tail off for three years while you were collecting Starwood points at your cushy—”

“I can't help the past, Tara,” he said. “All I can do is draw conclusions from the facts of the situation, and the fact is that he used the database in a way that he shouldn't have, violating users' privacy as well as my trust. And the conclusion is that whatever he's telling you is not to be relied upon.”

Tara's jaw was clenched, her eyes glassy. “He's poured his life into this and you're hanging him out to dry.”

“The money he's made at Hook is still miles beyond what others in his community—”

“You elitist prick!” she spat. “Jesus Christ, he built the entire program, and you—”

“—are the only reason it's going to be a viable business,” he said, calmly and firmly, “so long as you keep your mouth shut about whatever you're inventing in that pretty little head of yours.”

“How dare you accuse me of inventing when—”

“You have no proof. Just the words of an angry former employee with questionable values.”

“Then look in the database yourself,” she said. “Let's see if it's true.”

“Are you suggesting I hack into our users' private information?” He made a face. “That's entirely unethical. It goes against all our stated principles.”

“Are you kidding me?” Tara threw her hands in the air. She didn't have the stamina for this.

But how could she, really? All she'd ever done was work in an investment bank, she'd never had to deal with real business problems, like employee difficulties and product errors and ethically challenging situations. She thought the world was black and white, right or wrong, but it wasn't.

“Listen, Tara,” he coaxed, “you're tired. I know you've been working really hard, and I understand why you might not be seeing things clearly, but I promise, this is not a big deal.”

“An innocent kid might go to jail,” she said.

“That isn't true.” He shook his head. “If Robby Goodman is innocent, our judicial system will find that out. It's not our right or responsibility to step out of our own expertise.” He reached out and squeezed her arm. “Which is why you need to go back to what you know, which is how to make this the biggest IPO in history.”

Her eyes held his, big and brown and moist with recognition that he was right. Her chest started to heave less and he could feel her pulse slow through the grip on her arm. A rush of warmth spread over him: this is the kind of thing great leaders did.

“Go to hell, Nick,” she spat at him, shrugging her arm away and turning to the door.

“Don't you even think about repeating this to anyone.”

She glared at him. He wanted to grab her neck, to strangle her or maybe fuck her: something to put her in her place. “Do you understand?” he repeated, angry.

She moved to the door but he grabbed her wrist, hard. “I said, do you understand?”

“Yes,” she hissed between gritted teeth.

He held her a moment longer, then released his grip and took a deep breath, readjusting his suit coat. “Good.” He nodded. “I'll see you at the meeting, then.”

Tara calmly opened the door and left, letting it slam shut behind her.

Nick felt the panic start in his toes, creeping up his legs and into the pit of his stomach. First Antony's report, and now this?

The deal had to go through. There was no room to consider any alternative, even if Hook were somehow responsible for Kelly Jacobson, which it wasn't. And he had had to fire Juan: the engineer had broken the rules, and he'd become a threat to Nick's efficacy as a leader.

Nick might not have built the program, but he had worked hard for this. He'd worked hard his whole life, since he was five years old, multitasking piano lessons and T-ball and accelerated reading classes after school. He'd put every moment of his time toward building a perfect résumé, then risked it all for Hook. And he'd dumped Grace.
And he'd borrowed two million dollars
.

He sobbed involuntarily, his chest heaving from the pressure. He could already see the headlines:
Promising Harvard Business School Graduate Goes from $80 Million to Bankrupt Overnight.

“No, no, no!” he said, steadying himself on the hotel desk and addressing his reflection in the mirror above it. “You haven't done anything wrong. Everything you believe is right according to the facts that you have.”

Nick repeated the mantras he used to calm himself:

1. You went to Stanford and graduated from the hardest major magna cum laude.
   
2. You worked at McKinsey, the best consulting firm in the world, and got promoted to engagement manager in
   three
   years.
   
3. You worked at Dalton Henley, the world's best venture capital firm, under Phil Dalton, the most important VC in the Valley.
   
4. You went to Harvard Business School, the best business school in the world, where you were a Baker Scholar.
   
5. You are CEO of the most important social media company on the planet.
   
6. You can attract any girl you want at the bar at Rosewood.
   
7. Todd Kent works for you now. And Tara Taylor. And Tiffany.
   

He felt his brain start to relax as he went through the list: not only had he done nothing wrong, he'd done everything right. Tara didn't know what she was talking about. Guys like him didn't make mistakes.

TARA

S
UNDAY
, M
AY
11; B
OSTON
, M
ASSACHUSETTS

“Do you care to explain what's going on?” Catherine Wiley asked.

“What?” Tara looked up, startled. “What are you doing here?” She glanced around the hotel lobby. She was still in shock from what had just happened with Nick.

“I'm speaking at a Women in Business conference at Harvard tonight,” Catherine said. “I was on my way to Cambridge when I got a concerned call from Harvey Tate asking if I'd drop by to find out what's happening with our biggest deal.” She was at least three inches shorter than Tara, but her posture was so straight that she seemed taller. “Shall we speak in private?”

Tara followed Catherine into an empty conference room, where the two women sat across from each other at the long, empty table.

“You know?” Tara asked. She wasn't sure whether she was more relieved or afraid that Catherine had found out about Juan and Hook's link to the Kelly Jacobson trial.

“Of course I know,” Catherine said.

“Who told you?”

“Todd Kent,” she said.

“Todd knows?”

“Of course he knows.” The woman's brow furrowed. “Tara, you were gone for an entire day.”

“What?” Tara's brain searched. What did that have to do with Kelly?

“Jesus Christ, Tara.” Catherine flexed her hands in the air. Her wedding band was gone, replaced by what looked like a golden finger brace. “You let one of Wall Street's top tech analysts leave a meeting ready to issue a negative report, then skipped town in the middle of the road show? What the hell were you thinking?”

“That's what you're upset about? Me leaving?” Her head felt hazy. Did Catherine
not
know about Kelly?

“Yes.” Catherine nodded in bewilderment. “
That
is what I'm upset about. Where were you?”

“It was my sister's wedding,” Tara answered, remembering it as if it were an eternity ago. “My sister got married in Maine and I flew up to be there.”

Catherine's chest rose and fell. “Why?”

“Because she's my sister,” Tara said.

“Let me tell you something, Tara,” Catherine said, angry, “your sister is always going to be there—that's what families are for—but deals like this? Opportunities like the one that I have entrusted in you? They aren't always there, and they certainly aren't there for people who treat them casually.”