Cut to the Chase Read online

  Warrick echoed what she’d just thought. “They won’t have much to do, but I’ve found enough money to keep them on.”

  How do you find enough money to keep a full sales force, the scientists and lab technicians, the support staff, on? Was he that rich that he had piles sitting around in a closet he’d forgotten all about? Hell, she’d be psyched to find twenty bucks she’d forgotten about in a winter coat. Had this guy found a random extra few million in a coat pocket? She almost laughed at the image she’d lodged in her head, but stifled it in time.

  “All right, so let’s come up with a plan that’s going to get the company out of this.”

  Sara sat down and closed her mouth. She had to admit, hearing Jack say he had that kind of confidence in her floored her. And felt good. Maybe she was shortchanging Warrick and Simms. If Jack believed in them enough to be here, that said a lot about them, and one thing Sara had learned in the military was to be open to the opinions of those around her. Listening to your teammates can save your ass overseas.

  She blew out a breath. “All right. Well, the obvious thing would be a PR campaign, but we don’t really want obvious here.” The men waited and Sara kept going. It was how she brainstormed. She talked through problems until she came up with a solution. Of course, she usually did this in her office with the door closed and only proposed the end result to other people. Having the men watch and listen while she talked was unnerving.

  “Your employees need something to do in the meantime. We can’t train them to be PR gurus overnight.” She chewed on her lower lip and looked out the window, talking almost under her breath now. “But they could learn to do something else overnight maybe. They’re scientists and lab technicians. Some of them can be researching new drugs if there’s funding for that. It’s really the production and sales force we need to repurpose.”

  She stopped for a minute and watched people walking through the park across the street. Warrick had an enormous floor to ceiling wall of windows that looked out on a green vista of trees and walking paths with benches. Off to one side of the park was a small playground with a slide and swings.

  “The ideal solution would be a project your current staff can work on but that also provides the PR solution. A project that is the PR solution.” She still didn’t know what the heck that was, and she hoped Jack got that she was just spouting every thought that came to her for the moment. Surely, he wouldn’t expect her to come up with the answer right here and now. She turned in her chair to tell Jack she needed some time to work on this alone, but found him pointing at her with a wide smile on his face.

  “What?”

  “You’re brilliant.” He didn’t explain the statement. Just leaned forward in his chair. “Do you have your prosthetic hand proposal on your laptop?”

  It took a few seconds but she saw where he was headed and she wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. If she was honest, he was right. It was exactly what they needed. And in reality, it would be exactly what she’d been looking for as well. It was almost embarrassing she hadn’t seen it herself before he did. That didn’t change the fact that she felt nervous showing her proposal to Warrick Staunton, and she wasn’t at all sure she wanted the poster girl for saving Simms to be her.

  “You know it’s perfect.” Jack was still smiling at her.

  “Okay, care to share with the class?” Warrick said, looking between Jack and Sara.

  Jack smiled. “If Sara okays it, you’re going to be making her prosthetic hands. And you’re going to be giving them away to veterans in need. It will mean hiring a few new employees, which will also be good for PR. We’ll also redirect some of the current employees there, but obviously not all of them will find a skill set that matches the new project. For them, we need to get orders up within the next six months, but this gives us a little time and a hell of a PR strategy to bring people back around to the company.”

  He recapped exactly what Sara had been looking for in a company sponsor for her prostheses. Samantha, her friend and co-worker at Sutton, had helped her put all the pieces of the proposal together, but none of the companies she’d approached had bought into it yet. They all wanted her technology, of course. But none of them liked her conditions.

  She wanted a company to cap the amount charged to those who could pay for her devices, and to give a portion of the product to veterans at no charge. A pipe dream, it turned out. No company who had the funding to produce the devices on a larger scale than she could was willing to give up a damned thing, despite the fact she was asking pennies for the technology itself.

  The problem for Sara was that she had no interest in making money. Companies, on the other hand, did. They wouldn’t mind writing her a check for ten times the money she wanted for the technology. She’d started her prosthesis using known tech that was out there for the taking, but in the process, she’d innovated a few of the pieces related to grasp strength and biomimicry. She had considered simply putting the specs out there for everyone to see and use online. The only problem was, the average person couldn’t do anything with that.

  What she wanted was for a company with the equipment and funding to make it on a larger scale, make some money—a reasonable, fair amount of money—making it, but also have the project be partially charitable. She might as well be looking for a ride on a paper airplane to Mars.

  She pulled up the proposal on her laptop and put it in front of Warrick. Samantha had run numbers, and created projections and charts, and put it all together in a gorgeous package. That didn’t mean she wanted Warrick Staunton looking at her baby. He wasn’t nearly as approachable as Jack was. He seemed all business and her stomach tightened as he scanned the data she and Samantha had compiled. He looked up at Jack after a few moments. “You’ve checked all of this? It can be done?”

  Jack nodded. He had reviewed the project for her and had told her he’d keep an eye out for companies that might be a good match and more open to her idea. “Yes. It’s all accurate. The deal Sara would be giving the company would be a steal. You’d have to agree to the terms she’s laid out. The PR Simms Pharmaceutical would get from the donated prostheses will give us our best shot at recovery in the market. With any luck, that should drive your sales back up. Down the road someday, you’ll also make a nice profit, but in the short term, the goal is simply to build goodwill.”

  Warrick was silent a moment and Sara sought the words to voice her objection. What was her objection? What did she have to complain about? Jack was handing her everything she’d asked for. She couldn’t ask for better than this.

  Then her problem opened his mouth and spoke, and she realized it was Warrick Staunton who was bothering her. The thought of being his way out, the way to save his company, somehow disgusted her.

  Warrick looked at the prosthesis she wore on her arm now. She was still wearing the prototype she’d been messing with earlier. It wasn’t ready for anyone to see it in action. She hadn’t gotten the grip strength to work reliably and there were problems with some of the digits bending properly. She moved her arm to the side. Warrick showed her a page from the file Jack had handed him. The prosthesis she and Samantha had designed was on the page, laid out with specifications and details in the side margins of the page.

  “This doesn’t look like that.” Warrick frowned as he nodded to the prosthesis on her computer screen.

  “It’s not,” Sara said simply, then stood crossing to the other side of the room. She turned her back and opened her bag to remove the prosthesis she wore most days. The robotic one he’d seen in the proposal with all the bells and whistles.

  She and Samantha often messed around with other ideas. They’d created a prosthesis that had changeable gadgets to fit in a standardized base. The gadgets were customized for the user’s purpose. So, a person could fit it with a knife for cooking or a hammer if they worked in construction. They were fun and handy, but they also had to switch the tool with each use.

  The benefit to the robotic hand she took out of the bag now
was that it allowed the user to grip tools with the hand itself, much in the way someone with a natural hand might. As much as she loved playing around with the tooled prostheses she and Samantha were making, they had a lot of downsides to them. So did a standard prosthesis. Rather than your typical prosthesis which had “open” or “close” as the only two options, the bionic hand she now fit to her stump allowed for a variety of finger movements and grips. It worked by feeling movements she made with the muscles of her arm and responded accordingly to shift and adjust the pressure and grip type.

  There were others like it on the market, but nothing that compared as far as cost to bring to market. That had been her main focus during the design process. To come up with a bionic hand that had the features it needed; the materials to withstand wear, tear, and time; and cost effective production. Most bionic hands were out of reach of the average consumer because of their price.

  It took her a few moments to change the prosthesis. She crossed back to the men when she’d finished. This hand had the shape of a natural hand, but the material was purple in color. She could have chosen a plain white or even tan, but her hand would never look completely natural, so she’d given up on not drawing attention to herself. People would look. Let them.

  Where the digits of the fingers connected to the hand, there were rings of metal visible through the rubber. Two electrodes on the inside of the socket rested against the two muscles on her arm. The hand moved in response to small movements of those muscles. The hand looked surprisingly nimble as she flexed the fingers. She knew it wasn’t what most people expected.

  She watched as Warrick glanced back at the page, then to her hand, then back again a few times. He nodded. “Done. Thanks, Jack.”

  That was it. He walked out.

  Sara looked at Jack, back to the door Warrick Staunton had just walked through, and back to Jack. Then back to the door. She could go on all day like this and still not have words for the rudeness of the man who’d just exited.

  Chapter 3

  William Tyvek watched from a distance as the house was emptied bit by bit. He fumed at Warrick, but really, he knew he had himself to blame for much of what was happening now. He’d somehow messed this all up. His plan had been perfect. He had set everything up from the start to take Warrick Staunton to his knees. To take everything away from the man who’d taken William’s daughter from him. The fact that Warrick had walked away unscathed was yet another example of the way nothing stuck to Warrick Staunton.

  William had done everything right, set up every detail to point to Warrick Staunton as the mastermind behind illegal drug testing that was killing New Haven’s homeless men. He’d used leverage to pull in just the right people to point the finger at Warrick. The police had still somehow gone looking elsewhere. Warrick Staunton seemed immune and that had to stop.

  A flash of red caught his eye and William turned as his heart sped up.

  It was her. It had to be. His Vicki had come back.

  He glanced back at the house but didn’t see anyone around. The men must all be inside now, wrapping up the final pieces of furniture for moving. He sped up, moving toward the garden at the back of the house. It was her favorite spot.

  He caught sight of the little girl in her bright red dress once more. He knew the dress. Her nanny had bought it for her for Christmas one year but she’d worn it well into the summer, despite its heavy velour fabric. She’d loved that dress and the way it swished around her knees when she spun in a circle.

  She turned now, and he caught sight of cheeks reddened from the cold and a laughing smile, but when she spotted him, she ran.

  William followed, but knew he wouldn’t catch her.

  His daughter ran from him whenever he saw her now. It had started the day he’d taken Carrie Hastings and tried to frame Warrick for her death. That had been a mistake. A mistake that had turned Victoria against him. He’d been trying to find his way back to her since then.

  “Hey! You can’t be back here!”

  The shout came from behind him, but William didn’t bother to turn. He walked further into the wooded area behind the garden and yard. He knew how to cut through the woods and disappear before anyone could catch up to him. It was harder now with his leg the way it was. Moving hadn’t been as easy for him lately. But the person yelling was at the house. It would take them time to catch up to him, and most likely, they wouldn’t bother.

  This was the last time he’d be back to the house. Victoria was gone. She’d left him, and he supposed he couldn’t blame her. He’d screwed up everything.

  “So, the problem is?” Samantha drew out the question, using tone more than anything to tell Sara she was being unreasonable. Sara didn’t need her best friend to tell her that. She was well aware.

  “I guess I just don’t like the idea of being this guy’s bailout.” Sara paused as the baby began to stir in his car seat. Samantha reached a hand over casually and rocked the car seat where it sat on a chair next to them, picking up her coffee and sipping it as she did. It never ceased to amaze Sara how easily and quickly Samantha had taken to motherhood.

  Joey was so tiny, and only three months old. Sara only held him occasionally, still worried she would break him, or worse, drop him. And the fear had nothing to do with her prosthetic hand. She would have that fear regardless. She didn’t understand how women went from not knowing what in the world they were doing to skilled mommies who could juggle a newborn, pretty much overnight.

  “It’s the best of both worlds.” Samantha shook her head at Sara, her brow furrowed. “You get what you need, he gets what he needs.”

  Before Sara could reply, they were joined by Jill and Jennie. All but Jill worked at Sutton Capital together. Samantha was married to Logan, who also used to work at Sutton Capital. Jennie was married to Chad, Jack’s cousin and head of security at Sutton Capital. Jill was the only one of them who didn’t work at Sutton. She was a photographer, but her husband, Andrew, was the chief financial officer at Sutton, and also Chad and Jack’s best friend.

  Jill and Jennie spent a few minutes cooing over baby Joey before Jennie turned a mischievous grin on Sara. “Are we talking about Warrick Staunton? Because if that man has needs, you should think about taking care of them.” Jennie added an eyebrow waggle to emphasize her point.

  Sara laughed, shaking her head. She’d never been able to manage waggling her eyebrows like that. “I’m not going to be taking care of any of his needs. I don’t like the man.”

  “What’s not to like?” Jill shared a look with Jennie and Samantha and the girls all laughed. Sara understood. Warrick Staunton was easily one of the best-looking men she’d ever met. But he was too good-looking. He had that look of somebody who could have walked out of the pages of a magazine. Not someone who actually existed in the real world, or ever lifted a finger for anything. Not her type. Not even remotely.

  “He’s like a moody Simon Baker.” Jennie said.

  “No,” Jill shook her head. “Bradley Cooper.”

  The three women sighed in unison, but Sara laughed, ignoring the fact that Jill was pretty spot on. “Sorry, I like my men a little more down to earth than that guy.”

  “I think he’s kind of perfect. He’s the perfect combination,” Samantha said.

  “Combination?” Jennie asked, ignoring Sara’s eye roll.

  “Sure,” Samantha grinned. “He’s sort of cold and closed off, but he’s super hot at the same time. So, no entanglements. He’s too aloof for that. But I bet you anything he’s as hot as he looks in bed.”

  Sara had a feeling he wasn’t as aloof as people thought he was, but she didn’t voice that. No, she needed to sidetrack Samantha. “Shouldn’t your mind be on your husband? You know, the father of your baby, love of your life?” Sara challenged.

  Samantha laughed. “Oh trust me, my mind’s on Logan. I just think your mind should be on Warrick Staunton.”

  Sara didn’t have a chance to voice the ha! that echoed in her head as she looked at her
friend and tried to decide just how serious Samantha was.

  “I don’t know,” Jill said, “he’s got that brooding, I’m-a-man-in-need-of-healing thing going on. It’s kind of sexy. Would you like to help him heal?”

  Sara groaned. “No. That’s the last thing I need. Now can we drop this and talk about what really matters?”

  She saw the look between the three women but ignored it. She really meant what she said. The last thing she needed in her life was a man. The last one walked out on her while she was still recovering in the hospital.

  Samantha nodded with an over serious look on her face. “You got it. So we’re talking about your prosthesis right?”

  “Yes.” Sara hoped the other women would move off topic with Samantha.

  “What about it? Did you find a buyer?” Jennie sat forward as she asked. They all knew she’d been looking for a long time for somebody to work with her on her prosthetics project.

  “The brooding hottie is going to make them.” So much for Samantha helping Sara to change the topic.

  “No kidding? So you’ll be seeing a lot of broody boy?” Jennie frowned. “We really need to figure out a better nickname for him.”

  “No, we really don’t.” Sara needed to nip this in the bud before it became a thing. She’d seen what happened when things became a thing with this group. This was clearly becoming a thing.

  “I know, it’s great, right?” Samantha lifted a now fussy Joey out of his car seat and settled him over one shoulder. She somehow held him in place with the left hand while she reached under her shirt with the right hand. Seconds later, she had him tucked in there nursing away. “We weren’t getting anywhere with finding a company to produce the prosthetics the way that Sara wanted them to be produced, with the donations and everything. So, we took it to Jack and asked him for help.”

  Sara grumbled. “If I’d known this was the kind of help he would give…”

  “Oh stop,” Samantha said. “This is going to be great, and you know it.”