Julie James - About That Night

“You’ll know soon enough.”

She’d looked him over with a curious expression. “What are you up to now?”

Despite all her valiant efforts, Kyle had refused to give anything up under cross-examination. He had a lot riding on this trip, since the next twenty-four hours would drastically impact the launch of Rhodes Network Consulting. Either his actions would go down as one of the cleverest ideas in marketing history, or he was about to make a complete ass out of himself.

Only time would tell.

The front desk clerk smiled as Kyle approached. “Welcome to the Ritz-Carlton. How can I help you?”

“I have a reservation, under Kyle Rhodes.”

The clerk glanced up from the keyboard, her sudden recognition evident, then went back to typing. “I see we have you booked in one of our Club Level suites, staying with us for one night.”

“Could you arrange for me to have a late checkout tomorrow?” he asked. “I have a morning meeting that might run long.” Or maybe not. At this point, he gave it 80/20 odds he didn’t even make it past the front door.

“Certainly, Mr. Rhodes.”

Just then, Kyle’s cell phone vibrated. He checked and saw he had a new text message from Rylann.

KNOCK ‘EM DEAD, DIMPLES. WHATEVER THE HECK IT IS YOU’RE UP TO.

“Is there anything else I can do for you this evening?” the front desk clerk asked.

With a smile, Kyle tucked his phone back into his jacket. “Nope. I think I’ve got everything I need.”

SHORTLY BEFORE TEN the following morning, Kyle climbed into a taxi outside the hotel.

“Seven ninety-five Folsom Street,” he told the driver. When the taxi pulled to a stop a few minutes later, Kyle peered through the window and checked out the modern, six-story office building before him. After paying the driver, he stepped out of the car and adjusted his tie.

Time to face the music.

Portfolio in hand, he pushed through the double doors and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. He watched as the floor indicator counted upward at what seemed to be an excruciatingly slow pace, finally springing open to reveal a simple, minimalist-style reception area.

A receptionist sat behind a white and gray marble desk, her eyes going wide as saucers as soon as Kyle stepped out of the elevator. The wall behind her was devoid of any artwork, bearing only the company’s all-too-familiar name in lowercase letters:

twitter

“You actually showed up,” she said incredulously. “We’ve been betting for a week whether you would keep the appointment. A lot of people thought this was some kind of joke.”

Kyle had spent hours on the phone with the company’s lawyers just to get the appointment—no way would he have backed out after going through that torture. “I take it I don’t need to introduce myself?” he asked.

“That would be a definite no. You’re quite recognizable around this place.” The receptionist picked up the phone and pushed a button. “Kyle Rhodes is here to see you.” She listened for a moment, and then looked up at Kyle, still speaking into the phone. “You and me both.” She hung up and gestured to a waiting area. “Mr. Donello will be with you shortly. You can have a seat if you like.”

Kyle eyed the brown suede couch with two blue throw pillows cross-stitched with the words “Home Tweet Home.”

“I think I’ll stand,” he told the receptionist. He half-expected Donello to make him wait all morning, and then blow him off anyway, but the receptionist’s phone rang just a few minutes later. After speaking in a hushed voice, she hung up the phone and stood up. “Mr. Donello is ready for you. Follow me.”

She led him past the reception desk, through a set of frosted glass doors, and then into the main office area. Virtually everything was painted white except for the light maple hardwood floors. The office contained several rows of cubicles, with each row divided into four workstations.

And every person, at every single one of those workstations, had stood up to watch as he walked by.

They stared silently with a mixture of expressions on their faces, most of which Kyle would not describe as particularly friendly. When they reached the large corner office at the end of the hallway, the receptionist half-smiled. “Good luck.”

Kyle stepped into the office and saw Rick Donello, CEO of Twitter, sitting at his desk. He was a relatively young man, in his midthirties, with glasses, thinning hair, and a look in his unsmiling eyes that fell somewhere between disbelief and disdain.

“I’ll say this: you’ve got balls the size of watermelons, Rhodes.” He gestured for Kyle to have a seat, then nodded at the receptionist, who closed the door after she left.

Once it was just the two of them, Donello got right down to business. “You have sixty seconds to tell me why I should do anything other than toss you out on your ear.”

Fine with him. Kyle was perfectly happy to skip over all the bullshit. “As half the world saw seven months ago, you have cracks in your network that I could drive a truck through. My company can help you with that.”

Donello laughed humorlessly. “I’m not an idiot, Rhodes. We updated everything after you hijacked us. I doubt you’d find us so easy to hack into now.”

“How much of the revenue from your seven hundred advertisers are you willing to bet on that?”

Donello’s gaze was steely. “You’ve got forty seconds left, so finish whatever it is you’ve come to say. If nothing else, it’ll give me something laughable to tweet about later.”

Kyle sat forward in his chair. “I’ve read all the interviews, Donello. When you took over the company a year ago, you pledged to focus on Twitter as a business by turning what has become a massive communication network into a major advertising platform. You’ve emphasized the need for reliability—yet I managed to shut you down for forty-eight hours from a single computer while half-drunk on Scotch.”

Donello rested his arms on his desk. “So your proposal is that I hire you, the guy who made us look like clueless dickheads seven months ago, and pay your company some outrageous consulting fee to come in here and fix our security problems? That’s what you’re suggesting?”

“Yes.” Kyle held his gaze. “Except I’ll do it for free.”

Donello paused at that. “For free.”

“I’ll build a goddamn cyber-fortress around this place—and it won’t cost you a penny. I figure I owe you that, at least.”

Donello studied him and then leaned back in his chair. He spoke slowly, musing aloud. “You want the publicity that will come with this.”

The corners of Kyle’s mouth turned up in a smile. His sixty seconds were up, yet there he still sat. “Yes. And so do you.”

TWO HOURS LATER, the CEO of Rhodes Network Consulting LLC walked out of that modern, six-story office building having landed the company’s first client.

True, the client wasn’t paying him, but Kyle was a happy man nevertheless. As he’d hoped, at the end of the day Donello had acted like the businessman he was and seized on the unique opportunity Kyle had offered: better security and a ton of free publicity that would highlight that fact. They’d even worked out the wording of a joint press release that would be sent to the media at eight a.m. Eastern time the following morning.

Now it was time for Kyle to implement the second phase of his marketing strategy. After his arrest and conviction, and then again after his release from prison, he’d been bombarded by interview requests from virtually every media outlet—yet he’d never answered so much as a single question.

But he’d held on to the contact information for one particular person who’d asked for an interview for just this occasion.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of Twitter’s headquarters, Kyle dialed the cell phone number of David Isaac, correspondent from Time magazine. After getting the reporter’s voicemail, he left a message.

“David, it’s Kyle Rhodes. There’s going to be a press release tomorrow morning—you’ll know it when you hear it. If you can get me the cover, I’ll give you an exclusive. The whole sordid story, directly from the mouth of the Twitter Terrorist. Trust me, you won’t want to miss the part about the cactus in Tijuana.”

FOR THE SECOND time since Rylann had starting working in Chicago, the U.S. Attorney’s Office was abuzz over Kyle Rhodes.

She had, of course, heard the story that had set the Internet on fire earlier that Tuesday morning: that the Twitter Terrorist and Twitter had kissed and made up. She’d been in her kitchen, eating Rice Krispies and catching up on the news on her iPad, when she’d read about the press release. She’d laughed out loud, then had immediately texted Kyle:

SO THAT’S WHAT YOU’VE BEEN UP TO.

She hadn’t expected a response given how busy she assumed he was, but to her surprise she’d received a message back within minutes.

NO CLUE WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, COUNSELOR. I’LL CALL WHEN I GET BACK TONIGHT.

Sitting at her desk, Rylann looked up when she heard a knock at her office door and saw Cade standing in her doorway with a wry expression.

“I’ve received over two dozen phone calls from the press today, asking what I think about the fact that the Twitter Terrorist is starting his own network security company.” He shook his head. “Just when I thought we’d finally seen the end of that guy.”

He said the words offhandedly, just a casual remark, but Rylann nevertheless felt…sneaky. A little guilty, even. While she generally believed that a person’s personal life wasn’t anyone’s business but her own, she also didn’t like deceiving people. After working with Cade for nearly two months, she considered him a friend—they went on Starbucks runs together, they talked case strategy, and she’d even tried to set him up with Rae. But now here she was, about to lie to the guy.