Page 19 of Skins Game

“That still sounds like a spectacularly bad idea,” Nicole said. “The nail that sticks its head up gets hammered first.”

“Make sure you reply directly tothatemail address on their previous email, not to any other email address you find online. I’ve heard that’s the best way to make sure that the person you want to talk to gets your email. And of course, make sure you don’t reply-all. I hope whoever sent it was smart enough to send it BCC, but you never know what will happen if you click the wrong button on an email app.”

“That’s the truth. Reply-all is the bane of my existence. Are you sure this isn’t a ploy to get me fired?”

“I promise it isn’t. If anyone tries to fire you for this, I’ll go up the line of command and make sure everything’s okay. This is an important set of circumstances that corporate needs to know.”

All this time, the wind roared behind his voice like a hurricane. “It sure is windy in Chicago.”

“Oh, yes. Terribly windy.”

When they hung up, Arvind and Caitlin Moffett were looking at each other and then at her.

“What?” she asked.

Everyone around the table started shrugging extravagantly, and finally, Caitlin said, “Interesting that you dialed the new sales guy into a closed-door lab meeting call. That’s all.”

“He’s a new hire. The sales department is cliquish and weird. They probably aren’t letting him inside the circle of trust yet, but he deserves to know what’s going on because he works here.”

“Right,” Arvind said, nodding.

“Right, what?”

He sucked both of his lips inside his mouth and looked at everyone else at the table, who all looked up at the ceiling or at their laps.

“What?” Nicole asked.

Arvind shrugged. “You like this guy?”

“No,” she said. “I have terrible taste in men. If I like him, he’s probably a cheater or an embezzler. I am a perfect negative indicator.”

Caitlin asked, “Do you want to date him?”

“I—what?No.I’d have to think about it.”

7

Second Shot

KINGSTON MOORE

Kingston didn’t wait for Nicole’s reply email before starting to draft another company-wide missive for Sidewinder’s employees.

Yeah, some days, Kingston could be out of touch with the people who worked for the companies owned by Last Chance, Inc.

Jeez, that singular thought conveyed the whole issue. Too many layers existed between Kingston and the people who worked for him.

The whole corporate structure was like shouting through fifty layers of asbestos insulation. No wonder the message was muffled.

And no wonder Sidewinder employees were now holding war councils and deciding whether to abandon ship.

If Sidewinder’s staff simply packed their desks and left, taking their institutional knowledge, sector expertise, and product ideas with them, Kingston’s chance to win The Shark’s bet would evaporate in his palms.

Intellectual property companies like Sidewinder were only as good as their innovators and pipelines. They were essentially idea factories, and half-finished projects were worthless.

Any generic company could cobble together a lump on the end of a stick that approximated a golf club and sell it for cheap on the internet. The precise metallurgy in Sidewinder’s golf club heads and the specific fiberglass composition of their clubs’ shafts made them special, and special made them sought-after, and sought-after made them expensive.

And all that made the company profitable.