Page 73 of Skins Game

When that hadn’t worked, he’d tried the honeypot tactic, as spies called it.

But Kingston Moore wasn’t a honeypot. More like a beef pot.

It didn’t matter what kind of pot he was. Nicole had not fallen into his trap.

And she wouldn’t. She knew what he was after now. Some guys might’ve been just after a piece of tail, but Kingston had pursued something far more important to Nicole.

He’d been after her creativity, her art.

There was no reason on God’s green earth why a junior salesman should want prototype designs for clubs that didn’t exist, that he couldn’t sell. Even if he was working on commission, which the sales team sort of was because they hada base salary but also got bonuses based on their numbers, he couldn’t sell designs that weren’t being manufactured yet to consumers.

Nicole stood in the covered driveway outside the hotel’s lobby, and a battered Honda Accord skidded to a stop in front of her. A pink neon sign in the front window readRyde.

The passenger window rolled down, and the guy inside asked, “Ryde for Nicole Lamb?”

“That’s me.”

She tossed her backpack in the backseat and climbed in after it.

“I’m glad you waited,” the driver said. “Sorry I was a few minutes late. I was hoping you would be waiting because those Otto Rideshare drivers have been hacking our site and intercepting our rides. I got your address that you’re going to right here.” He rattled off her apartment address.

“Yeah, that’s it. Why are they doing that?”

“One of our software coders left in a huff a few months ago, and he stole the code for our ride management software and sold it to Otto, and now they’re hacking our system and stealing all our business.”

“I’m so sorry. That’s terrible,” Nicole said, automatically commiserating. “It’s terrible that he would betray your company like that.”

That scum had stolen designs and sold them to the competition.

And with that, a blast of cold air washed down Nicole’s back more frigid than any air conditioning.

Kingston might be in sales, all right.

He might be trying to get her prototypes and designs to sell them to the highest bidder, like rival golf club companies like Titleist or TaylorMade.

And she’d almost fallen into his trap.

28

Confession Time

KINGSTON MOORE

Kingston made it into Last Chance’s office in Stamford, Connecticut, with ten minutes to spare before their Monday morning all-hands-on-deck meeting.

After disembarking the redeye flight that had landed in White Plains only a few hours before and a quick shower at his apartment, he’d hightailed it in to attend this meeting.

First, there was a general summary of Last Chance’s current business operations and status, a list of sad-sack companies with sound fundamentals upon which Last Chance was performing institutional CPR.

Most of them were doing well. That wasn’t a surprise. Last Chance had an eighty percent recovery rate for businesses they chose to invest in.

That was a phenomenal success rate. Most VC firms with similar business models averaged a fifty percent or less survival rate for companies they picked up.

After the meeting, Kingston didn’t move to stand up like normal, and none of the three other guys did, either.

Jericho Parr, a sunshine golden boy who sat at the head of the table this week, was staring at his hands spread on the ebonyconference table. “It’s April. We are into the second quarter of the year. We need to know how we are doing.”

He didn’t have to say he was talking about Gabriel “The Shark” Fish’s poison-pill wager.