The Start-Up

Episode 3: Beautiful Code

Sadie Hayes

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The Start-Up

Episode 3: Beautiful Code

www.Doreye.com

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This book is a work of the author’s experience and opinion. The names, characters, places, incidents and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Cover Designed by: Arsonal Design, LLC

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Published by: Backlit Fiction, LLC

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ISBN: 978-1-937704-11-7

www.Doreye.com

The Start-Up series

Episode 1: The Start-Up

Episode 2: The Anti-Social Network

Episode 3: Beautiful Code

Coming Spring 2012:

Episode 4: Reverse Engineering

www.Doreye.com

Critical Acclaim for The Start-Up

“Who knew Silicon Valley could be sexy? Sadie Hayes’ debut ebook series The Start-Up describes the real side of Silicon Valley and how its power corrupts. You will tear through this page-turner and will be begging for more!” –Amy Gleason

“In The Start-Up we see the beginning of Adam and Amelia Dory’s climb to wealth and power… This fast-paced novel has provocative characters trying to figure out how to navigate a world controlled by money and bad intentions. I dare you to put it down!” –Becky Julian

“Silicon Valley and cliffhangers may be strange bedfellows, but Palo Alto writer Sadie Hayes debut, The Start-Up, is an unexpectedly addictive new novel that combines high tech hi-jinks with high tech publishing: a serial eNovel with monthly new releases planned.” –Gary Griffiths

“Sadie Hayes is on her way to becoming a new kind of bestseller - an eBook bestseller.” –Grady Harp

“Exciting, entertaining, and informative - The Start-Up is a must read for anyone interested in the fast paced worlds of entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley, and venture capital.” -J.R. Sedivy, Chairman and CEO, Analytika, Inc.

“A well-crafted, fast-moving tale of the conflict which arises when honesty and integrity confront the wealth and oft-corrupted power of the high-tech world of Silicon Valley. An excellent read.” Frederick J. Masterman, author of Season of the Plant

“Sadie Hayes provides a screen shot of technology’s sordid underbelly in this riveting e-book novella.” –Bill Bentrim,

“Start to finish it holds your interest and Hayes’ writing is spectacular and absolutely breath-taking! The way the story was presented was like watching a movie...an incredibly good one. I am begging for more Sadie Hayes! A job well done and I would highly recommend it. This is a fun and fast-pace novel that I think most will thoroughly enjoy!” – Jess, Sit Here and Read

“Sadie Hayes has blown me away with this series. This is something new in the YA genre…get to your nearest Ereader device and buy these books.” – Courtney Wyant, Courtney’s Book Nook

“The Start-Up is a short read, and the dialogue is sharply realistic. This story is something that I’ve never seen in Young Adult fiction, so it’s different and unique. I highly recommend it to someone who enjoys stories about backstabbing, pretentious college students who are involved in the business world. I’m totally looking forward to reading the second installment, The Anti-Social Network.” – Lauren Nicole, Books From a Shelf

“The Start Up is particularly awesome, if I must say so myself. The novel was light and funny and carefree, yet it still reminded us of the sinister ways of society. It was terrifically well written, and extremely witty, I practically smiled through the whole thing!” –Dana Hilgers, Dana Does Read

“Deep-seated greed and corruption intricately blended with naivety and intelligence, The Start Up by Sadie Hayes, is sharp, fun and full of angsty dramatic brilliance. Gossip, intrigue and illegal corporate tactics sing from Silicon Valley, telling us of the money to be made and the people who will destroy anyone in their way to get that money.” –Jen, In the Closet with a Bibliophile

“I loved these novellas! The Start-Up and The Anti-Social Network are, in my opinion, on the forefront of what is sure to be a great YA genre in the future because the topic of advancing technology is extremely relevant.” –Sandra, Panda Reads

“It’s deliciously good. This read was a breath of fresh air. A brand new viewpoint on our favorite type of YA guilty pleasure.” – Sara Oestreich, The Librarian Reads

“A new series that combines the wonderful world of technology with the backstabbing and glamorous life of the wealthy…I am hooked. The Start Up has everything you could want in a modern day series [and] will draw many male and female fans a like.”

“The Start-Up picks an ideal topic for ebook serial fiction, with genius programmer Amelia Dorey persuaded by her more worldly twin brother Adam to turn programs into dollars.” – Sheila Deeth

“This pure CW teen drama in a lot of ways - it’s the problems of beautiful people as they juggle relationships, drama, and school. And yet…I can’t deny that I was absolutely addicted to the first two parts of this series. As a marketing idea, The Start-Up takes King’s serializing of The Green Mile and brings it into the digital age, both literally and figuratively.” – Joshua Mauthe

“AHHH! Not again! Just as good as the first, or maybe even better…when I got to that last page and then tried to flip the virtual page, I was like “Noooo!”… The novels are hilarious, sweet, scandalous, and super awesome, I find myself smiling from ear to ear the entire time! I hope Hayes keeps up with the series, because I am not done with these characters, not anytime soon.” –Dana Hilgers, Dana Does Read

“Book two of the Start-Up is another interesting story arc in the tale of computer genius Amelia and her more earthly twin Adam as they start up a business together. Guided by the wise, preyed on by the foolish, but never quite sure of their place in this high-finance world, they’re approaching the point where their wonder-product will be announced.” – Sheila Deeth

“Similar to the first installment, The Anti-Social Network is built upon a foundation of true experience. Although the characters and story are fiction, the themes are very true to life, and entrepreneurs may learn a thing or two…The Anti-Social Network has a perspective of their acceptance of entrepreneurship and subsequent moving of the company from the idea, or seed stage, to an early and ultimately expansion stage. This realistically mimics the journey of an entrepreneur assuming they have the burning desire, faith, and persistence to stay the course and rise to each ever increasing challenge.” – J.R. Sedivy, Chairman and CEO, Analytika, Inc.

Contents

Prologue: Bookmarks

Chapter 1: Lift Off

Chapter 2: Hawaii 2.0

Chapter 3: Get To Know Me

Chapter 4: Is This Seat Taken?

Chapter 5: Dinner Table Confessionals

Chapter 6: Waterfalls

Chapter 7: You Can’t Stay On Top Forever

Chapter 8: Some Things Champagne Can’t Fix

Chapter 9: Prove Yourself

Chapter 10: Look, But Don’t Touch

Chapter 11: Footprints

Chapter 12: Yours, Virtually

Chapter 13: Tell Me Your Secrets, I’ll Tell You Mine

Chapter 14: Panic

Chapter 15: Prepping and Primping

Chapter 16: You Can’t Win All The Time

Chapter 17: Or Can You?

Chapter 18: Here She Comes

Chapter 19: Competitive Advantage

Chapter 20: Speech!

Epilogue

Author’s Biography

PROLOGUE:

Bookmarks

www.crunchbase.com/company/doreye

CrunchBase

Home>Companies>Doreye

Doreye, Inc.

Doreye (pronounced “Door-Eye”) is a downloadable device and object recognition application created by Amelia Dory and her brother Adam Dory. In an interview with TechCrunch, Amelia called Doreye, “A remote control for the physical world.” The application uses the phone’s native antenna and circuitry to receive and broadcast signals across a wider spectrum of frequencies than the manufacturers intended. As a result, Doreye currently allows the user to “see and control” any electronic device with their phone—televisions, garage doors and even microwaves are accessible via Doreye.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was gifted an early alpha version, called Doreye, “…physically impossible. I’d sooner believe the Loch Ness monster exists before I would believe Doreye exists… And, yet, here I am using it to unlock my car.” The limitations of what is and isn’t possible doesn’t seem to prevent Amelia Dory from pushing the horizons of Doreye. Later this year, Doreye will be able to recognize and find inanimate objects. “Like how a bat uses sonar,” Amelia explains that Doreye will use infrared signals and a sleek, lightweight AI (artificial intelligence) to recognize things like your keys, your car or even your friends.

Amelia Dory holds over a dozen patents related to Doreye. She co-founded the company with her twin brother Adam Dory, who is the company’s COO and head of Business Development. They started the company six months ago while freshmen at Stanford. Both hail from Indiana.

www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/fenway-ventures

CrunchBase

Home>Financial Organizations>Fenway Ventures

Fenway Ventures is a venture fund that focuses on seed and Series A investments to start-up companies. The fund also runs a start-up incubator, which is designed to speed the development of entrepreneurial companies by providing mentorship, as well as business and legal support.

Fenway Ventures is currently incubating two early-stage companies: WorldSight and Doreye. WorldSight uses advances in plastics technology to create eyewear that affordably prevents glaucoma in third world inhabitants. Doreye is a revolutionary software that the valley has deemed “The next Google;” it transforms anyone’s cell phone into both a remote control for electronic devices and an object recognition “radar” for inanimate objects.

Key People:

Founder Tom Fenway is one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific investors and philanthropists. His Kadence music service formed the backbone of Apple’s iTunes as well as Final Cut Pro, and inspired most other online music aggregators. He is particularly known for his laid-back aesthetic, notoriously wearing flip-flops to high profile meetings.

Analyst T. J. Bristol handles supervision as well as business support for Fenway’s incubator. He assists the founders in market analysis and fundraising. Formerly an intern at Goldman Sachs, T. J. is the son of Ted Bristol, one of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture investors. T. J. graduated from Stanford, where his father Ted is a trustee and his sister Lisa is currently a freshman.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/fashion/weddings/vows/Hawkins-Bronson

Vows

Shandi Marie Hawkins and Chad Sebastian Bronson

By: Margot Langsford

Shandi Marie Hawkins and Chad Sebastian Bronson are to be married at noon on Saturday at the Hibiscus Grove, on the island of Maui, Hawaii. The Rev. Frederick Wilton, an Episcopal priest, will officiate.

The bride, 23, will take her husband’s name. She is pursuing her Master of Art History from Yale University, where she received a Bachelors degree this past May. She is the daughter of Ronald and Chloe Hawkins of Atherton, California. The bride’s sister Patricia Hawkins, a sophomore at Stanford University, will serve as maid of honor.

The bridegroom, 27, is receiving his M.B.A. from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He is the son of Bradley Fitzgerald Bronson and Vivian Wells-Bronson of Darien, Connecticut. Before attending Stanford, he worked as an associate at Deutsche Bank, and received his A.B. in Economics from Harvard College.

The couple met three years ago at the annual Young Patrons of Lincoln Center charity ball.

online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405231545674219645274003298926316.html

The Wall Street Journal | Technology | Top Stories

Secrecy Shrouds Gibly Sale and Court Proceedings

By: Steven Messing

In the world of technology, a single blog post can turn success into failure.

Last June, Gibly, Inc. was on the verge of being sold to Lloyd’s (LLYL.l) for $3.8 billion in what was immediately heralded as the best return on investment in tech to date. Gibly’s lead investor and de facto CEO Ted Bristol considered the sale to Lloyd’s his swan song, and Silicon Valley awarded it as the crowning achievement to Bristol’s remarkable career.

Days after the announcement and out of the blue, TechCrunch broke the tech story of the decade. Gibly was known for being a remarkable software program that acted as a personal assistant, doing everything from transcribing text messages to managing payments with one’s cell phone. The article by TechCrunch revealed Gibly’s much more secretive function. A mystery hacker discovered—and leaked to the blog TechCrunch—that Gibly was actually constructed to create a database of users’ private information. Over one hundred million users had their passwords, home addresses, credit card information and more stored in the Gibly server.

The deal was put on hold indefinitely and Gibly was immediately the subject of both a class action suit and a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission over privacy concerns. At the time of this writing, Ted Bristol was unavailable for comment.

Rumors abound as to the identity of the mystery hacker who took down Gibly, as well as his motivations. Some claim it’s the Internet civil disobedience group Anonymous, while others point towards a covert team at the CIA. Many technology blogs claim it’s either a head engineer from within the company or, least likely, a teenager with time on his hands. Regardless, some lone gunman single-handedly cost Silicon Valley’s best investors billions of dollars and their reputations.

What Gibly was really up to—or why the sale to Lloyds was simply put on hold instead of scrapped altogether—is as much a mystery as the identity of the mystery hacker.

CHAPTER 1:

Lift Off

“Please remove your shoes, sir,” the airport agent said. Adam unlaced his Converse sneakers. He yanked off his socks and tossed them, along with his sneakers, into the gray plastic bin. The security agent rolled his eyes. “Just your shoes.”

Adam grabbed his socks and fumbled to put them back on. He blushed as he tried to avoid the eyes of the passengers behind him who, like the agent, all seemed to be experts at this airport security drill. Why hadn’t he just followed his sister Amelia to the line without the body scan? Naturally, she had preferred a pat-down to a government-authorized body scan (who knew what they did with the images? she had insisted), and right now a pat-down sounded far less uncomfortable than the annoyed glare of this security agent.

Adam placed his messenger bag on the conveyor belt. As it slumped against a shopping bag full of wrapped Christmas gifts, Adam felt a tightness in his chest as he remembered that there are rich, happy families who fly to Hawaii to celebrate Christmas. The holidays had always been a dark reminder for Adam that he and his sister had almost nothing to give or receive, and no family except each other.

“Do you have a laptop?” the agent asked.

“Oh. Yes.” Adam had recently inherited a MacBook Air from Amelia. Given to her by Tom Fenway, Silicon’s richest venture capitalist, as a gift for joining his tech incubator, it was by far the most expensive thing Adam had ever owned. Even weeks after Amelia gave it to him, he kept half-expecting someone to come to his door and claim it.

“Please remove it.”

“Oh, right.”

One day, Adam thought, he’d be a pro at this routine and look back and laugh. But for now, this was only the second flight he’d ever taken and his embarrassment was mixed with giddy excitement. This wasn’t just any flight: Adam and Amelia were going to Maui on a fully-paid weekend trip, courtesy of the annual Maui Waves of Disruption tech conference.

Organized by TechCrunch, the leading Silicon Valley blog, the conference showcased thirty promising young companies that would show off their products at the two-day expo. Journalists, investors, and spectators from around the globe paid big money to attend, checking out the new companies by day and networking at huge hotel parties by night.

Adam and Amelia’s start-up, Doreye, had been selected for the expo on November 15, exactly a month earlier, and Adam had hardly been able to concentrate on anything since. A free vacation was nice, but even better: Lisa was going to be in Maui the very same weekend for Patty Hawkins’s sister’s wedding. Adam couldn’t believe his good fortune: finally, fate or God or whatever was starting to make up for the shabby life he and Amelia had had until now.

He was fairly certain he had bombed all his final exams for the term, but he didn’t care. Who could think about schoolwork when he was about to be on a Hawaiian beach with the super hot love of his life?

“I think the gate’s that way,” Amelia said when he joined her on the other side of security. He couldn’t help but be impressed by his sister’s calm demeanor. Since the summer, she’d gotten comfortable presenting Doreye and dealing with the press around it, and she seemed to be treating this like just one more interview, as though flying to Maui to stay in a five-star hotel was a normal part of everyday business.

“Aren’t you even a little excited?” he asked as he zipped his bag shut.

Amelia looked up. “Honestly?” Her face broke into a huge grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited for anything.” She had been working around the clock for the past three months, struggling to balance Doreye with her schoolwork. The only break she ever took was on Wednesday nights when she went to the Lair to play VOSTRA, the virtual reality game her friend George had introduced her to. Otherwise, her autumn term had been a blur of coding, press interviews, meetings with her engineering team, class, and just enough homework not to flunk out. She and Adam hadn’t had time for movie nights or anything outside of Doreye, and she was glad they had the flight—just the two of them—to hang out a little.

She laughed as Adam pulled her into a playful hug. This was going to be such an epic weekend.

CHAPTER 2:

Hawaii 2.0

When they exited the terminal in Maui, they saw a man in a suit holding a sign that read Adam and Amelia Dory.

The twins looked at each other. “Our driver,” Adam mouthed, with a grin. They had a driver. And that was after the first class seats and flight attendants who had actually known their names and handed each of them a glass of champagne and real silverware for dinner, along with a little package of socks, mints, and a tooth brush.

The Land Rover pulled into the Ritz Carlton, a magnificent white fortress surrounded by lavish tropical gardens, fountains, and palm trees. Observing that the trunks of the palm trees were wrapped with Christmas lights, Amelia wondered what it was like to sing holiday carols when it was 90 degrees outside. A beautiful Hawaiian woman wearing a white wrap dress greeted them with leis made of real flowers and led them to their room.

Their suite was airy and bright. Sunlight reflected off the teak wood walls and floor. Two queen beds with plush white comforters faced French windows that opened onto a majestic stone-carved balcony overlooking the whitest sand and bluest water Amelia had ever seen.

Amelia walked out onto the balcony. “Adam, come look at this view!”

But Adam was rummaging through his suitcase for his phone charger. He had forgotten to shut off his phone on the plane and the battery had died; he had been stressed about finding a power outlet since landing more than an hour ago. She looked back and saw him plugging the phone into the wall and furiously tapping a text message.

“Who are you so anxious to get ahold of?”

Adam looked up. “I told Lisa I’d text her when we got here.”

Amelia was afraid of that. She knew Lisa was going to be here for the Hawkins-Bronson wedding and was worried she’d be a distraction to Adam. “Are you going to see her?”

“Probably,” Adam said. Who was he kidding? He was going to see her even if it killed him. “This place is so romantic, how could we not hang out?”

Amelia swallowed. She also knew that Sundeep was here, and that Lisa had yet to break the news to Adam that she was secretly seeing Sundeep.

Amelia’s mind flashed back to that fall’s English class. Of all the classes she rarely paid attention in, the freshman Shakespeare seminar she was taking to make up for the English class she’d failed last spring was the one she paid the least attention to. Which is probably why she’d never noticed that Lisa sat a few rows behind her…until the day the professor had announced partner assignments for the final project, and she had heard him say, “Amelia Dory and Lisa Bristol, analyzing Measure for Measure.” Stunned, she had turned to see Lisa, whose face had gone white. Amelia had put her head in her hands. Seriously? What were the chances?

Amelia had planned to dart out of class and e-mail Lisa, hoping this whole project could be taken care of virtually, but Lisa caught up to her and suggested they meet the following evening to review the text and make an outline. Amelia reluctantly agreed.

All of the next day, Amelia was on edge. She felt jealous that Lisa got to date Sundeep, and angry that she was also cheating on her brother. Most of all, though, Amelia felt guilty that she still hadn’t told Adam the truth. She couldn’t bear the thought of his sadness and disappointment. It was the only secret she had ever kept from him.

Lisa had grabbed a large table at CoHo, the campus coffee shop, and two boys were flirting with her when Amelia arrived. Noticing Amelia, Lisa blushed and shooed them away, motioning for Amelia to take a seat at the table.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” Amelia said tartly.

“You didn’t,” Lisa said.

Silence.

“So, I was thinking…” Lisa took a deep breath and turned her attention to the text opened in front of her. Her notebook, full of diligent notes in careful handwriting, was also open, and she tapped her purple pen lightly as she spoke. “I was thinking that the analysis on Measure for Measure is always around Angelo and Isabella, but maybe it would be interesting to think about the relationship between Mariana and Isabella.”

Amelia hadn’t actually read the play, but she had skimmed the Wikipedia entry on her iPhone on the way to the meeting, and now she scrambled to remember who Mariana was. “Sure,” she said. “That works.”

Lisa waited for her to say more and, realizing Amelia wasn’t going to, went on. “I think we could set up an interesting dissection of the supporting female characters, and the similarities and differences between Isabella and Mariana, whose moral stances are pretty much antithetical to each other and yet, working together, the women resolve the central dilemma.” Amelia wasn’t reacting and Lisa started to realize she hadn’t read the play. “And, of course,” Lisa continued, “consider the implications of having Mistress Overdone—the prostitute—in the work. Like, is Shakespeare trying to drop a hint that we all prostitute ourselves for something, even a nun like Isabella?”

Amelia nodded absently. “Sure. That sounds good.”

“Okay,” Lisa said. She was beginning to sound a little frustrated by Amelia’s neutrality. “Well, I actually really like this stuff, so what if I take a stab at the outline and I’ll e-mail it to you?”

“Great,” Amelia said, starting to stand up. If she sat there any longer, she was certain that Sundeep would walk in and join them, and she’d have to pretend not to care.

Lisa looked at her in disbelief. Was Amelia really going to let her do this whole project? Lisa wasn’t letting her off that easily. “Let’s meet again later this week to talk about it,” she said.

Amelia stopped and searched for an excuse. There was nothing. She sighed. “Yeah, sure.”

By the following week, Lisa had e-mailed Amelia a thorough outline of her proposed thesis. Amelia read it on her laptop during class. It actually made the book sound kind of interesting, which led her to read the play. Well, most of it.

When they met again, Amelia had been a little more animated. Lisa had proposed that they write that Isabella used Mariana for her own gain, and, therefore, was no better than Mistress Overdone, the Madame in the local brothel. But Amelia insisted Isabella had done what was necessary to stick to her moral grounds and that made her strong and respectable. Besides, she said, Mariana didn’t have strong morals, she just wanted to get married.

“I think you misunderstand Mariana,” Lisa had said.

Amelia looked at Lisa. There was something deliberate and serious in Lisa’s tone. Was Lisa talking about Mariana, or about herself? Either way, Amelia respected Lisa’s assertiveness and agreed to write the first draft of the paper.

When they met to review the paper the following week, Lisa had basically rewritten Amelia’s draft, fixing the broken prose and circular logic. It was a lot better. Amelia was a little embarrassed.

“You did a really good job,” Lisa offered, “I love this part.” She pointed to the one section of the paper she hadn’t changed.

“Shakespeare isn’t my thing,” Amelia deflected.

“If I had your talent, it wouldn’t be my thing, either.” Lisa smiled.

They sat in silence for a moment. Amelia hated to admit it, but Lisa was incredibly sweet, and she was actually starting to enjoy their meetings. No one had ever really explained English to her, or forced her to take ownership of her opinions about a character. Even if her attempt at the paper had sucked, it was the first time she had written an essay she hadn’t hated, and seeing Lisa’s improvements made her respect her partner’s ability to understand this stuff.

“I’m sorry I’ve been a pain of a partner,” Amelia finally said.

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t have wanted to work with me if I were you, either.”

More silence.

“For what it’s worth, I really care about Adam. A lot,” Lisa finally said.

Amelia looked at her over her glasses.

“It’s complicated,” Lisa said. “I have an obligation to Sundeep.”

“I’m not going to break my brother’s heart,” Amelia said. “It’s up to you to tell Adam, but you ought to do it soon.”

That had been two months ago, and Adam was still in the dark. Amelia had never told him about her project partner, but she had made up her mind to do it after the conference. That would give him winter break to recover, she reasoned, and start the New Year fresh.

CHAPTER 3:

Get To Know Me

T. J. saw Adam and Amelia step off the elevator and gave a big wave to them, excusing himself from the tiki table where he was sipping a mojito with two hot, blond club promoters who had just promised him a VIP table that night at Timba, Maui’s hottest celebrity nightclub. The party theme was “Santas and Snowbabes,” which was code for hot girls in skimpy fur-trimmed costumes.

“Hey guys!” he said cheerfully, shaking Adam’s hand and giving Amelia a kiss on the cheek. “How’s the room? Was your flight okay?”

“Yeah, it was cool,” Adam said in his best frat-boy, chill accent. Amelia tried not to roll her eyes, embarrassed for her brother. But T. J. didn’t seem to notice the way Adam tried so hard to be like him. “And you, Amelia? Feeling good?”

“Yeah,” she smiled. “This place is amazing.”

T. J. looked genuinely pleased. “Wonderful! Listen, the press is having a conference that starts in about ten minutes. They’re all dying to hear from you, but I didn’t want to commit you if you weren’t feeling up to it.” He looked at Amelia questioningly.

“Oh, sure. I feel up to it. Adam, are you okay with it?”

“Great!” T. J. clapped his hands without waiting for Adam to answer. “Let’s go get you ready, then.”

T. J. led Amelia and Adam to a large meeting room that was set up like a post-game sports conference. There were a hundred or so seats for the press that faced a stage with a long table and three chairs, each accompanied by a bottle of Fiji water. Behind the table was a white board covered in the logos of conference sponsors and, behind that, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto a veranda leading to the white sandy beaches. The press corps was starting to file into their seats, and T. J. gestured to a man with a headpiece and a clipboard.

“Are these the Dorys? Are they up for joining the panel?” The man smiled at Adam and Amelia.

“Yes! Mike, meet Adam and Amelia Dory. Mike is the press organizer for the conference.”

“We’re thrilled to have you,” Mike said as he shook both their hands. “We’re going to get started in a few minutes. Shouldn’t be any difficult questions. No one’s going to be drilling you on technology or funding or anything. They’re just here to get to know the entrepreneurs.”

Mike smiled at them both as he snapped his fingers at an assistant, gesturing for her to put two more chairs on the stage for Adam and Amelia. Then, responding to something broadcast in his headpiece, he ran off.

“Wow.” Adam turned to Amelia and T. J. “This is so official.”

T. J. smiled. Back in Palo Alto, Adam and Amelia had done a lot of one-on-one interviews with tech bloggers, but nothing on this scale. T. J. had spent the last six weeks networking with the press, raising excitement for Doreye and making sure that Adam and Amelia had a seat on every high-profile panel.

T. J. understood that great technology was only part of the formula for a really successful start-up. The other part was about image and perception, making sure users and influential thinkers promoted the brand the way you wanted them to. And this was the part where T. J. really hit his stride. He was determined to guarantee that, when it launched, every cool kid in America was chomping at the bit to download and own Doreye.

Besides, Amelia had the potential to become an absolute media darling. Sure, at first he’d written her off as awkward and uncool. But then he realized how much America loves a rags-to-riches tale, and what could be better than a foster-kid-turned-successful-entrepreneur story? Not only that, but there weren’t many successful female tech geeks. The more time he’d spent with Amelia, the more he’d started to see past her second-hand clothes, unkempt hair, and chunky glasses. She was actually pretty. Her slim waist and long legs were kind of hot, and with contact lenses and a little mascara, her eyes could be stunning.

But it wasn’t time for that just yet. People would take more to her now while she was still awkward and poor. Once Doreye started to take off, they’d do a makeover and guys would buy into Doreye because they wanted to sleep with her, while girls would buy into it because they wanted to be her. The only thing people loved more than rags-to-riches, T. J. thought, was ugly-to-hot, and he was planning to accomplish both with Amelia.

Mike’s assistant led Adam and Amelia to two seats at the middle of the table and adjusted their microphones. In the other seats were two venture capitalists and the CEO and founder of PocketFun, a mobile gaming company worth $2 billion. They smiled as they introduced themselves to Adam and Amelia.

“You’re with Tom Fenway’s incubator, right? I’ve heard such great things about Doreye,” said one VC. “I can’t wait to see the demo.”

Amelia smiled politely. Adam grinned. “We’ll be sure you get a front row seat!”

Mike stood on the side of the stage and coughed into a microphone to get the attention of the press, who started to quiet down. He introduced the panel and opened the floor for questions. The journalists immediately focused on Adam and Amelia, hardly asking any questions to the venture capitalists or the guy from PocketFun.

“Did you come to Stanford expecting to start a business?” a woman in a blue dress asked.

“Not at all!” Adam answered. “We didn’t even know what we wanted to major in, much less whether we would start a business.”

“But then Tom Fenway found you?”

“That’s right. Tom spotted Amelia at University Café and the rest is history.” Adam smiled. He was totally in his element with all these people hanging on his every word.

“What is the dynamic like in Tom Fenway’s incubator?”

“It’s great. We all get along really well, and there’s always plenty of free food.” The audience laughed and Adam glowed.

“Amelia, we haven’t heard much from you,” a young, slender redhead in a white dress piped up from the back. “How are you enjoying Hawaii?”

Hearing her name startled Amelia. She had been studying the chandelier hanging from the ceiling—a thousand tiny crystals refracting sunlight into the spectrum of visible light. It was absolutely beautiful. Amelia liked when Adam answered the questions and she could just listen. This was the part he loved, and she was happy for him to take care of it.

She looked at the woman and sat up to speak into the microphone in front of her. “Oh, it’s just wonderful,” she said, thinking about the beauty of the chandelier. “Then again, I’m happy anywhere I can code.” The room laughed lovingly. There was something surreal and comforting about sitting in a room full of people who were so captivated and supportive.

The woman smiled, but her face lacked the warmth of the other journalists. “Does that include juvenile detention?”

Amelia blinked. What had she said? Suddenly the chandelier looked like it was going to fall. How could it be suspended by such a thin little cord? “That…” she started, not sure if the word had actually come out. How long had it been since the woman had asked the question? Everyone was staring at her. “That’s not…public information,” Amelia stammered.

No one was smiling anymore. The woman tilted her pretty head and glared at Amelia. She was gorgeous and terrifying.

“How did breaking through bank firewalls and embezzling money inform the creation of Doreye?”

Amelia felt like the chandelier had crashed down on her, like the gold cord had snapped and the shimmering crystals were shattering around her. She looked over at Adam for help, but he was as dumbstruck as she was.

“They didn’t inform it at all, actually. Doreye is the pure creation of a brilliant and promising young entrepreneur.” T. J. was leaning over Amelia’s shoulder, speaking into the microphone. His hand rested on her back and he smiled charismatically at the audience. “And we, as the Doreye team, are thrilled to give you all the first view of our app at this weekend’s expo.”

Amelia nervously lifted her eyes back to the crowd. They were nodding and smiling, looking at T. J. with encouragement.

T. J. continued to speak. There wasn’t the slightest hint of worry or embarrassment in his voice. “And now we’re going to go set up the Doreye demo booth so that we can enjoy this beautiful beach before we show off the technology to you tonight. It’s Adam and Amelia’s first time in Hawaii, and I want to be sure they catch a few waves while they’re here.”

The journalists beamed. Adam and Amelia left the panel in stunned silence, grateful for T. J.’s quick save. With a single sentence, he had turned them back into the poor, pathetic foster kids that the journalists loved to write about.

As they filed out of the room, Amelia glanced back for the beautiful redhead who had asked about juvenile detention.

But there was no sign of her.

CHAPTER 4:

Is This Seat Taken?

Across the lobby, Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, Patty, Chad, and Chad’s parents and sister were gathered in their hiking gear, waiting for their driver to arrive and take them to a nearby waterfall for a sunset hike.

Shandi had opted for the spa over the hike, worried that she’d get mosquito bites or some other ailment that might threaten tomorrow’s perfect day.

Patty wanted a drink. She’d had to finish three exams and a fifteen-page research paper in two days in order to catch yesterday’s flight to Maui. To reward herself, she’d spent the day recovering, lying out on the beach, reading all the gossip magazines she’d neglected during the last two weeks of studying. She couldn’t believe how much she’d missed!

She’d made the mistake, though, of coming in at one o’clock in the afternoon to jump in the pool. While she was ordering a pineapple smoothie at the pool bar, she had run into Chad’s kid sister, Molly, who hadn’t left her alone since. Even when she’d put her headphones in (a clear signal that she didn’t want to talk), Molly had poked her to ask what color nail polish she was going to choose for their mani-pedis tomorrow morning. Patty had sucked hard on her smoothie straw, trying to be polite and wishing she’d had the bartender make the smoothie alcoholic.

Molly was going on about which Harry Potter movie was her favorite when the driver pulled up in a Land Rover.

“We ordered a passenger van,” Chad’s mother insisted, her tanned arms crossed over her perky chest. Chad’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bronson, were Nantucket chic: both ultra tan, blond, and always wearing solid pastel colors, like they’d stepped straight out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement. “There are six of us.”

I don’t have to go! Patty thought, sensing an opportunity to escape Molly’s chatter.

“We can squeeze in,” Chad’s father insisted. “Molly can sit on Chad’s lap.”

“Ewww!” Molly squealed. “I am thirteen years old and absolutely not sitting on my brother’s lap for the next half hour.”

Mrs. Hawkins consoled her. “Don’t worry, dear. Patty can sit on Chad’s lap, right guys?” He looked at both of them. Patty wondered if her cheeks were as red as they felt.

“Of course,” Chad smiled at Patty as they walked out to the car.

Patty blushed as she crawled onto Chad’s lap. She grabbed the headrest behind him for support, but doing so caused her breasts to brush against his face. He pretended not to notice. When she was finally seated, the small of her back pressed into his arm. She tried to balance her weight onto her heels so she wasn’t too heavy on his thighs.

“Sarah’s cousin’s best friend lives in LA and she auditioned for Glee and said Lea Michele was totally not that pretty in person,” Molly was telling her father with authority.

The car hit a pothole. Patty fell back onto Chad.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s okay,” he blushed.

“And I totally believe it,” Molly went on. “I mean, she’s got good hair, but everyone would if they spent as much time on it as she does.”

They were on a dirt road now, the car bumping and Patty bumping along with it. She tried to stay forward on Chad’s knees, tried not to slide back to where his…parts…were. That’s just what she needed: to ram into her future brother-in-law’s balls the day before his wedding.

But she kept sliding back. “Here,” he said, and he lifted her by the waist, opened his legs, and shifted her weight onto one thigh, pulling her legs between his. “That better?”

“Yeah,” she said, noticing that he’d left his hand around her waist, his other arm resting on the top of her thighs.

“Besides, I bet her voice isn’t even that good. They can edit everything on TV.”

Chad glanced at Patty who, between Molly’s jabbering and the stomach-turning bouncing, looked miserable. He poked her side with his finger and grinned at her in silent commiseration. Patty met his blue eyes—unhappy as she was, she couldn’t resist returning his grin.

CHAPTER 5:

Dinner Table Confessionals

Mr. Bristol had made a reservation at the fanciest seafood restaurant in Maui for a family dinner on Friday night. Between the wedding and the conference, he knew he’d be running around all weekend and needed to schedule some family time if he had any hope of not pissing off his wife. Of course, he’d had to book a 5 p.m. table to make it to the eight o’clock conference demo, so the family was seated at a center table in an empty room, the sun still shining brightly through the restaurant’s large, ocean-facing windows and the pianist on the baby grand in the corner playing chipper Christmas carols that sounded totally out of place.

Ted had even been so generous as to invite Lisa’s boyfriend, Sundeep, a young Indian guy who was working on some medical device with Tom Fenway’s incubator. He wasn’t sure what Lisa saw in Sundeep; she was so beautiful that she could have any guy she wanted, especially now that she was in college. Sundeep was a nice guy, sure, but he was a little…dull. He didn’t play or watch any sports, had no interest in Scotch or cars or cigars, and, frankly, Ted was at a loss for what to talk to him about. But young love was young love, he reasoned, and inviting him along for the weekend had made Mrs. Bristol very happy.

After the waiter took away their entrée plates, Sundeep cleared his throat and lifted his wine glass. “I’d like to make a toast,” he said, looking around the table and landing on Lisa. Lisa smiled at him nervously. Her relationship with Sundeep was the biggest stress in her life, and she had no one to talk to about it. Her feelings for Adam had grown so much that every time she smiled at Sundeep, or kissed him, or accepted his affection, she felt like a liar and a cheat. She had tried to get her parents not to invite him to the wedding, but her mother had insisted—she thought she was doing Lisa a favor, and how could Lisa tell her the truth?

T. J. took a large sip of his wine. Oh, God, he wasn’t going to propose, was he? He liked Sundeep well enough. He was so friendly that you couldn’t dislike the guy, and he thought what Sundeep was doing for India was really impressive. But for his sister? He didn’t seem to fit.

“I just wanted to say a big thank you to all of you,” Sundeep said. “For welcoming me into your family and letting me be a part of this very special weekend.”

Mrs. Bristol was making a pouty, isn’t-he-so-sweet face at Ted, squeezing his hand under the table. Ted had stopped counting, but he was pretty sure the glass of wine in her hand was her third, after downing two daiquiris and a glass of champagne before dinner. He’d had his assistant book the presidential suite for the two of them at the Four Seasons and was starting to worry she was going to spend the night hunched over the toilet.

“You see,” Sundeep kept going, “I’m not on good terms with my own family right now.” He looked down at the table, nervously wiping the perspiration from his water glass with his thumb. Lisa’s eyes got wide: was he going to tell them? Mrs. Hawkins gasped and pressed her hand over her heart in excessive concern. Yes, she was definitely wasted.

“When I decided to pursue WorldSight, I turned down an opportunity to attend Stanford Medical School. It’s so competitive there, and they don’t let you defer, so I gave up my spot and my fellowship. My father was furious. He’s a doctor and always assumed I’d follow in his footsteps to become a cardiac surgeon. My mother was angry too, but she reasoned that my work on this company was just a phase—something I needed to get out of my system—and I told her I’d consider reapplying to medical school this fall.”

Yes, he was telling them. Lisa’s mind raced: was it good or bad for them to know? She took a sip of her wine. Did it matter? He was going for it.

“But I didn’t reapply. How could I? The more I work on this, the more I’m certain it’s my calling. In response, however, my father officially cut me off. My mother was helpless to do anything, and I haven’t had any contact with anyone in my family since.”

It was true, and hearing him say it made Lisa’s heart heavy all over again. He was such a good person, such a kind soul, and his family was treating him so unfairly. She thought back on the first time he’d told her. She’d just been to see Adam in his new dorm room, and her heart was fluttering with her attraction for him. She thought about Adam’s mismatched socks and the dimple in his left cheek that always appeared when he smiled at his own jokes and the way he didn’t even try to contain his excitement at seeing her when she’d come back from her family vacation in France. She thought about all these things and her cheeks got hot and her whole body felt light and she texted Sundeep to ask him if they could talk, because she knew that she had to break up with him. He’d said yes and they’d agreed to meet that night. But when they’d met, right as she started to tell him she’d found someone else—that it was her, not him—he’d broken down, put his head on the table and explained what had happened with his family. He was devastated. She couldn’t tell him.

That was over three months ago and she still hadn’t found the strength to be so cruel. Sundeep didn’t have a lot of friends. He spent all his time working on his company or admiring her. What would happen if she broke up with him? She didn’t know, and it worried her horribly.

So Lisa felt trapped. She loved one guy and felt duty-bound to another. And now he was eliciting the sympathy of her mother, which was going to make this whole thing even more difficult. No, it was not a good thing that he was telling them, she decided.

“So, in conclusion, I’d like to express my gratitude and admiration to the Bristol family for your extraordinary kindness and hospitality.”

Everyone clicked glasses and smiled politely at Sundeep. He nodded sheepishly and looked longingly at Lisa. “Thank you,” he whispered. She hoped he couldn’t pick up on the fakeness in her reassuring smile. She looked around. Some family he’d just gotten himself involved in, she thought. Mrs. Bristol was taking a long swig of her wine, Mr. Bristol was focused on getting the waiter’s attention to order dessert and another Scotch, and T. J. was checking his text messages under the table.

CHAPTER 6:

Waterfalls

“We should let the young athletes go ahead of us old fogeys,” Chad’s father said cheerfully. Chad and Patty had been silent for the half hour the families had been on the trail, and the adults naturally assumed it was because the hiking pace was too dull.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Patty said, smiling politely.

“Are you afraid I’ll beat you?” Chad smiled at her.

Chad’s mother laughed. “I’m glad to see the sibling rivalry has already begun!”

Patty glared at them both. She was fiercely competitive and, especially when it came from Chad, a challenge was too much to resist.

She chuckled coolly. “Please. I could take you any day. I’ve got nothing to prove.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Chad smirked.

Patty stopped, held his eyes for a minute, and took off, dashing up the hill.

Forty strenuous minutes later, Chad and Patty were both in a full-on sprint, jumping over roots and dodging branches until they finally burst into a clearing where an enormous waterfall plunged into a pool of crystal-clear water. A bright, red sun rested on the horizon opposite the waterfall, its light reflecting off the water in a brilliant mix of colors.

“Totally beat you!” Chad gasped.

“Did not,” Patty panted, looking up at the sunset. “Oh, my God, this is the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.”

They stood for a moment taking in the beauty. It was the kind of moment that you know is rare and aren’t quite sure how to take in.

Patty’s tanned face dripped with sweat, her clothes wet from the run. Chad pulled off his sweat-soaked shirt and Patty tried not to pay attention to his perfectly chiseled abs. She wished she were a guy and had the option of taking off her sweaty top, too.

“I know how we can decide,” Chad said. “See that rock in the middle of the water? First one there wins.”

With her hands on her hips and her gaze set on Chad, Patty used her foot to force one shoe off the other. “You realize I was recruited to swim for Stanford, right? The best swim team in the country?”

“Yeah,” he said, slipping off his own shoes, “but you’re still a girl.”

She slapped him playfully on the stomach and dove into the water, easily beating him to the rock with her flawless freestyle.

She climbed up and watched the sun slip toward the blue-green sea. Chad clamored onto the rock beside her and rested his elbows on his knees, shaking his head to release water from his shaggy blond tresses. “Okay,” he conceded, out of breath. “You are a goddess and a champion. You win.”

Patty laughed. “That will teach you.” Her cheeks were flushed with the exercise and the beads of water made her skin glisten in the dusky light. Her searching eyes were captivated by the setting sun, and she looked like she was deep in her own world, deep in thought about something only she could know.

“You are so, so beautiful,” Chad said slowly, his voice honest and raw, born out of a reflex, as though she was so beautiful right then that he couldn’t not say it.

Patty turned her head toward him, pulling her knees into her chest and swallowing hard. “You can’t say that, Chad,” she said with a twinge of anger in her voice. “It isn’t fair to me.” She glanced back at the horizon, surprised by her own vulnerability. She knew, logically, that it wasn’t fair to Shandi, but if she was being honest, she was more upset by how unfair it was to her, the way he led her on and made it impossible not to love him.

Chad touched her arm. “I know. I know, Patty.” He closed his eyes as if to gather his thoughts. “I know it’s crazy, but if you only knew how much I think about you—I can’t get past it. Ever since that party when I saw what we might be able to have. I mean, when I felt the chemistry between us…I just don’t know what to do.”

Patty pulled her shoulder away from his touch. “What you do is forget about it! You marry my sister and you stop saying things like that and you stop stroking my arm like this and you stop looking at me with those eyes,” she hissed, her heart sinking at how much she didn’t really want him to stop any of those things.

The sun was melting and the sound of the waterfall roared behind them.

He leaned into her, their noses barely three inches apart. She could feel his warm breath hit her lips. His eyes looked into hers, searching, and he whispered, “But what if I’m marrying the wrong sister?”

“Who won?” Mr. Hawkins called out from the shore. Molly splashed into the water as the rest of the hiking crew clambered up the trail to the clearing, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at its beauty.

The sun slipped below the horizon, and the magical moment was gone.

CHAPTER 7:

You Can’t Stay On
Top Forever

The conference expo, where all the start-ups were demonstrating their products, was about to start. Amelia bent over, her hand resting on the table behind the Doreye booth, taking deep breaths with her eyes closed. Adam rubbed her back. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She shook her head, not looking up. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Adam,” she moaned.

“It’s going to be okay.” He tried to console her, but he wasn’t sure how. She’d been devastated ever since the morning session when the journalist had brought up her time in jail. “Tonight’s all about the product. No one’s going to be asking you about our past.”

“Where’s Tom?” Amelia asked.

“His flight got delayed,” T. J. said, overhearing her question as he walked into the booth, sliding the cell phone he’d just been talking on into his pocket. “I told him to take the private jet but he always insists on going commercial. Listen, sorry I’m late. I had a family dinner. I brought you some dessert.”

T. J. dropped a white box on the table and looked empathetically at Amelia. “But you don’t look very hungry.” He pulled her up gently from her keeled-over position and put his hands on her shoulders. He looked straight into her eyes and said seriously, “Amelia, you are going to be spectacular tonight. Okay?”

She blinked her eyes. Growing up, she never cried, but she felt tears forming and fought desperately to hold them back.

“I don’t care what you did or where you came from. You’re here now and you’re the most exciting thing at the expo and absolutely nothing anyone does or says will change that,” T. J. went on.

Amelia nodded her head like a child trying to appease her parent.

“I mean, I’m a total asshole who always looks for the worst in everyone, so if I’m saying that…” T. J. smiled, and Amelia let out a laugh, wiping a tear from her eye. T. J. was new at the whole self-deprecation thing, but he was pleased that it seemed to be making Amelia feel better.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s go get you back in front of your computer, talking about code.” He led her to the front of the booth, where conference participants had already started to gather.

Adam followed them, simultaneously impressed by and jealous of T. J.’s ability to console Amelia. Adam glanced at the box of dessert, computing that if T. J. had just finished dinner with his family, then Lisa was wandering around unoccupied somewhere in the hotel. Just then, across the room, he spotted the back of a blond head set on a slender frame. Lisa!

Adam raced across the room and tapped her on the shoulder. “Lisa!”

“I’m sorry?” He heard a British accent as the woman turned toward him. Not Lisa.

“Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

“Not to worry, Adam.”

Adam blushed and darted back to the Doreye booth, wondering briefly how the woman knew his name.

Thirty people were gathered around the Doreye booth as Amelia started the demo. She was holding an iPhone in her hand and linking it to her laptop, which was hooked up to a forty-eight-inch Alienware LCD monitor suspended above the booth. A television, a radio-controlled toy car, a microwave and several other devices were arranged on the table.

“I want to be honest about the shortcomings of this alpha version,” Amelia said to the crowd. “I haven’t yet been able to make Doreye as robust as I want to, which means we can’t yet manage multiple devices simultaneously. I set up a queue system, which is a good patch for now, but there’s still a slight lag as Doreye switches between devices. The lag is because of the network. I wish we were on 4G. Anyway, in the future this shouldn’t be a problem, but for now, fair warning.”

The crowd smiled, charmed by the young girl’s honesty. They all watched as she proceeded to open the Doreye app on her iPhone and use it to run the other devices on the table. With the swipe of Amelia’s finger, the television turned on and changed channels before turning off again. A brief moment later, the toy car moved in a semicircle and stopped next to the microwave, which suddenly turned on. The devices were elegantly operating in concert, and Amelia was the conductor. There was ooh-ing and ahh-ing as more people huddled around the table.

Just then, though, the microwave shut down. Amelia looked at it quizzically—she hadn’t done anything to turn it off. Then the toy car started moving without her touching the Doreye app. She looked at the iPhone in her hand. What was going on?

On the monitor, the devices started flicking off and on, registering as “in use,” then “out of use,” and going completely haywire. The crowd began to murmur.

“Amelia,” Adam whispered. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not doing anything,” Amelia whispered back. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

A man in the front row heard her. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

Amelia looked up at the crowd and blushed. “I’m not sure what’s going on,” she admitted. “Maybe there’s an issue with the network here?” She was desperately searching for an answer. “But that’s never been a problem before…”

“That’s just the carpenter blaming her tools,” a British accent called out from the back of the crowd. The group parted and the blond who looked like Lisa but wasn’t sauntered forward. She was glaring at Amelia and smiling menacingly. “It’s not the network, it’s your program. Not being able to handle multiple devices isn’t the only problem. It’s entirely flawed software.”

Amelia’s and Adam’s jaws dropped. Who was this woman?

“She stole the idea from us, but she missed a few details. If you want to see the real deal, come with me to the RemoteX booth.”

The crowd followed her, leaving the Doreye table empty. Adam, Amelia, and T. J. were stunned.

CHAPTER 8:

Some Things
Champagne Can’t Fix

The last thing T. J. wanted to do was to go to Shandi Hawkins’ “Moonlight Drinks” reception on the Four Seasons terrace. It would be like every other Atherton party—the same faces, the same what’s-the-latest-hot-deal-in-the-Valley chat among the men and how-do-you-keep-your-skin-so-young-looking dialogue amongst the women—just in a different setting with a few East Coast WASPs interlaced, courtesy of Chad Sebastian Bronson of the Darien, Connecticut Bronsons.

The demo had been a disaster. T. J. had to figure out who that woman was and what RemoteX was all about.

But, in truth, that was secondary. What was really weighing on him now was Amelia, and a deep sense that he’d let her down. He should have stepped in, should have been able to help her recover from the malfunction, should have been able to recapture the audience’s attention when that woman interrupted.

He couldn’t explain it, except to say that he’d felt so good, so valuable, earlier in the day when he’d been able to protect Amelia from the nasty journalist during the panel. And he’d felt exactly the opposite at tonight’s demo.

He rolled his head to stretch his neck and pulled up the sleeves of his pale-blue linen button-down so they just covered his elbows. Then he took a deep breath and walked onto the terrace with a forced smile, grabbing a flute of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter as he headed to the bar.

While he waited for the bartender’s attention, a cute brunette in a purple maxi dress approached. She was clearly already drunk, the pink cocktail in her hand swirling precariously as she swayed on her heels.

“Are you T. J.?” she giggled.

“I am,” he said. She had great breasts and would be an easy score—girls at weddings always were.

She giggled again. “Actually I already knew that. Everyone has been saying you’re the guy to meet.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Lauren. I grew up with Chad.”

Good old Shandi, prepping all the single girls for his arrival.

“Very nice to meet you, Lauren. Can I get you a drink?”

“Yes, please! I’ll have another one of whatever these pink ones are.” Lauren pointed to the menu where specialty cocktails were listed.

He turned back to the bar, motioning to the bartender. Maybe tonight wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“Heard about the demo. Tough start for the weekend.” T. J.’s father suddenly appeared beside him.

T. J. felt his jaw clench. He tried to sound cool. “We’ll get through it. I’m not worried.”

He motioned again for the bartender, purposefully keeping his gaze averted from Ted.

“Still, not good news about RemoteX. How’d you miss that there was a competitor?”

T. J. swallowed hard. He was not going to give in to his father’s provocations. He focused on the bartender. Why was this guy not coming over?

“I’m looking forward to seeing more about what they’ve developed. It’s hard to tell how many parallels there really are,” T. J. answered.

Finally, the bartender approached and took his order. “Jack and Coke and one of those pink cocktails, please.”

“Still,” Ted continued, “I guess with Amelia’s background, it’s possible she did steal the technology. Poor kid, growing up alone, no moral center. She probably doesn’t even realize it’s wrong.”

This was too much. It was one thing to push T. J.’s buttons about the business, but Ted had no right to pull Amelia into it. He turned to face his father, his brow furrowed and his blue eyes intense. Ted was casually leaning back, both elbows propped on the bar, looking out at the crowd and sipping a beer. He was totally at ease as he taunted his son.

“You know what I think?” T. J. said decisively, a mix of anger and total confidence in his voice. “I think Amelia was lucky. It’s better to have no father at all than a morally bankrupt, money-grubbing one.”

Ted raised his eyebrows and shifted his gaze to his son. “I’m sorry?”

“What you did at Gibly—what you’re doing at Gibly—is wrong and you know it. It could threaten national security—our very safety. You’re pleading ignorance for profits, as though that makes you inculpable. But it doesn’t. If the person paying for that data is a terrorist and, because of it, we’re attacked? That’s on you. And that’s fucking immoral as hell.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ted hissed, standing up straight. T. J. was focused.

“Let me tell you what I do know: Amelia was right to tell the press about Gibly. She was right to expose what shady shit you’ve been up to. You were once respected and admired—you were powerful—and then a little girl took it all away from you. You want your revenge on Amelia? You’re going to have to go through me.”

“You’ve always been so full of yourself, son. But what have you ever done without my help? Even this little job that you’re so cocky about. Who got you that job? Me.”

“You’re a shitty father. You tried to compensate for being absent and cold by providing Lisa and me with opportunities. But it’s a poor trade. You always put yourself first, always prioritized your business deals and ego over everything that mattered to me. I’d rather have a poor father with no connections—I’d rather have no father at all—than one I disrespect as much as I disrespect you.”

T. J. handed a five-dollar tip to the bartender and walked away, leaving Ted looking for the first time in his life like he wasn’t sure what to do.

“Did you get my cocktail?” Lauren stumbled away from the group of girls she’d been chatting with and grabbed T. J.’s arm.

“It’s on the bar,” he snapped, shoving his hands in his pockets and heading for the door.

CHAPTER 9:

Prove Yourself

Amelia and Adam were back in their hotel room, huddled over her laptop. After the demo fiasco, Amelia had texted George, hoping he was still awake and could gather a few folks from Gates for a Skype conference to figure out what had gone wrong. George had readily obliged.

“I just don’t understand what could have happened. The devices have never malfunctioned like that.” Amelia was talking to George, T-Bag, and Luke, another engineer who was part of the Wednesday night crew.

“Do you think it was a network issue? Maybe there was too much interference from the other products at the demo,” George offered.

“More interference than I’ve had at Gates? If there’s no problem there, with all the computers and iPhones and other programs running, I can’t imagine there would be a problem here.”

“Unless the broadband is weaker to begin with,” T-Bag offered.

“Wouldn’t that be a major problem for us, then?” Adam started, looking a little panicked. “I mean, that would mean Doreye wouldn’t work everywhere, right?”

“Yeah, Adam, that’s what it would mean,” George said in an irritated voice, as though he were talking to a child.

“Or maybe there was just another type of product that interfered. What were the devices around you at the demo?” Luke asked.

“There was the electric car, like, three booths down. That must have taken a ton of energy,” Adam piped in.

“An electric car would take electric energy, Adam, not broadband.” George was clearly annoyed. “Listen, Adam, maybe you should leave this one to us.”

Adam winced. He was just trying to help. Why did this geek George think he had the right to tell him to bug off? He looked at Amelia to stand up for him.

Amelia bit her lower lip and said softly, “I think George is right. Why don’t you go find Lisa? This’ll probably take a while and be boring for you anyway.”

Adam sat for a moment, stunned. Was she serious? Then, realizing she was, he picked up his wallet and notebook. “Yeah, okay.”

He’d love to see Lisa, but he had texted her twice and she still hadn’t responded.

Adam headed to the hotel bar, his feelings crushed.

“I’ll have a beer, please,” Adam said to the bartender. The room was dimly lit. Several groups were gathered around low tables with cushioned seats, deep in conversation over the chill house music. Adam took a seat on one of the leather stools and grabbed a handful of nuts from a bowl on the bar, glancing out the window where he watched a party happening on the terrace.

He sipped his beer and tried to think about how he could help with this RemoteX debacle, or at least prove his worth at Doreye. George was right: he didn’t understand the technology, but how could he learn? And what else was he supposed to do to prove that he ought to be part of the company? It had been his idea to start the company, and yet he had no idea what he was doing.

“Mind if I join you?” A man in his late fifties took the stool next to Adam’s and motioned to the bartender.

“Not at all,” Adam said, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. The man looked vaguely familiar, but Adam couldn’t place him.

“Macallan 15,” the man said to the bartender. “No ice. What brings you to the hotel bar alone on a Friday night?”

Adam was a little perplexed. He wasn’t accustomed to meeting strangers in hotel bars, but this man seemed friendly enough. And it felt rather adult to have a conversation like this—two men exchanging pleasantries over a few drinks.

He shrugged. “Just feeling like a total failure lately.”

The man’s Scotch had arrived and he clinked his glass against Adam’s beer with a laugh. “That makes two of us,” he said.

They sat in silence for a moment, each taking long sips of their drinks.

“You know,” the man said, “the funny thing about failure is that you never see it coming. You really think you’re on the right course and then, out of nowhere, it hits you that you’ve been fucking things up all along.”

Adam wasn’t totally sure he understood what the man was saying, but he nodded anyway.

“My problem,” Adam said, “is that I’m in unknown territory. Like, I have all these things that I want to accomplish, and this great vision of what it should look like when it’s done, but I haven’t got a clue what I’m actually supposed to be doing, you know? What I’m supposed to be doing day-to-day to get to where I want to be.”

The man turned to him and smiled. “Do you drink Scotch?”

“I never have.”

“Well, that’s the first thing you need to do.” He turned to the bartender and motioned for another Macallan 15. “Act like who you want to be, down to every last little detail, and eventually, you’ll become that person. Trust me.”

Adam liked this guy. He started to relax and forget about Doreye and contemplate who he wanted to be. James Bond immediately jumped to mind. The man seemed to relax too, as they drank their Scotch and made small talk.

“I have another problem,” Adam confessed.

“What’s that? Let’s see if I can solve that one too,” the man said jovially. Talking to this kid was making him feel useful.

“There’s this girl.”

“Uh-oh. Here we go. Tell me about her.”

“She’s perfect.”

The man laughed. “Aren’t they all? At first, anyway.”

“She’s smart and funny and beautiful and…I think I love her. But she’s holding back, and I think I know why. Well, I do know why. It’s because she doesn’t think her father would approve of me.”

“What’s not to approve of? You seem perfectly respectable.”

“It’s just that her father is kind of a big deal, and I’m not…”

“Can I tell you a secret?” The man leaned in and whispered to Adam. “I’ve been told I’m ‘kind of a big deal,’ and there’s nothing about you I wouldn’t approve of.”

He pulled back and sipped his Scotch. “Especially considering who my daughter’s dating. Jesus. Nice kid, but no spunk. I can’t figure out what she’s thinking.”

Adam felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and looked down at the text message.

“It’s her!” he exclaimed. “She wants to meet at the beach!”

The man chuckled. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get going.”

“May I—?” Adam asked as he reached for his wallet.

The man rolled his eyes. “Who are you kidding? This one’s on me. It was great chatting with you. Good luck with the girl… and her dad.”

CHAPTER 10:

Look, But Don’t Touch

Adam dashed through the lobby, past the large Christmas tree display stretching up to the chandelier, past the designer gift shops, around the pool, and down the boardwalk. He didn’t slow down until he saw Lisa’s moonlit outline in the white gazebo at the beginning of the sand, where they’d agreed to meet. She was looking at the waves, her long skirt blowing softly in the breeze. It was like something out of a movie.

“Lisa!” he called out, running the length of the boardwalk and up the gazebo steps.

She turned and smiled. She wore a high-waisted navy chiffon dress with slim criss-cross straps that showed off her gently sloping shoulders. Her hair was pulled back in a side twist with a hibiscus flower tucked behind her ear. Her makeup shimmered, her lips glistened in the moonlight.

Adam was suddenly self-conscious about his flip-flops, shorts, and ratty T-shirt, but Lisa didn’t seem to notice. He put his hands around her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. “You look absolutely stunning,” he whispered.

She returned his kiss, but quickly put her hands on his chest, determinedly. “Wait. We have to talk. I have something I have to tell you.”

Adam felt his heart drop. Her eyes were serious and sad. And he knew: she was going to end it. Suddenly, the memories of her never wanting to be called his girlfriend, of how seldom she’d slept over this quarter, of how long it took her to text him back all hit him like a ton of bricks. He’d been in such denial that he hadn’t wanted to accept the truth. The man at the bar was wrong. He wasn’t good enough for Lisa or her father.

“Yeah, I know,” he pulled away, swallowing hard and turning from her to sit down on the gazebo bench, leaning his elbows forward on his knees and looking down at his feet.

“You do?” She didn’t understand. “Did Amelia—?”

“You’re not that into me. It’s obvious. And you’re ending it.”

“No! I mean, that’s not what I…”

But Adam didn’t hear her. The Scotch was pulsing through his veins and he was suddenly feeling confident and articulate—and angry.

“You know what bothers me though?” He stood up and walked back toward her. “You never gave me a real chance. As sweet as you were, I was always the bar boy from your brother’s fancy party. I didn’t fit into your rich, exclusive world.”

“That’s not—”

“But you know what, Lisa? You may be embarrassed to stand next to me now, but someday…someday I’ll fit right into your little moneyed world and you’ll be sorry.”

“Adam!” she snapped. “This has nothing to do with money.” She was shaking her head in frustration. “My God, Adam. Do you have any idea how much I care about you? How much I love you? But my past is complicated—”

Adam touched his finger to her lips to make her stop talking, a glimmer of hope restored in his voice. “What did you say?”

“I said my past is complicated.”

“Before that. Did you say…you love me?”

“Yes, Adam. I love you. But—”

Suddenly all his distress transformed to joy. Adam felt like he was going to explode with happiness. He grinned from ear to ear and pulled Lisa into a close hug, kissing her mouth hard, again and again. “No ‘buts’!” he exclaimed. “You love me, you love me, you love me. It’s the only thing that matters.”

Lisa laughed and let her arms fall around his. He looked so happy, and that made her so happy. How could she ruin this moment?

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, okay?” he said. “We’re together now and I love you so, so much.”

She smiled and leaned her forehead against his. Faint music from the Hawkins party drifted in the air and “All I Want for Christmas is You” started playing, as if on cue. Lisa pressed her cheek against Adam’s and they swayed to the song in the moonlight. Adam listened to the lyrics and wondered whether Santa did exist, after all. And whether (dare he dream it?) maybe from now on he’d be one of those people who flew to Hawaii with his girlfriend’s family to celebrate the holidays.

Seconds later, Lisa’s phone rang in her purse but she ignored it. A moment later it rang again. “I better get that,” she whispered, breaking their embrace to see who was calling.

“It’s my family. I have to go.” She pouted.

“No, you don’t. Stay.”

“Trust me, if I could be two places at once, I would.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said as she scurried down the gazebo stairs, her long dress flowing behind her.

As Adam started back, his eye caught the flower she’d been wearing in her hair. Like Cinderella’s slipper, he thought, as he picked it up. He walked out to the beach and sat in the sand, crossing his ankles and taking deep breaths of the fresh sea air.

He listened to the waves and reflected on the night. Lisa loved him! Could life be any better? He replayed her words and the sight of her lips in the moonlight—those lips that loved him, that he was allowed to kiss and admire, that belonged to him.

Then he thought about her goodbye. “If I could be two places at once, I would.” If only!

Wait, two places at once? With a start, his mind snapped to the airport gate that morning. All the expo participants had been on the same flight. He never would have missed seeing a woman who resembled Lisa. Was she not a passenger? TechCrunch had purchased the tickets and made sure they would all be on that plane. Why would they have made an exception for her?

Adam’s mind suddenly felt alert. He stood up, brushed the sand from his shorts, and walked, deliberately, back toward the hotel. He thought about his conversation with the man in the bar that night: choose who you want to be and start to act like it. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, but he pictured himself as James Bond—the bad-ass blond 007 who took out guys left and right—and let the thought motivate him as he glanced around to make sure no one was looking. Then he carefully slipped through the door to the conference room where the booths were still displayed.

The lights were out and the room was silent, save the buzz of the electronics in place. Okay, he thought, what would Bond do? Adam tiptoed toward the RemoteX booth. A laser-thin ray of blue light shot out from the corner. An alarm! He jumped to avoid it, then realized it was just the glare from a computer at another booth. Calm down, he told himself.

He reached RemoteX and slowly wiggled open the drawer under the booth, covering his hand with his shirt as he did so, so there wouldn’t be any fingerprints. He used the light from his iPhone as a flashlight, glancing into the corners of the room to be sure there weren’t any security cameras.

In the top drawer were a pair of scissors, some wire, a garage-door opener, a television remote, and an MP3 player. He shut the drawer carefully and squatted to open the bottom drawer. It was empty, except for a small shoebox in the back corner. Adam pulled it out and took the lid off.

“Bingo,” he whispered.

A pile of magazine clippings and online article print-outs about Doreye were stapled together and folded neatly on top. Below it was a shoddy device, opened, with switches and wires sticking in and out like someone didn’t know what they were doing. It resembled a control panel. At the bottom of the box he found a slim, plastic container filled with little metal chips that looked like the SIM card in the back of a cell phone. Adam wrinkled his brow. What were these? There must have been fifty of the chips in the box. He used his fingernail to pull one out and slipped it into his pocket.

Adam discreetly replaced the contents of the shoebox and slid the bottom drawer closed. He tiptoed back to the Doreye booth and checked the drawers: nothing unusual. What could the chip be for? And why was it in the RemoteX shoebox?

Adam closed his eyes. Think! What would James Bond do? All he could think about were images of beautiful women and fast cars.

His eyes snapped open: the toy car!

He looked across the devices at the Doreye booth until he found the radio-controlled toy car. He picked it up and drunkenly snapped open the chassis to where the rechargeable battery was inserted. He slowly pulled out the battery and squinted to see…yes! A small metal chip, just like the one in his pocket, was tucked behind the battery, preventing two wires from meeting. He wasn’t sure what the wires were for, but he was pretty sure the chip was not supposed to be there.

Adam looked across the other devices on the table. He didn’t have to disassemble each one to know that the British blond girl sabotaged those, too. “RemoteX, I’m on to you,” he said with a satisfied smile.

Just then he heard a noise and a swath of yellow light streamed in from the conference room door. Adam froze.

Instinctively, he ducked behind the Doreye table and peered toward the door trying to figure out who it was. His mind raced. If he got caught, what would people think? They’d probably think he was sabotaging RemoteX. Or, at the very least, he’d get kicked out of the conference and everyone would think he was the fucked-up, add-nothing leech to his sister they’d suspected all along. He had to get out of there now…but how?

Adam heard someone whistling as he crawled behind one booth, then the next. Suddenly, the overhead lights snapped on and he peered out from behind the booth where he was crouched. A man in a cleaning uniform was pushing an industrial vacuum on the far side of the room. He was wearing headphones and looking away from Adam, going about his business. Adam felt his chest empty the breath he’d been holding. He quickly stood up and raced out the door.

CHAPTER 11:

Footprints

After three hours of trying to find a solution, Amelia told her friends back in Palo Alto to go to bed. She sat staring out the window for a while, searching the Hawaiian stars for an answer and, finding none, took a deep breath and went to locate Adam. She knew he was upset, and she felt bad. He’d only been trying to help. But she’d also been relieved that George had had the guts to tell him he was slowing them down.

She wasn’t sure where he’d gone, but she guessed he’d wandered down to the Ugly Sweater party a group of conference participants were unofficially throwing in one of the ballrooms downstairs. The last thing she wanted was to be social with a bunch of dressed up, drunk conference goers, but she hoped it was late enough that they’d all be on the prowl for someone to hook up with and not bother her with questions about Doreye.

Amelia arrived in the lobby and followed the cheesy Christmas music down the hall, gulping anxiously before opening the door.

The room was enormous, with another crystal chandelier hanging from the center and floor-to-ceiling windows across the back, which overlooked the beach and the crashing waves illuminated by the full moon. A huge palm tree decorated with lights and Christmas ornaments towered over a garland-trimmed tiki bar, and poinsettia blossoms were mounted on tiki torches. A wooden dance floor had been constructed in the middle of the room, and it was packed with drunk twenty- to fifty-somethings, all looking equally ridiculous in red and green turtlenecks, checkered suits, and oversized crocheted holiday sweaters.

“Amelia?”

She turned around to find Sundeep, clad in a two-sizes-too-small bright green turtleneck, red chino pants, an oversized reindeer pin clipped to his shirt, and a Santa hat in hand.

“Sundeep!” She tried not to gawk at how ridiculous he looked. “I was just looking for…”

“Adam?” he interrupted. “I haven’t seen him, and I’ve been here for a while.”

Amelia’s shoulders dropped in disappointment. Why did everything about this day have to be a challenge?

“Do you want to get some fresh air?” Sundeep asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and followed him outside onto the beach. Fresh air was exactly what she wanted: lots and lots and lots of fresh air to make everything else evaporate.

They strolled along the warm sand in silence, until Sundeep finally said, “What’s wrong?”

Amelia pursed her lips and took a deep breath. “It was the expo today. Doreye didn’t work.” She tried to stop them, but tears filled her eyes. “And I just spent three hours working on it, and I’ve done everything right, Sundeep! It should be working.” She was sobbing now.

He stopped her, gently holding her shoulders to steady her. “I heard about the other company,” he confessed. “And you know what else I heard? That you’re the smartest person in Silicon Valley. The next hotshot engineer. The next big thing. You will figure it out, Amelia. Of that I’m absolutely certain.”

She shook her head and broke free of his grip. They continued walking.

“You know what I think?” he asked.

“What?” she sniffled.

“I think women as strong as you don’t cry over iPhone applications.”

She swallowed.

“Do you want to talk about the press conference?” he asked.

“No.” She kicked a conch shell and kept walking. “What is there to talk about? I did it. I’m guilty. I hacked in and embezzled money and knew what I was doing wasn’t right. I spent three months in prison and it was completely and utterly horrible. And now everyone knows and they’re going to bring it up and I’ll never escape it.”

“You can’t change your past,” Sundeep said. “But you can decide how you’re going to use what’s happened to you.”

She didn’t respond. He tried another angle. “What happened to you, Amelia…it’s part of you, and you may not want to do it again, but it made you a stronger person, a more honest person.”

“I wish I could be as honest as you,” she said. “I mean, you don’t have a flawed bone in your body. You’re smart and caring and totally…perfect. Your life is perfect.”

Sundeep was silent. Finally, he said quietly, “That’s not true.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I haven’t been entirely honest with you.” He turned to look at her, the corners of his mouth pinched tight. “My family disowned me, Amelia. Last spring. And now I’ve got nothing.”

They had walked back up to the hotel entrance, and she stopped before opening the door. So that’s what Lisa had been talking about. “Oh, Sundeep.” Her heart genuinely ached for him. “I am so, so sorry.”

Sundeep was looking at the stars, as if trying to fight back tears of his own, but he forced a smile. “It’s okay. It’ll work out. Sometimes other people don’t understand why we do what we do, but we can’t let that keep us from fighting for what we believe in.”

If Amelia had been a hugger, she would have given him a hug. But she was still attracted to him and was embarrassed that he might know that.

A drunk man in a crocheted reindeer vest stumbled up off the beach beside them. “Ooooooh!” He yelled at the pair, lifting the eggnog in his right hand and spilling it onto the patio. “Somebody’s under the mistletoe!”

Amelia and Sundeep glanced up and sure enough, they were standing directly under a thick tuft of mistletoe suspended from a light fixture on the wall. “That means you have to make out,” the drunk guy hollered as he stumbled through the door to the bathroom, leaving Amelia and Sundeep both blushing furiously. They paused, caught in the moment and the embarassment and the comfort of each other’s presence.

“Amelia!” Adam’s voice called from inside. He was running down the hall toward them. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I figured it out! I figured out how RemoteX sabotaged us. There is nothing wrong with Doreye!”

CHAPTER 12:

Yours, Virtually

Amelia pretended to go to sleep when Adam did. He was in a great mood, and she didn’t want to upset him with her nerves. She lay staring at the ceiling, heart beating and mind racing as she listened to her brother’s slow, steady breathing.

She kept thinking about the chips Adam found in the Doreye devices. T. J. had shipped their presentation to Maui days ahead of time; someone could have easily added an override switch to the terminals in each device’s radio receiver. It was an easy hack to do for an engineer with time and a wire wrap tool. But why would anyone want to sabotage their demo?

Unable to sleep she slipped out of the bed, picked up her laptop, and quietly opened the sliding door onto the balcony of their room.

The air was thick and heavy, but a cool breeze blew from the ocean, bringing with it the scent of salt and tropical flowers. She closed her eyes, listened to the gentle melody of the bugs buzzing below, inhaled deeply. She looked up at the full moon overhead and wondered for a minute how life had led her here, to this balcony in Hawaii at a TechCrunch conference where her start-up company was on display.

Then she sat down in one of the rocking chairs, opened her laptop, and logged into ZOSTRA, the virtual world she’d joined with George, T-Bag, Janet, and Jon. Wednesday nights were when everyone met at the Lair to get together in the virtual world, but individual players could log on any time to work on his or her avatar. As players completed tasks and challenges, they got points they could use to buy virtual goods.

Amelia had created an avatar that wasn’t much different from herself. Her avatar had more voluminous hair and bigger breasts, and she wore contacts, but Amelia didn’t spend any money on clothes or handbags like a lot of the other girl avatars. One Wednesday, virtual T-Bag (a stunningly buff and attractive blond) had taken virtual Amelia on his virtual private jet to virtual Rodeo Drive to model Gucci and Prada. Everyone had laughed and Amelia had blushed, but she’d quickly stuffed her virtual Jimmy Choos in her virtual closet.

Instead, she used points to buy more and more complicated weapons to fight bad guys. She’d quickly mastered nunchucks and daggers. She was saving up for a master sword, like the one Uma Thurman used in Kill Bill, to fight a Russian terrorist named Boris, the virtual creation of a small and timid red-headed girl from Minnesota who had been playing ZOSTRA for four years and had serious skills.

Amelia was shooting virtual clay pigeons when another avatar appeared on the right side of her screen. It was George. He didn’t say anything, just started shooting clay pigeons next to her. He was better than she was and, when they’d finished the round, she sent him an Instant Message to tell him so. The IM popped up in a speech bubble above her avatar. In the bubble above his, he said, “You’re quickly surpassing me, young grasshopper.”

“There are too many pigeons to shoot. It’s getting more difficult to see them all.”

“That’s what happens as you get better.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get better.”

“Then how will you beat Boris?”

“Maybe beating Boris isn’t the only point of the game.”

There was a pause. Amelia anxiously watched the speech bubble above George’s head. Finally, he responded.

“I think some players have talents that are so exceptional they have a responsibility to use them, even if it’s hard.”

“Then I’ll stop getting better.”

“You can’t. It’s not in your nature.”

Amelia felt tears welling up in her eyes again. “I don’t like this, George,” she typed.

“You’re the strongest woman I know, Amelia. In addition to being the smartest and the most beautiful. You can do this, I know you can.”

Her eyes hung on the word “beautiful,” and she felt a single hot tear roll down her cheek.

She waited, feeling her heartbeat slow down. She wasn’t sure why, but she suddenly, desperately, wished George were there.

She typed, “I wish you were here,” and stared at the blinking cursor at the end of the phrase, without clicking send.

Just send it, she thought, her finger resting on the Enter key. But just then another message popped up in the speech bubble above virtual George’s head. “Have to sign off. Good luck tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”

Just as well, Amelia thought, as she backspaced the line and instead sent, “I will. Thanks, George. For everything.”

CHAPTER 13:

Tell Me Your Secrets,
I’ll Tell You Mine

T. J.’s alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., but he was already awake, feeling guilty about what he’d said to his father the night before. It was unnecessarily harsh and dramatic. Ted hadn’t been trying to egg T. J. on. Probably he had only wanted to hear what had happened. Shit, he was probably even trying to have a civil conversation with T. J. and just didn’t know how to go about it in an uncompetitive way.

T.J. pulled on a pair of shorts, laced up his tennis shoes, and headed to the hotel gym.

He was surprised to hear someone already there, running hard on the treadmill, and even more surprised when he saw that it was Patty.

He stepped on the treadmill next to her and started upping the speed on the belt. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

“Nope!” she said, pulling an ear bud out of her right ear, then replacing it, politely indicating that she didn’t want to talk.

A large mirror faced the treadmills, and as T. J. started his run, he couldn’t help but notice their impeccable form. Patty’s legs were all long, lean muscle as she pounded away at a seven-minute-mile clip, and T. J.’s chest and ab muscles glimmered—not an ounce of fat anywhere—as he ran at a slightly more reasonable eight-minute-mile pace. Say all you will about rich Atherton kids, he thought, but they had phenomenal figures. Like modern-day Greek gods.

They were both panting heavily, staring into the mirror but not looking at anything in particular, as they contemplated their own concerns. When Patty’s machine hit nine miles, she slowed the belt down to a quick walk. T. J. followed suit.

“Don’t stop on my accord,” she smiled, out of breath.

“I happen to be finished too,” he said. He wasn’t about to admit that he’d just forced himself to run two miles farther than he’d intended because he had too much pride to start after and finish before a girl.

“I was going to grab a smoothie at the juice bar after this. Want to join?” T. J. asked.

“Sure,” Patty said. “Just going to stretch a little. Meet you there.”

T. J. was sitting at the tiki-themed juice bar watching CNN on the television screen when Patty joined him, a wet towel wrapped around her neck. He pushed a tall glass of white foam toward her. “I ordered you a coconut-lime smoothie. It’s the best one.”

“Thanks.” Patty took a long sip through the straw and climbed into the high chair beside him. It was delicious.

“So what were you running so hard about?” she asked T. J.

“I was kind of an asshole last night. Felt bad about it. Punishing myself, I guess. You?”

“Too long a story to tell over smoothies.”

“We could ask the bartender to put some booze in them, if that would help?”

Patty laughed. That actually didn’t sound like such a bad idea. “Nah. I’m getting my nails done with the bridesmaids in an hour. My mother would disown me if I showed up drunk.”

“Fair.”

They sat for a few moments in silence when T. J. finally said, “So, you’re really not going to tell me?”

Patty studied T. J. for a moment. She desperately wanted to tell someone. It was so difficult to hold it all in. T. J. already knew the beginning parts of it. The first night something happened between her and Chad was last spring at T. J.’s graduation party. The security cameras caught them in his father’s garage...together in the Lamborghini’s back seat. When it happened, T. J. had been a jerk about it, trying to blackmail her. Despite that, it seemed like he had grown up a lot since then. For some reason, she felt like she could trust him.

“It’s Chad,” she said softly, looking down at her bare feet. She desperately needed that pedicure.

T. J. sat up in his chair, his curiosity piqued. He tried not to seem too interested. “Oh?” he said.

“It’s so wrong, T. J. I know it is. But I like him. I really, really do. And…” She couldn’t say it. She’d never said it out loud.

“And?”

“And I think he likes me, too.”

“Why do you think that?”

“We went on a hike yesterday. To the waterfall. And he told me so. He said he thinks about me all the time.” Patty’s face reddened. “He said he thought maybe he was marrying the wrong sister.”

T. J. almost choked on his smoothie. “Wow.”

Patty shook her head, as if trying to get the whole thing out of her mind. “It’s so stupid. It’ll all be over tomorrow, no matter what. I just have to stop thinking about it.”

“Maybe it won’t all be over tomorrow. Maybe it’s just beginning.” T. J. smiled coyly.

CHAPTER 14:

Panic

Adam slept deeply until ten o’clock in the morning. The sun was streaming through the flowing white drapes at the balcony windows and he was full of the euphoria that only comes after a night of dreaming about your true love. Yesterday had been an emotional roller coaster, but everything felt right now that he knew Lisa loved him.

Not to mention that he’d discovered the problem with their presentation yesterday. RemoteX was trying to sabotage Doreye with that chip. They had decided not to say anything until they’d had a chance to tell T. J. and Tom. Tom’s flight was rescheduled to land this morning, and T. J. would be at the Hawkins wedding all day, though he said he’d slip out after the ceremony to check in on them.

Adam stretched his arms over his head and rolled out of bed, careful not to wake Amelia. Someone had slid an envelope under the door to the room, and he picked it up along with the free copy of the New York Times.

Inside the envelope was a handwritten note from Mike, the conference organizer:

Wanted to get you the questions for today’s Q&A in advance of the session. Good luck. –Mike

Behind it was a typed list of questions submitted by the press, which they planned to ask Adam and Amelia at the Q&A. Adam felt the blood drain from his face as he read the list:

1. What is your current relationship with the Dawson family? When was the last time you were in contact with them?

2. Are you aware of Mr. Dawson’s upcoming release from prison? Will you reach out to him?

3. Is Stanford aware of your criminal past? Do you worry about what will happen now that it’s public?

4. You’re on fellowship, meaning individual philanthropists fund much of your education. Do you feel a responsibility to tell them what you did?

5. How has Tom Fenway handled knowledge of your crime? Is he concerned about potential legal fall-out?

6. When did you learn to hack through security walls? Have you ever done it since, for any purpose?

7. You know how to hack into very sophisticated systems. Is that how you infiltrated RemoteX and stole their technology?

8. Your peers have noticed that you are both wearing much more expensive clothes than you did a year ago. How have you funded your new wardrobes? Can you honestly say that your income is “clean”?

Every single question involved some aspect of Amelia’s past. And each was worded deceitfully. Even if Amelia’s answers to the questions were fair and honest, the way the questions were phrased made her sound like a criminal. Like the one about the fellowship: they weren’t even getting fellowships any more, but if someone in the public heard that question, all they’d focus on was this idea that Adam and Amelia were thieves taking advantage of naïve benefactors. It was appalling.

Adam felt his heart race. He looked at Amelia, still sleeping in the plush white bed. They’d gone to bed at 3 a.m., but he’d heard her get up in the middle of the night and was worried she wouldn’t sleep. He was relieved to see her sleeping so peacefully now and dreaded having to wake her. This letter was going to devastate her all over again. But they had to figure out what to do, and fast. The panel started in an hour.

Adam shook her gently. “Amelia?”

She rolled over and sighed with her eyes still closed. “I think I could get used to this bed,” she smiled. She couldn’t remember them, but she knew that she’d had really nice dreams. Her smile turned into a grimace, though, when she saw Adam’s worried expression. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t freak out.”

But she could already feel serious anxiety setting in. She just couldn’t handle any more right now. She pulled her legs out from under the covers and put on her glasses. “What is it?”

“We got the questions for today’s Q&A. The journalists submitted them to Mike, and he slipped them under the door so we had time to prepare.”

“And?”

“And they’re all about your time in juvie, and your hacking abilities.”

It felt like a nightmare. She fell into her pillow, shaking her head. “Why won’t they stop? Oh, God, Adam, I hate this all so, so much.”

He didn’t know what to do. Amelia had always been the strong one, the one who could take a bad situation and rationally develop a plan of action. But she was in no state to solve this problem.

His mind raced. “We have to get them to cancel the Q&A.”

“How?” Amelia moaned from the pillow. “It’s why they all came. Adam, why did we ever do this? I just want to go home.”

“T. J. knows Mike, right?” Adam’s mind was suddenly lucid. “And, for that matter, everyone in the press. He can convince them not to ask those questions.”

“But he’s at the wedding, remember?”

“You have to go get him. No,” he reconsidered. “I’ll go get him. You might run into Ted Bristol.”

Adam scrambled to pull on a pair of shorts and a Polo shirt—one that Lisa had helped him pick out—and dashed out the door. “Don’t worry about anything, Amelia. Order some room service and take a shower and I’ll figure this out, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.”

This was all going to work out. It had to.

CHAPTER 15:

Prepping and Primping

“Oh my God, you must be so nervous.”

Patty glanced up from the InStyle magazine in her lap and into the mirror at the very gay hairdresser wielding a hot curling iron and a coy grin. He was a super thin, bald Asian guy, dressed completely in black, including thick plastic glasses, and he’d clearly had at least six cups of coffee already this morning, or a lot of something else. “Marc, with a C,” he’d introduced himself. Patty didn’t trust hairdressers who had no hair of their own.

She smiled politely. “Why would I be nervous?”

“Well, it’s your sister’s big day. I mean, I’d be totally nervous that I’d ruin it.”

Patty felt her cheeks burn. What did he know? She lifted her eyebrows and he quickly backtracked. “I mean, that I’d step on her dress or forget to grab her flowers or whatever.”

Whew, she thought. “No, I guess I’m not really that nervous.” She went back to the article about finding the right-fitting pair of skinny jeans.

“Ahhhh!!!!” Marc with a C squealed, dropping the curling iron in order to clap as he turned from Patty to Shandi, who had come out of her private room and was twirling in the middle of the Four Seasons salon for all to see, her veil perfectly affixed atop a knot of careful curls. Her bangs were swept gently across her forehead and her makeup was flawless. Even in the tank top and shorts she was wearing, she looked like a princess.

The four other bridesmaids, two from college and two from Atherton, turned in their salon swivel chairs and chirped gleefully along with their respective stylists. Patty swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and called out, hoping she didn’t sound fake. “Oh, Shandi, you look so pretty.”

Not like Shandi heard, anyway. She was already at the mirror, examining each individual curl. “Are you sure?” she asked, pointlessly. Of course, everyone insisted she was absolutely mad if she thought she looked anything less than perfect.

Patty couldn’t wait for all this to be over. She’d gotten good enough at swimming to prove to herself that her athleticism matched that of her nationally ranked tennis-playing sister; getting into Stanford had validated that she could match Shandi academically. But when it came to looks, Patty still felt totally, utterly inferior. She felt okay when Shandi wasn’t around. She could see that her legs were shapely, her stomach flat, her skin smooth, her face not so unattractive. But the minute Shandi came back into the picture, Patty felt like a fat cow. She looked at her sister’s thin frame and high cheekbones and knew that, even if she stopped eating for a month, she’d never be as pretty.

And all she could think about now, sitting here with her hair actually looking really amazing (maybe Marc with a C wasn’t such an idiot), was that she’d never get to feel the way Shandi felt right now, with everyone ooh-ing and ahh-ing around her. That on her own wedding day, when she ought to feel like the most beautiful woman in the world, Patty would come out of her private room, and Shandi would be sitting where Patty was sitting now, and, even in her veil, Patty would feel less beautiful than her effortlessly perfect maid-of-honor sister.

She put down the magazine. Now was not the time to be reading about skinny jeans.

When they were finished, the bridesmaids went up to their rooms to get dressed. Patty was following their lead when the photographer, who had been capturing the morning, asked her to stay behind. “I want to get a few shots of you helping your sister get ready. These are always fantastic.” She winked.

Patty grimaced, looking down at the workout suit she was wearing (why hadn’t anyone warned her the photographer would be on hand?) and reluctantly followed her sister to the bridal suite, where her $7,500 ivory-lace-with-buttons-down-the-back Vera Wang dress hung from a three-panel mirror.

The photographer instructed Patty quickly to put on her own dress while she sat Shandi on the chair at the vanity and directed her to peer into the gold oval mirror. “Just beautiful!” she kept saying.

Patty watched miserably as she slipped on the pale-pink, empire-waist, floor-length strapless chiffon bridesmaid dress she assumed Shandi had picked out because it made her look especially like a blimp.

“Ready?” the photographer asked Patty, who nodded. “Okay, come help your sister put on her gown.”

Shandi slipped off her shorts and shirt, revealing the pristine white-lace La Perla bra and underwear she’d saved for today. She looked like a lingerie model, her thin hips and shoulders balanced by round, firm breasts and butt. “Here, help me climb into this before Diane snaps one of me naked.” She motioned for Patty to come over.

Patty slipped the heavy gown off the hanger and, careful to avoid stepping on the fabric, knelt down so Shandi could support herself on Patty’s shoulder while she stepped into the dress. Patty stood behind her, carefully pulling shut the hook-and-eye clasps that lined the back, as the photographer snapped away.

When Patty was finished, she looked over her sister’s shoulder into the mirror, scanning the dress from the bottom all the way up to her sister’s face. But when she got to Shandi’s eyes they were directed at Patty’s reflection, not her own. Shandi’s face was still and looked…sad.

She was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “You are so beautiful, Patty.”

Patty felt her skin tingle, but didn’t know what to say, and so said nothing. Shandi turned to face her, just a tiny glimmer of wetness in her blue eyes.

“I don’t know when you went from being my kid sister to such a gorgeous, strong woman, but I’m really, really sorry I wasn’t there—or wasn’t paying enough attention—to witness it.”

Patty shook her head and looked down at her feet, not knowing what else to do, but Shandi kept going. She reached her hands up and held her little sister’s cheeks in her hands. “Listen, you have something really special, Patty. Something I never had. You have fearlessness and decisiveness and a lust for life. And I don’t think I’ve ever told you, but I admire you so, so much for that.”

Normally, Patty would write off any affirmative thing her sister said as a backhanded compliment, a patronizing, “Oh, you’re so lucky you have such a good appetite; I wish I could eat like you do!” kind of thing. But Shandi was actually being genuine.

Shandi took a deep breath and turned back to the mirror.

“Do I look okay?” she asked, really seeming to mean it.

This Patty could answer, honestly. She whispered, “You look absolutely stunning, Shandi. Completely, completely beautiful.”

“I’m so nervous, Patty,” Shandi confessed, swallowing hard.

“Don’t be!” Patty said, suddenly jumping at the opportunity to be her sister’s cheerleader. “You’re going to do everything just right. And even if you don’t, no one will notice. They’ll be too busy admiring how perfect you look.”

“Not about getting things right,” Shandi said slowly. “I mean, about the whole thing. About whether I’m doing the right thing. But I guess it’s too late.” She tried to laugh.

Patty felt her heart clinch. Did “about the whole thing” mean “about Chad”?

“No!” Patty exclaimed. “I mean, I feel like it must be totally normal to have doubts right before the big moment, but seriously, Shandi, you shouldn’t. Chad is unbelievable. Totally unbelievable. He’s smart and funny and gorgeous and…you are going to have an amazing life together.”

“You’re the lucky one, Patty.” Shandi neither agreed nor disagreed with what Patty had just said. “You’ve got your whole life in front of you. Can do whatever you want, nothing to tie you down. And you’ve got the personality and courage to do it, you know? Even if I still had your freedom, I’m not sure I’d have your courage to take advantage of it.”

“You’re twenty-two!” Patty laughed. “You’re not exactly old! And you’ve got everything in front of you, plus you’ve got a partner to do it all with!”

Shandi gave her a thanks-but-you-couldn’t-possibly-understand smile. It wasn’t condescending, just…sad.

The photographer coughed softly from the corner. Both sisters had forgotten she was there.

“Sorry to interrupt, ladies, but your mother wants to take a few private pictures with the bride.”

“Of course!” Shandi quickly snapped herself back into wedding mode, her eyes shining brightly in fully confident, self-absorbed, happy-bride fashion.

“Thanks so much for your help, Patty,” she chirped as she followed the photographer out to meet their mother.

CHAPTER 16:

You Can’t Win All The Time

Adam punched the elevator button furiously. “Come on!” he yelled at the button. Now was the chance to be a hero, and he wasn’t going to miss it. The doors finally opened and he rode the elevator to the lobby, dashing to the front desk.

“Where’s the Hawkins-Bronson wedding?” he belted.

“It’s in the Hibiscus Grove, down the street. The next shuttle should be leaving in about five minutes.”

Adam didn’t have five minutes. He rushed outside and stopped under the porte-cochère desperate for a solution. The doorman was helping a woman out of a red Porsche Carrera while her husband stood with the bags waiting for the valet. Adam rushed to the valet stand and grabbed a blank ticket. He ripped the ticket in half and gave the bottom portion to the man, who looked at Adam’s khaki shorts and flip-flops suspiciously.

“Our valet had an emergency phone call,” Adam said calmly. “I’m an office intern, and they asked me to stand in until he’s back.”

Adam glanced nervously over the man’s shoulder, spotting the real valet coming back. But, the man seemed satisfied and handed Adam the key. Adam grabbed it, skipped quickly to the driver’s side, and sped off toward the Hibiscus Grove, his adrenaline pumping with the $160,000 accelerator under his foot.

He left the car outside the small villa nestled next to the Hibiscus Grove and dashed through the door onto the terrace. Elegantly dressed, beautiful people were milling around, sipping champagne, all smiles for the half-dozen photographers swarming the crowd. Adam’s eyes darted around, looking for T. J. Where was he?

He ran to one wall of the terrace. If he stood on it, he could get a better view of the crowd. He climbed up and peered out, his heart racing with adrenaline. “T. J., where are you?” he muttered under his breath.

He scanned the crowd. But his eyes darted back to the corner. Did he just see what he thought he saw? Who was that standing under the palm tree? It couldn’t be…

Adam’s heart sank. No, it didn’t sink; it collapsed, crashed, plummeted to the center of the earth. All the blood in his head rushed to support it and he felt like he was going to faint. Lisa—his Lisa—was in the gazebo. And she was kissing—it couldn’t be! —the Indian guy from the incubator.

He shuddered. He didn’t know how to process this. What the hell was going on? He climbed off the wall and sat down. He needed a drink. A waiter passed by with a tray of mimosas and he grabbed one. He had to see it again, to confirm. He walked closer to the gazebo. There was no doubt: Lisa and Sundeep were holding hands. He was smiling and whispering in her ear and she was laughing, tossing her head, her perfectly sculpted golden curls falling down her back. Adam downed the mimosa and grabbed another.

“Did you decide to crash the wedding?”

Adam turned his head toward the voice. The man with the scotch from last night stood next to him, one hand in his pocket and the other holding a glass of champagne.

“Are you okay?” the man asked, noticing Adam’s distraught expression.

Adam took a deep breath and tried to refocus on why he had come. “I have to find T. J.,” he stammered. “T. J. Bristol. Do you know him?”

The man chuckled. “Sure, he’s my son. He’s right over here.”

Ted turned to motion for T. J., who was standing close by, chatting with an older woman, and so didn’t see the stunned expression on Adam’s face. Holy shit. That’s where he’d seen this guy before; at the party last June, giving the toast for T. J. His brain couldn’t handle all of this.

Ted turned back before Adam had time to recover his expression. He lifted his eyebrows in a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-this-kid grimace as T. J. broke away from his conversation and joined them.

T. J. noticed Adam’s dumbfounded face, too. “I see you two have finally met.”

“Actually, I don’t think we ever officially have.” Ted stuck out his hand jovially. “I’m Ted Bristol. What’s your name?”

“Adam,” Adam stammered, taking Ted’s hand.

T. J. rolled his eyes. “Adam Dory,” he said. “Amelia’s brother.”

Ted clucked his tongue. “Well! Adam Dory!”

Adam blinked his eyes closed, half expecting Ted to punch him.

But instead Ted smiled. “It appears there are two extremely impressive Dorys.”

Ted’s smile was genuine and warm, not conniving, and Adam blushed. There was always talk about Amelia, but it was the first time Adam could remember anyone ever saying he was impressive. He knew it was wrong, but he felt a weird connection with Ted.

“So what’s up?” T. J. asked, “Why on earth would you come to this wedding if you didn’t have to?”

Adam’s mind was racing. If this guy was Ted, that meant Lisa was his daughter, and hadn’t he said last night that he didn’t like her boyfriend? And her boyfriend was Sundeep? Unless she was a total slut and she was kissing all sorts of boys in the gazebo. No, that couldn’t be. Lisa wasn’t a slut. She was perfect—she loved him!

Focus!

“It’s Amelia. The panel, I mean. You have to stop the Q&A,” Adam stammered.

“Too late,” Ted said, showing T. J. and Adam his Android phone, where he was live streaming the conference.

“What do you mean?” Adam grabbed the phone and stared in horror at its screen. Amelia was standing at the side of the stage, about to make her presentation. Adam glanced at his iPhone. It was 10:55 a.m. and he had three frantic texts from Amelia: “Where are you???”

Had he been watching Lisa and Sundeep for that long? How many mimosas did he drink?

“No! We have to stop the Q&A. They’re going to drill her on questions about juvie!” Adam rushed out. T. J. followed.

“The ceremony starts in one hour,” Ted called. “Your mother’s going to kill you if you miss it.”

But neither Adam nor T. J. heard as they dashed back to the stolen Porsche.

CHAPTER 17:

Or Can You?

Adam raced to the side of the stage just as Amelia walked out, taking the microphone from the previous presenter. T. J. left to find Mike. Amelia was scheduled for a ten-minute presentation and a fifteen-minute Q&A. If T. J. could get to Mike fast enough, there was still a chance he could derail the Q&A.

“Found you!” Adam turned at the sound of a familiar voice. Tom Fenway was next to him, one hand on the handle of a rolling suitcase, his face flushed. He’d obviously just come from the airport.

“This is not going to be good,” Adam moaned. But Tom didn’t hear. He was smiling brightly at Amelia, his gem. He obviously hadn’t heard about yesterday’s disaster, Adam thought.

Amelia took a deep breath and began to speak into the microphone. The PowerPoint presentation she’d prepared with Tom and T. J. back in Palo Alto was projected on the screen behind her, and her iPhone and all of the devices controllable by Doreye were on a table in front.

“My very savvy business team helped me prepare a presentation,” she said. Her voice was calm and clear. “It goes through the numbers on our business, the market potential, and lots of other things I’m sure you all are interested in.”

She used the monitor control to click quickly through all the slides, so fast no one could read them. “But I’m going to disappoint you, because I don’t want to talk about any of that today.” She clicked one more time, and the monitor went black.

Adam glanced at Tom. What was she doing? But Tom was still focused on Amelia, beaming like a father proudly watching his son’s first little league game. The audience was silent, and the room was thick with anticipation.

“Instead,” she said, “I’m going to talk about honesty.”

She paused, letting that sink in. “When I was fifteen, I did something very dishonest. First I hacked into the College Board website and adjusted the SAT scores of my foster brother. Then I hacked into an insurance company’s database and adjusted the sales figures of my foster father. And then I hacked into a bank and embezzled money into his account.

“And then one day I woke up and realized that other people were suffering because of what I was doing. That people worthy of recognition for good test scores, worthy of commissions for high sales figures, worthy of the money they worked hard to earn, were being penalized because of what I was doing. And so I confessed, and I stopped, and I accepted my punishment and spent three months in jail.”

No one in the audience dared even to blink in case they might miss something.

“And I wouldn’t do it again,” Amelia said. She shook her head and laughed. “Absolutely not. But I will take what lessons I can from it, and that’s what I’d like to talk about today. You see, through that experience, I met honest people and I met dishonest people, and I learned the difference. I made a vow always to be honest, but I’ve unfortunately learned that there are still a lot of dishonest people in the world, and they don’t always get caught.”

Amelia walked over to the microwave and opened the back panel, pulling out the chip.

“This little chip here,” she held it up, “is the reason Doreye didn’t work during yesterday’s demo.”

She set it aside. “It overrides radio frequencies. The person who put it there is a dishonest person. I won’t slander anyone, but given all you were able to dig up about me, I’m sure you can figure this one out, too.”

Amelia proceeded with a flawless demo, using the iPhone to work all the devices on the table. The audience relaxed, smiling excitedly in anticipation of this stunning new product, working just as well as the hype had promised.

When she was finished with the demo, Amelia turned back to the press. “I believe that, if we work together, and if we’re honest, we can take computer technology to a level none of us has yet conceived. This is just the start.”

Thunderous applause erupted. One by one, the audience started to stand, cheering loudly. Amelia closed her eyes and let out a deep exhale. Adam could see her hands shaking.

Then she added, “I believe there were a few questions you’d prepared. I hope I’ve addressed them adequately.” With that, Amelia walked off the stage, the crowd still applauding.

Tom Fenway opened his arms and Amelia fell into them. “You were absolutely brilliant,” he whispered, planting a grandfatherly kiss on the top of her head. Cameras snapped all around them, the journalists delighting in the perfectly captured moment of mentor-mentee affection.

She stood back and smiled at Tom, her eyes bright. “Thank you so much,” she said quietly.

T. J. ran up to her. “Jesus, Amelia! Where did that come from? You were unbelievable!” He pulled her into a hug, his face radiant with astonishment and adrenaline. “You just catapulted this thing onto a whole new level. Do you have any idea how much you owned that crowd?”

She laughed modestly. “Thank Tom,” she said. “He gives a hell of a pep talk.”

Amelia and Tom exchanged a knowing glance. Right after Adam had left this morning, Tom had called her cell phone to check in. After she’d babbled into the phone, he’d calmly told her she needed to wait exactly three hours to have a breakdown. For now, she had to bolster herself. “Act like it’s not you. Pretend like you’re playing the part of someone else, a fierce and intimidating woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone.” Together, they’d written what she would say and he’d instructed her to stand in front of the mirror as she practiced the speech into her phone.

Amelia finally turned to Adam. Adam didn’t know what to say. He’d failed her, and he knew that she knew it. He’d gotten distracted worrying over Lisa, and somewhere while he was gone, his sister had become…awesome.

“You were amazing,” he finally offered.

“Thanks,” she nodded.

Adam turned to Tom. “Answering their questions before they asked them was a pretty bold strategy.”

Tom smiled. “Well I ain’t often right, but I’ve never been wrong.

Amelia laughed. “Can we please go get lunch now? I’m starving.”

As they walked toward the dining room, Adam dug his hands into his pockets. His fingers landed on something: the flower from Lisa’s hair. He held it up and contemplated it for a moment before tossing it into the garbage can in disgust.

CHAPTER 18:

Here She Comes

Patty was standing in the upstairs sitting room of the Villa next to the Hibiscus Grove, looking out at the wedding guests below. Shandi was taking pictures somewhere and the other bridesmaids were happily drinking champagne and putting the finishing touches on their makeup.

From here, she could see all the guests milling around on the terrace outside. She admired Lisa Bristol’s silky, gold, one-shoulder dress and the little Judith Leiber clutch she carried effortlessly. She looked like a little goddess. What was she doing with that boring Indian guy? Nevertheless, Patty was jealous of Lisa. Not in a malicious way (how could you not like someone so sweet?), but in a wish-I-was-her kind of way.

She took a sip of champagne and scanned the crowd for T. J., but she couldn’t find him. He was probably off with some newly found hot girl, she thought. She heard her phone signal a text message.

From: CHAD

I need to see you immediately. Can you come to my suite downstairs? And come alone!

Patty almost coughed up her drink. Was he serious? In less than an hour he would be married to her sister. What kind of horrible person was he? She felt any lingering attraction melt. This guy was bad news.

She was in the middle of typing an angry response when another text came through.

From: CHAD

URGENT!! PLEASE!!

She sighed. Fine. One more meeting, but if he thought she was going to sleep with him he had another thing coming. She erased what she had started to type and tapped, On my way.

She crept out the side door and back through the lobby to the east wing groom’s quarters, prepping what she was going to say. She wouldn’t even enter the room, just stand outside and tell Chad, defiantly, that it was over and he needed to leave her alone.

Before she could knock on the door, however, it swung open and Chad pulled her by the wrist into the room.

“Chad, I cannot do this anymore,” she said, just as she’d rehearsed on the walk. “You are marrying my sister and—”

“No, I’m not!” Chad shouted, panicking. She’d never seen him so flustered. He was freaking out.

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s gone, Patty! She’s gone!”

Patty looked at him like he was an idiot. “What is wrong with you? She’s taking photos. I was with her an hour ago.”

“No, she’s not!” Chad was pacing back and forth in the room, pressing his hand to his temple, trying to think. “The photographer came in here forty minutes ago looking for her. She said Shandi had asked if she could leave her alone for a few minutes, and when she came back ten minutes later, Shandi was gone. The photographer thought we were having some romantic pre-wedding tryst. I’ve called Shandi a dozen times. I ran around the entire grounds. She’s nowhere.”

Patty looked at the clock. It was 11:42 a.m. The processional started at noon.

“Nothing’s wrong, Chad,” she said calmly. “She’s upstairs in the bridal suite. I just walked past her to come up here,” she lied, wondering whether Shandi actually had been in the bridal suite. “You need to go to the altar and get in place, okay? You’ll see her in, like, twenty minutes, and then you’ll be married and you’ll laugh about this.”

Chad grabbed a bottle of water off the minibar and took a long swig. “You’re right. She probably just got distracted with all the getting ready.”

“Exactly.”

Chad put down the water bottle and gave Patty a hug. “You’re the best,” he said, and ran out the door.

Patty waited thirty seconds, and then ran as fast as she could upstairs to figure out what was going on.

CHAPTER 19:

Competitive Advantage

“I wanted to thank you for today.” Amelia was washing her hands in the bathroom when she heard a thick British accent perfectly articulate each word.

The bathroom was otherwise empty. The blond woman looked Amelia in the eyes and smirked tightly. A moment passed before she took a lipstick tube out of her purse and leaned toward the gold-rimmed mirror to apply it.

Amelia looked at the woman’s reflection in the mirror, her hands still under the running water. “What for?” she asked cautiously.

“For putting us on the map,” the woman said, her eyes focused on her mouth in the mirror, carefully drawing the deep red to the edge of her top lip. She puckered a few times to settle the lipstick, and then she turned to face Amelia and stuck out her hand. “I’m Violet.”

Amelia studied the woman. She couldn’t tell how old she was. She could have been twenty or thirty-five. Her wardrobe was too sophisticated for college, but her skin had the flawless glow of a teenager. Amelia shook her hand but didn’t introduce herself. Violet obviously knew who she was.

“What do you mean?” she asked instead.

“I mean, before this, no one knew a thing about RemoteX. We weren’t even invited to the conference. We snuck inside the day before, pretending to be hotel staff, and added our booth to the expo floor. Now, though, when people leave, all they’re going to be talking about is RemoteX. Doreye and RemoteX. Money can’t buy the kind of publicity you just got us.”

“But they think you’re dishonest. My brother figured out how you cheated. We exposed you.”

Violet smiled. “They think RemoteX is dishonest for now. But give me a week, maybe two, and the story will change. Besides, any press is good press.”

Amelia was looking at her suspiciously.

“I knew you’d never figure it out in time,” Violet said. “Your brother, however, I underestimated. He’s not as naïve as you. There’s real potential in Adam Dory.” She smiled at Amelia, but Amelia didn’t seem to register.

“You see, your problem is that you assume people are good. Despite all that you’ve been through, in your happy world people are incapable of acting selfishly or maliciously. You never even thought to consider that I might have done something to mess up your presentation. Instead, you worried that you’d messed up something.”

Amelia stared at Violet in silence, studying her warily. Violet shrugged it off with a laugh.

“Look at me like that all you want.” She turned back to the mirror and touched her hair to pull it into place, dropped her lipstick into her purse and snapped it shut. “Not all of us are cute little orphans with Tom Fenway in our back pocket. Some of us have to make things happen.”

“See you around, Amelia.” She waved as she walked out the door. Amelia watched her leave through the reflection in the mirror.

CHAPTER 20:

Speech!

Chad’s hands were clammy and his cheeks were a deep crimson. He’d been standing at the altar for fifteen minutes. The string quartet had repeated Bach’s “Air on the G String” three times, waiting for the cue to switch to the processional music so the wedding could begin.

Chad felt everyone staring at him, looking for his expression. People were discreetly checking their watches and iPhones. The wedding was supposed to have started already. Why wasn’t anyone making an announcement?

Chad tried to push away his worry and focus on how beautiful everything was. The guests were assembled on the lawn at the Hibiscus Grove, under a white canopy tent. The grass had been trimmed to the length of a putting green so as not to catch on women’s heels. The curved, dark redwood altar was covered in white lilies—Shandi’s favorite—and looked out onto the ocean where the high sun was gleaming over the water. Quiet bamboo fans whirred over the three hundred guests, all seated in cushioned white folding chairs. The aisle between his family’s side and hers was sprinkled with white rose petals. His eyes followed the aisle down to the French doors of the hotel’s side terrace, through which, he was sure, the ushers would soon be guiding his mother to the front row so that the ceremony could start and he could marry Shandi.

His eyes strained to see past the doors. Where was Patty? Where was anyone? Craig, his best man, leaned over to him. “Don’t worry, man,” he said, “The longer you have to wait, the better the sex will be tonight.” Chad forced a smile, appreciating Craig’s clumsy effort to cheer him up.

The crowd turned at the sound of the doors pushing open. Finally! Chad jumped, looking anxious.

But it wasn’t Patty, or Shandi, or the ushers. It was…T. J. Bristol.

Chad hadn’t known T. J. that long, but in all their encounters he’d never seen him at all un-composed. Yet here was T. J., his clothes a mess, his hair disheveled, with a distraught look on his face. From his spot at the altar, he saw T. J.’s chest rising and falling in deep breaths, like he’d just finished a sprint.

T. J. ran midway down the aisle and stopped, looking up at Chad with eyes full of concern and opened his mouth to speak.

 EPILOGUE

From: Ted Bristol, ted@gibly.com

To: Adam Dory, Adam@Doreye.com

Subject: Great Meeting You

Hi Adam,

I hope you enjoyed crashing the wedding! Did you stick around long enough for all the drama? Poor Ron Hawkins had about five heart attacks.

Am leaving Maui tomorrow, but would love to grab another scotch with you when we’re back in the Bay Area. Don’t worry—it’s on me. I’m impressed with what you’re doing with Doreye and can tell you’re very driven. I’m an excellent judge of character.

Shoot me an email. I’m looking forward to it.

Ted

“Sir, I don’t want to tell you again. Turn off all electronic devices.” The stewardess’ aggravated tone startled Adam, who was glued to his iPhone. He glanced up, gave a slight smile and apologized.

“Adam, it’s a real threat,” Amelia sighed, “The signals that the 3G network gives off can interfere with communication and flight control devices in the cockpit. Your phone could endanger everyone on this flight!”

She brushed her hair away from her glasses as she glared at Adam. It had been a rough couple of days and she was exhausted, ready to head back to Palo Alto.

“What’s the email, anyway? Good news? You’re smiling.”

With a swipe, Adam saved the email message before shutting down his phone.

“It was nobody, Amelia. Just spam.”

Author’s Biography

Sadie Hayes holds several degrees from Stanford University. She has spent years working in the tech industry, both as an entrepreneur and as an investor. The Anti-Social Network is the second episode in her new series: The Start-Up. If you work in Silicon Valley, you might not know Sadie Hayes. But she knows you.

Follow Sadie: www.twitter.com/DigitalSadie

www.Doreye.com

Want more of The Start-Up?

Episode 4: Reverse Engineering

Coming Soon!

Stay in touch with Sadie and The Start-Up series at:

www.Doreye.com

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Author’s Biography