The Insider

Chapter 9

Two weeks after her boss' return, Miranda was slowly learning how to work with him. He was a man of few words that gave out very few instructions on what he wishes to be done.

No wonder he wanted to work with Mr. Glen so much, Miranda thought. She discovered that Mr. Lawrence finds great trouble in communicating his myriad thoughts, they being consisted of highly complicated mathematical algorithms. Add this to the fact that he appears to be equally secretive about a lot of things, so much so that he would sometimes stop in the middle of delegating work to her if he suddenly realizes that the matter on hand is classified as highly confidential in nature.

With his and Glen's long years of working together, she imagines that they must have had a sort of short-hand on how to communicate with each other as well as a very deep feeling of mutual trust.

Although she struggled with communicating with him professionally, the boss becomes a different person when they are on a break. He would constantly joke around and tease her mercilessly, his favorite topic of which is her opinion on her 'maturity'.

The boss is only thirty-three, a decade older that Miranda, but his hair is already littered with grays. She imagines it may be due to his highly stressful work at Lindbergh, which he appears to love so much. Despite his frequent jokes, Miranda couldn't take offense in them for she knows how far the gap is between his and her professional experience and achievements.

From gossips that she gathered from the grapevines, especially when he hasn't returned from Thailand yet, she learned that he was Lindbergh's golden boy back in the day. She heard that he invented a lot of advancements that helped the company grow.

They said he was so smart and so hard-working that he practically lived in the office. But they also said that this caused him to skip on the family life altogether. They said he once had a lover who broke up with him because she thought he loved his work more than her.

The last of these gossips, Miranda did not find hard to believe. She's seen his dedication to his work and she wouldn't doubt if anyone will get jealous of it. For some nights, she will find him still deep in phone conversations and frowning at his computer screen long after the sun has set.

Miranda tried her best to leave the office after her boss, as she was taught that that's what an ideal subordinate should do. However, Lawrence will most times send her away, warning her that she wouldn't have any sort of transportation to take her home if she stayed to wait for him to finish up.

Sometimes Miranda will wait up, telling him there are still some work that she intends to finish and the two of them will order Chinese take-outs, laugh at each other during dinner, return to work for a few more hours, until he eventually shuts down his laptop, goes to her and offer to take her home. But most nights, he stays at the office alone.

As for Lawrence, he found solace in Miranda's presence during the past couple of weeks. She's a welcome distraction from the turbulent office situation relating to the leak of Project Phoebe information.

Apparently, the Board decided to keep information on the data breach under wraps, afraid that stockholders will suddenly withdraw from the company. They also decided that the main remedy that should be resorted to is to ensure that the data bought by EMC cannot be accessed into. As lead developer of the project, the burden of ensuring this remedy falls entirely upon Lawrence's shoulders, at least until Finance advises that they have gained enough money to fund project roll out and beat EMC in introducing the product to the market.

Hoping that the the company goes through all this hullabaloo, preferably unscathed, Lawrence looked at his new assistant who now busily sorts various papers on her desk.

Her innocence is refreshing and she's given him a lot of novel ideas on how to address his tasks. She amazes him at how much she understands the job despite her short amount of working experience at the office and despite the very little information that he lets on.

One time, she noticed an error in the design on integrated circuit for Project Phoebe's memory module that he asked her to file. She pointed it out to him, telling him that she's noticed this anomaly even before when she was browsing the project's files in her workstation.

He was very thankful for this information because it greatly helped him in further diminishing the value of the data presently in EMC's possession. At least he knows that their research will be further stumped by this problem in the program even after they manage to unlock the data.

A knock on his door breaks Lawrence reverie. He looked up to see Miranda sticking her head into the office.

"Sir, the Vice President called, she said please check your phone as she's been having a hard time trying to reach you."

Lawrence frowned, he wondered what Karen wants this time.

"OK, Miranda. Thank you," he said, picking up his phone and checking out what Karen is up to.

He noticed three missed calls and two messages in his notification panel. Am I on silent mode? He thought, wondering why he didn't hear the calls and messages come through.

After he clicked the message icon at the bottom of his phone, the color on his face left him as the implication of Karen's messages dawned on him. Her first text read:

Renz, the Thai police caught the fucking asshole who sold the data to EMC. He's already brought in for questioning. Will wait for further details of arrest. Update you later.

But nothing can prepare Lawrence for the content of her second message.

Fuck it Renz! Thai asshole just ratted out that he's sold data with you as his accomplice! BoD is being briefed on this as I type. I know he's a lying piece of shit. Leave the office now and call me ASAP.