The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,70
him place his palms on his thighs. “Kate’s in a bit of a bind, you see. As of tomorrow, I will be merging my company, Digitools, with Zeneration, the sponsor of this competition. It will be publicly announced in a month. Since you signed a nondisclosure agreement as part of the registration process, you can’t talk to anyone about any of this. Especially Kate.”
The NDA.
Damn it.
He continued. “Technically, since Kate’s part of the Zeneration family as of tomorrow, she can’t win this contest. She’ll be disqualified because family of full-time employees are not allowed to compete. Your case is different. Your father was a contractor, not a full-time staffer. And with his job loss, he’s no longer affiliated with the company anyway.”
While I wanted to punch his face off, I hung on to his every word. I had no idea where this was going.
“Kate can’t win this competition. It’ll be a PR nightmare. We originally planned to ask you to throw the competition so she’d lose, but now the Zeneration and Digitools PR guys are telling me you’re the only American team left in this contest. We can’t have a non-American win, not for a competition of a large-scale U.S. military contractor. Zeneration’s been plastering this contest all over our website and social media. It would ruin us. And ruin the deal.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And these wristbands? What’s the deal with them. Are they yours? Digitools?”
“Yes. We’ve collected biometric data on all of you to show us how people respond to threats in poor weather conditions, while lacking food and water. The GPS is a little spotty, though. We need to work on that. Those robots are ours too. Now that we’re merging with Zeneration, the government will have access to all this data when they build out their military robotic technology.”
That didn’t sound good. “So what do you want from me?” My stomach sank with that question. A lot of this mystery had been answered or solved. We were now at the part where the evil person disclosed the malicious plan. Like Pete did when he almost Tasered my balls.
He scooted up in his chair. “This is the good part. Effective momentarily, we’re changing the rules to allow teams to break apart into solo participants. A single person can win the whole grand prize.”
He grinned at me like an overzealous game show host. “That’s where you come in. According to our analysts studying the video camera data, for a while Kate and you were projected to be in first place getting to the finish line. But now, with her leg injury, they’re expecting you two to come in fourth. Team TBD would lose anyway.” He took a deep breath in, then exhaled from his nose. “You need to drop her and win, by yourself.”
My mouth gaped, but no words came out. My chest tightened at the thought of doing this competition without Kate.
Robbie Anderson-Steele leaned back farther in his chair, making the wood creak. His steely eyes narrowed. “For you, under the condition that you will never breathe a word of this to Kate, declaring yourself independent would grant you a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus. So essentially, you’ll be compensated another twenty thousand on top of the fifty thousand you’ll earn if you win the whole thing. You get to keep it even if you lose. But if I find out you’ve told her anything”—he pulled out a manila folder from a pile of papers on his desk—“I’ll sue you for contract breach. And your parents will be left to beg on the streets.”
I shook my head. “Why don’t you just tell Kate? Why make all of this so complicated?” The words barely croaked out.
He sprang forward in his chair, making my head reflexively jerk back. “Kate and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things concerning her future happiness and well-being. She’s already upset with me for acting in behalf of her own best interests. And this will just make her think I’m taking more things away from her. Simply put, she wouldn’t understand. I’m protecting her from embarrassment and even more hostility. It’s best to avoid this conversation with Kate altogether.”
He stood up. Meeting over. No handshake. “I can tell