Chapter One
Spending a few days without the Internet wouldn’t kill Sarah Burton. But it just might bury her career six feet under. She could practically read the tombstone.
Here lies the career of Sarah Burton. Co-founder of thriving tech start-up LinkDigital, millionaire by twenty-five, and a Forbes magazine darling—all thrown away on a vanity project.
That was probably too many words for an epitaph. Plus, considering how much of her own money she had tied up in this new company, Sarah would be too broke to spring for a slab of marble big enough for all those words.
To be fair, this project wasn’t a passing whim. She’d spent years building Global Office—GO for short. It was her biggest business risk and her greatest dream.
She only wished it hadn’t become such a nightmare.
When the network had crashed overnight—again—taking the entire GO server with it, Sarah had pinched herself to make sure it was really happening and not a bad dream.
It was just the latest in a string of issues to plague her and this new venture.
The problems had started when an adult film company had already trademarked her first proposed business name. Then, halfway through development, a competitor launched a nearly identical model to the one she’d planned.
The biggest disaster—the one that really could’ve ended it all—happened a month earlier. One of her main investors had a change of heart, leaving Sarah to invest more of her own personal savings or risk shuttering the whole deal before it even launched.
One of those issues on its own was a bit of bad luck. Put together, it seemed like a curse. If she’d been superstitious, she would have pulled the plug.
Crouching down to get a better look at the pile of wires—and the woman pulling them out of the battered brick wall with total abandon—Sarah braced herself for the worst.
“Give it to me straight.”
Maisie Spencer, the IT employee she’d borrowed from her functioning company, LinkDigital, lifted her head. “It’s not good, boss.”
Sarah would have guessed as much.
“What’s the damage?”
“Server is fried. By the looks of this, it was only a matter of time before it did. Do you back up?”
Of course Sarah backed up. You didn’t become the Chief Product Officer of a thriving tech company without knowing to do something as basic as regularly backing up a server.
Gritting her teeth, Sarah nodded. “Every night.”
“Off-site?”
“By cloud.”
“Glad to hear it.” Nodding in approval, Maisie tugged at a few more wires. Sarah grimaced as another fell to the wayside. “Once you’re back online, you’ll be fine.”
“And how long will that be?”
“Depends.”
If Sarah ground her teeth any harder, she’d end up with TMJ—or at least a pounding headache.
“What does it depend on?”
“How long you want to be operational.”
Sarah’s left eye twitched. “Let’s say I want to be running forever.”
“Nothing runs forever. Not without maintenance.”
“Of course.” She breathed in deeply through her nose, counted to ten, and then released it with control that would’ve earned her a gold star in yoga class. “The website launches in a week. What do we have to do to be fully operational by then and to stay that way for the foreseeable future?”
“So you want a long-term fix, not a bridge.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “That’s right.”
Maisie sat upright. “Right now, you’re working with an old system. Like I said, I’m surprised it didn’t crap out sooner.”
“You mean the network itself or the entire infrastructure?”
“The infrastructure.”
Well, crap. If the infrastructure in the office was to blame—the servers, the wiring, pretty much everything but the kitchen sink—it was no wonder the whole system had given out.
While working in a Gilded Age warehouse had its charm, it also came with antiquated wiring. It was probably the biggest issue most businesses operating in Lincoln’s renovated Haymarket District faced. She’d known they were on borrowed time.
She’d just hoped that time would last a bit longer.
Right now, there was no point bemoaning her past decisions. She needed a plan. A good one to dig her—and her career—out of the ground.
“Where do we start?” Sarah asked.
“The good news is, I’ve put in another patch of sorts to get you back online for now. But who knows how long that will last? A couple days. Weeks.”
A couple of hours?
“So the bad news is . . .”
“You need to rewire. Now.”
A discomforting mix of anxiety and the excitement that came from going into problem-solving mode coursed through Sarah. “We’ll need to bring in building maintenance to take down the last bits of drywall and ceiling tiles, which I’m less concerned about.”
Her team