The fact that I’d not taken the time to read a single one was bad enough. But worse was the fact that I’d jumped to conclusions—I’d thought Averin had to be at least forty-something to have that publication record.
And I’d thought Averin was a man.
She was neither forty-something nor a man. I’d thought she was a grad student, honestly. A gorgeous one too. When I’d first seen her, my mouth had gone dry, the tips of my fingers had twitched. It was such a dick move, such a massive error of assumptions that I still got a hot, embarrassed feeling when I thought about it. I may have played it cool when I was standing in front of her—I was terrific at playing that game—but I’d known I had fucked it up, and for some reason, it had felt uniquely awful to fuck it up with her.
“How’s he doing?” asks Jasper, and he sounds genuinely concerned.
“He’s a stubborn cuss, and he’s got me working like a dog. Which I guess means he’s doing all right. Doesn’t quite have his color back yet, but he’s a little better every day.”
“You brought him home yet?”
“Yeah. On Thursday.” I let that sit, enjoying Jasper’s silence. Thursday, the day Jasper called to insist I see Averin as soon as possible, I was helping get my seriously injured father discharged from the hospital, settling him into a house I’d spent the last three days preparing for his arrival, moving furniture and setting up ramps and installing grip bars for his tub and toilet.
Fucking Jasper.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I really am.”
Anyone else would probably hear this as lukewarm, barely a gesture. But Jasper hardly ever apologizes, so if he’s said it, I know he means it. And I can forgive Jasper for not getting it, I guess—the guy’s got no family of his own, and pretty much all he does is work. He laughs off the jokes people make at the office about his being robotic, a machine, but I know that shit gets to him. I know he tries.
“Averin,” I say, shifting the focus back to where he’ll feel more comfortable. “She doesn’t want anything to do with Beaumont.”
“Try again,” he says, and I have to laugh at how fast he’s returned to form.
“I’m serious, Jas. Aside from the fact that I was shit in the meeting, I don’t think she’s interested at all in what we do.” I have a memory of the way she waved a hand over me, where I stood in the doorway. Your suit, she said. Your face.
“So she’s a tough case. But that doesn’t mean she’s impossible. You’ve handled lots of cases like this.”
I had, actually. In fact, usually, tough cases are my specialty. Two months ago, I closed a guy who’d had his name on four medical patents that Beaumont wanted to develop. He’d been tenured faculty at his university for fifteen years, making good money, his wife and his kids happy and settled in their town. He had a top-of-the-line lab on campus and grad students that worked hard for him. There was really no reason for him to move on.
Until I convinced him otherwise.
Most people think recruiting comes down to one or two major things—money, usually, is the first one, or location—if you can convince someone that they’re going to be moving to a better place, one with more opportunities, or a better climate, whatever. But it’s more complicated than that. A good recruiter gets to know as much as he can about his target’s life, looks at that life in all its tangled, sometimes piecemeal, and always personal complexity. A good recruiter knows that people might move for money or location, but they stay for all kinds of different reasons—politics, partners, the sports scene, dog parks, whether there’s a good local bookstore. Beaumont has branches in seventeen states, and I know them all inside and out. I know the offices and the people who work in them; I know the surrounding areas and the shopping districts and the best places to go to school. I know everything that might turn a recruit on, that might scare them off.
Usually.
“She seems different,” I say, stacking more slate.
“Listen. Since we talked, I met again with Greg,” Jasper says, his voice serious. Greg is head of R&D, basically our boss, though Jasper and I work with more independence than probably anyone at corporate headquarters. “He’s decided Averin is his top prospect. And if we get her, he says he’ll let us out of the non-compete.”
Holy shit. I drop a piece of slate.
If we get out of the non-compete, Jasper and I have our shot, what we’ve been working toward for the last seven years. We could go independent, start our own consulting firm—rather than being employed by a single company, doing their R&D recruiting, we go out on our own. We scout talent, we shop it. Sports agents for scientists, basically. We’d work all over the world. We’ve built up contacts everywhere.
It’s the non-compete that’s kept us at Beaumont, and if we get out of it, we can make this happen.
If I can get Averin.
“I’ll get her.” But even as I say it, I think of that firm set to her mouth, that sharp-eyed look she gave me. She looked at me like I’d come to steal the eggs from her nest, and while I’d dealt with targets that were protective of their work, I got the sense that there was something else to the way she’d looked at me as a threat.
“You have a plan?”
“No,” I say honestly, picking up one of the shards from the piece of slate I’d dropped. My life is chaos right now, being away from the office and here taking care of my dad. And yet I’d worked my ass off for seven years, for longer than that, really, and all of it had been for this kind of chance. If I need Averin, I’ll find a way to get back in her good graces and to ignore the inconvenient and entirely unprofessional effect she has on me. “But I’ll make one.”
* * * *
I’m back at my dad’s place by seven, but it feels like midnight to my body, which hasn’t seen that kind of hard labor in years. In Texas, on the road, I work until I’m dead tired, and while I get to the gym almost every day, it’s nothing like a day at the yard, which is standing, lifting, pulling, stacking, cranking.
My dad got hurt doing this kind of work, and I’m struck with a fresh wave of guilt. I have that guilt generally, have had it since I left home, but it’s not even close to what I’ve felt since I got the call last week from the hospital. Your father’s taken a fall, the nurse had said, and I’d had to ask her to repeat it, just to let it sink in.
Sharon, my dad’s neighbor and part-time employee at the salvage yard, is in the kitchen, stirring something that smells delicious on the stove. “Potato and leek,” she says, as I set my wallet and keys on the counter. “Want some?”
“Thanks, Sharon. How’s he doing?”
“I think he terrorized the home health aide today,” she says. “He made her take apart some clock he’s trying to repair. When I got here, she said he wouldn’t even let her do the sponge bath he’s supposed to get.”
Shit, I think. Guess I’m doing the sponge bath. “I’ll call the service tomorrow and apologize.” It’s only for this first week, the home health service, but still, I want to stay on their good side.
Sharon shrugs. “You know, by the end of it I don’t even think she minded. She asked where she could leave all the tools so she could work more on it tomorrow when she comes.”
I have to laugh, imagining this. My dad is eccentric, no doubt about it, but he’s charming as hell too, and he’s always getting people interested in the same oddities that preoccupy him. When I was growing up, my favorite days at the salvage yard were when the polished, wealthy clients would come in, looking for something mint-condition, some high-priced sideboard or chandelier. They’d talk to my dad for twenty minutes, and all of a sudden, they’d