Chapter Thirty Townsend
Chapter Thirty
Townsend
When Townsend hears the knock on his door Friday evening, he assumes it’s Talia, hands too full to punch in the key code. But when he opens the door, her friend Meera Ratnam—a woman he has not seen or spoken to in over two years—is waiting on the other side.
“Hi,” he says, too perplexed to say much else.
“May I come in?” Without waiting for permission, Meera slips past him into his condo.
“It’s been a while.” Townsend watches as Meera walks a slow circle around his living room. She only ever visited his place once or twice during their . . . whatever it was, but still, having her here feels like a violation of some sort, like a glitch in the matrix.
She nods without looking at him. “Two years.”
“Is Talia okay?” Only two ties bind Townsend and Meera together, and he can’t imagine that she’s here about the one that doesn’t involve his girlfriend.
“She’s fine,” Meera says, “other than . . . you know.”
“Right.” Even after years with no contact, so much unspoken information exists between them, all thanks to their shared connection.
Not for the first time, Townsend wonders if Meera is bitter that he ended up with her friend—a total coincidence, but probably a tough pill to swallow nevertheless.
As far as he knows, Meera has never mentioned their prior relationship to Talia, so perhaps she thinks of Townsend as little as he thinks of her.
That’s the beauty of summer flings: You fuck, and then you forget (unless, of course, someone makes the mistake of catching feelings).
“I’m not here about Talia.” Meera flops down onto his sectional, making what sounds like a small groan of pain as she does so.
“Okay.” He joins her on the couch, because continuing to stand feels silly.
“I’m here for a job.”
“A job where?”
“A job with your company,” she says, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. Then she stares him down, daring him to choose his answer carefully.
Townsend wasn’t sure what to expect from this visit when he let Meera into his home, but it certainly wasn’t this. “Don’t you work at Cuff with Talia?”
“Not anymore.”
“What happened?”
“Cuff performed a security audit and accused me of misusing my access to privileged data.” She pauses and then adds, without apology, “I used my credentials to look up your past conversations with Amanda. A few times, actually.”
Talia has already told him as much, but Townsend still takes the opportunity to act indignant. He knows he probably won’t have the upper hand for long—at least, not if this conversation goes the way he suspects it will. “That’s a violation of my privacy.”
“I know. That’s why I was fired. And that’s why I need you to hire me.”
“But . . .” Is she really going to make him say it? “Why would you want to work for me, given our history?”
Meera blinks at him, her expression betraying nothing.
“I need to have health insurance. I don’t know if you know this, but I have an autoimmune disease.
It’s what inspired this idea I had for a holistic autoimmune-care platform.
But I never could come up with a name for it.
” She waggles her finger at him, like he’s a naughty schoolboy.
“AutoInTune. A little gimmicky, but cute.”
After two years of waiting for the other shoe to drop, it’s almost a relief, having this accusation out in the open.
Plus, Meera has nothing to back up her claims, save for a few private conversations shared beneath her sheets in the early hours of the morning.
She has a flimsy anecdote; he has plausible deniability.
“You’re not seriously suggesting what I think you are, are you? ”
“You built your start-up off of my idea, Townsend.”
He summons a laugh. Make her feel small, he coaches himself. Make her feel stupid. “Actually, my start-up was inspired by my father’s rheumatoid arthritis, which caused him to develop heart disease and die.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says, the empty platitude sounding even more hollow than usual coming from her mouth. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you stole your idea from me.”
“Even if what you’re saying were true, you can’t prove anything.”
“It is true, and I can prove you’re a thief.”
Thief. Why did that word feel so familiar? “As much as I’d love to have you join the team, we aren’t hiring right now.”
Meera raises an eyebrow. “You’re not hiring? How big is your team?”
“I’m hiring to scale at the moment.”
“Do you plan to expand your budget for new hires?”
“Eventually.”
“I guess that should be expected,” she says, “given that AutoInTune is currently hemorrhaging money.” Then she shoots him a withering smile, as though to say Gotcha.
Except he isn’t convinced that she has him beat. “My company’s finances aren’t a matter of public record, so you might want to check your sources.”
“Well, you might want to check Reddit, because your company’s finances are a hot topic.”
Dammit. He needs someone to scrub that goddamn Reddit thread from the internet. “You work for a dating app. You of all people should know better than to believe everything you read online.”
“I believe Orson Livingston, who commented on the thread and basically called you a sham. He’s a VC at Silicon Hills, right? Where you tried to get more funding?”
Townsend’s face must betray his surprise, because Meera grins again, encouraged.
“I talked to him a few days ago. I sent him a message, asking why he would call you out so publicly, considering you grew up together. He told me some story about a party you and your friends threw at his parents’ house in high school.
You fired a paintball gun at one of their neighbors and fucked up his eye. And you never got in trouble for it.”
Townsend remembers that party, that neighbor, that horrible mistake. He’s tried to put that night out of his head, but he still remembers. He was young and stupid. Remembering what he did is punishment enough.
“Orson said he’s tired of watching assholes and liars win,” Meera continues. “And I have to say that I agree with him.”
“Who says I’m a liar?”
“Sage Clinic might, after they investigate those user metrics you provided for your company.”
“How—?” Townsend hasn’t told anyone except for his dad’s buddy, Carter Bonier, about the due diligence request and what it may potentially uncover. Not even Talia. The only person who could possibly know . . . “Are you working with Amanda?”
The glint in Meera’s eyes is positively gleeful now, almost crazed. “All this time you thought you should be scared of Amanda,” she says, “but really, you should be afraid of me.”
Is this really the same woman he met through that entrepreneurship intensive at UT Austin a couple summers earlier?
The chill, self-deprecating divorcée with the wrinkled T-shirts and creaky bed frame?
Townsend doesn’t know what has happened in her life over the past two years, but something has changed her, turned her into someone nefarious.
“What did Amanda tell you? Where is she?”
“Forget Amanda,” says Meera. “I’m just taking back what is mine. You owe it to me.”
Facing off from opposite ends of the couch, Townsend studies her, looking for the chink in her armor.
There’s no denying that she has more information than he would like—but would she ever actually do anything with it?
He thinks of the complaints Talia has made in passing about her friend: lazy, flaky, apathetic.
Not someone who would have the gumption to ruin his life, since she isn’t even willing to fix her own.
“Believe what you want,” he says, “but the fact is that I don’t owe you anything.
Not as my girlfriend’s friend, not as someone I used to hook up with, and not even as someone I simply pity. ”
Meera’s face falls; clearly, this isn’t the response she anticipated. “Talia deserves so much better than you.”
“Right. Sure.” Townsend is fired up now, spoiling for a fight.
“Don’t pretend you’re such a great friend to Talia when you’ve been lying to her, keeping our past a secret all this time.
Talia is a good person. She covered for your ass at work, and this is how you repay her?
From now on, you fix your own problems. Don’t expect me or Talia to bail you out. ”
With this, Meera stands, a bit wobbly on her feet, and suddenly it occurs to Townsend: the brick.
Could Meera have tossed it through his car window?
But she can barely get off the couch; it’s hard to imagine her lobbing a brick with enough force to shatter a rear window.
Once she’s successfully gotten herself on steady ground, she turns to face him.
“You’re an asshole,” she says, “and you deserve all the shit that’s coming your way.”
“I welcome it,” Townsend replies. He keeps his cool, but her words are ominous—is she talking about the collapse of his business? Amanda’s continued harassment? Or something even worse?
They stare each other down for a moment, and Townsend knows the question on her mind, because he has the same question for her: Are you going to tell Talia about this?
But neither of them voices it, and eventually, Meera leaves.
Townsend tries him twice, but the private investigator that Carter hooked him up with doesn’t answer his phone.
It’s a Friday night; the guy presumably has a life.
Still, it’s fucking annoying. This creep is getting a lot of money from Townsend to track Amanda down, and he needs to work faster.
Clearly, Amanda is talking. Clearly, she needs Townsend to shut her up for good.
He’s just poured himself a drink (yes, he’s trying to cut back, but tonight, he needs one) when Talia calls.
All he wants is an hour to himself, so he doesn’t answer; maybe she’ll assume he’s working.
But after a minute, she calls again. Well, fuck, he thinks.
Meera probably went and told her everything. Time to face the music.
“Hey, babe,” he answers. “Sorry I missed you the first time. What’s up?”
Her tone sounds clipped, her words rushed—not because she’s pissed, he quickly realizes, but because she’s afraid. “Townsend? You there? Please, you need—”
Silence. “Tal? Need what?”
She doesn’t respond. Instead, the phone beeps in his ear, signaling that the call has been dropped.
Within a few minutes, he’s in his newly repaired BMW, speeding his way to Talia’s place in SoCo.
During the fifteen-minute drive, a dozen different thoughts cross his mind: Amanda has broken in again and left another note.
Or worse, Amanda has broken in to hold Talia hostage and currently has a gun trained on her face.
He thinks he’s exhausted every possible option—but nothing can prepare him for what he experiences when he turns down Talia’s street: sirens. Flashing lights. Fire everywhere.
At first, he’s too mesmerized by the flames—ten feet high, spitting and crackling like something alive—to think straight.
Then he realizes those flames engulf Talia’s home.
A fire engine roars down the street behind him, and he pulls over to the side to jump out of his car, barely taking a few steps before collapsing to his knees.
Talia. Head spinning, he calls out her name, fumbles for his phone, tries to get to his feet—but before the panic can fully set in, she’s running right into his arms. For a moment, they just sway in silence, shaking even as they attempt to hold each other steady.
Sobs rack her body. “Townsend,” she cries. “My house. It’s gone.”
All he can do is repeat the same words of comfort, again and again: “You got out. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
They both know the last part is a lie.