Chapter 2 At the Office (1)

'Hmph! That was impressively fast,' Clara thinks and smiles to herself. When she got a good look at him, she learned she was right. He was the President, Sebastian Colfer. And he was still staring at her, very intently and with a sinister smile on his face.

She stuck the last RFID inside the room she was working and noticed a pair of feet right in front of her. 'Here's another pervert I will need to take care of,' she thought. Looking at the man's shoe size, he was probably around 6 feet tall. It will be a bit harder to ward him off because of his height, but she knows she can easily block him off.

'What was that sticker for?' The man asks. She looks up from the floor. 'Dammit, it's the President.'

'Sir, we have explained all the installations on the docket that were handed to you this morning. We will finish the installation in two hours, and it would be better if I showed you what our technology does in your office than explain it here.' Clara stands up and looks around the room. 'I would think that you wouldn't want everybody here to know what it does, either. Am I right?' she asked with eyebrows raised. 'I know you are tech-savvy and all, but it will be worth it if you can wait until we reach your office. The visuals are very nice,' Clara explained.

'I have all the visuals I need here,' his gaze raked its way from the toes of her feet to the top of her head. 'Plus, I doubt you'd finish in 2 hours. You and your 2 guys have been here since 8 am, and for the last 2 hours, you haven't even managed to finish half of this floor. I think you should have brought in more people so you could finish faster. Are you even up to the task of providing the security equipment for our shipping company?" He mocked, trying to rile her up. He heard about her reputation for having a very short temper.

'If you hired us to do the entire building, then I would have brought in more people, but as you stipulated, you only required us to cover the two main floors. We will finish in two hours, but if you leave now, we might even finish faster,' she clenched her jaw. 'Relax, Clara! You need this project.'

Clara, Max, and Jeremy should not be here today, but their assistant mistakenly double-booked their technicians, and now they were the only ones left. They built this technology and software from scratch, and there was no doubt they could do it themselves. Plus, she was here because she enjoyed being on-site for the initial installation, anyway. The last thing she wanted to do was to get all sweaty and grimy when she had hired hands available, but since the situation called for it Clara wasn't one to back down from a challenge.

Maybe it was better they are handling this installation after all, especially if Mr. Colfer had any snarky comments about their product. Then they would be here to answer him directly. This didn't change the fact that she felt uncomfortable talking to him while currently hunched down on her knees. She was already short enough that people usually disregarded her stature in the company.

She had to bribe Max and Jeremy to come with her today. This was not how they had expected spending their Friday, but she told them that dinner was on her, at the most expensive restaurant in town, and they gladly agreed. Food always motivated these two, and she knew how to manipulate them.

They finished at 11:30 and took a much-deserved break, having forgotten how much work it took to install their systems. The good thing was that she shaved thirty minutes off of the installation time, otherwise, they might have missed the promised deadline. She had to compose herself and pretend that she enjoyed being here. Talking to people was not her cup of tea, they had Max for that. He was a genius when it came to sweet-talking their clients. But being the President meant she had to be cordial and charismatic from time to time or when the citation called for it. She preferred working with computers over people, but she was here today, as an act of solidarity.

At exactly 12 noon, they arrived in Sebastian's office. Max was showing him how to operate the cameras. One of the conference rooms was not in use, and it was the perfect place to test the night vision mode of the cameras they just installed.

Sebastian was nodding, but he didn't seem to be too interested in what Max was saying because he kept on stealing angry glances at Clara, or that was what she thought.

She could feel him throwing daggers in her direction, but she was busy ignoring him. She was biting her lower lip to prevent herself from laughing or even smiling. This whole scenario was amusing to her, and she didn't even know why. 'I guess we're going to find out soon enough. This guy is playing a game, and I'm not sure I want to be part of it,' she thought.

Shaking her head, she went back to setting up for her demonstration, half of her attention was on Max, so she wouldn't lose her cue. The advanced RFID mapping system she had set up was very impressive, and she wanted to wow him, so he wouldn't say no to signing up with them in the future.

Jeremy, having lived with Clara almost all his life, knew when she was up to something. She bit her lower lip when she was either amused or angry. And at this time, she was not frowning, so it couldn't be the latter. He was looking at this silent exchange between her and the President and was wondering what was happening.

The RFID mapping was their next line of defense in case the cameras got shut down or sabotaged. It shows an outline form of the digital maps. Not as accurate as the cameras, but still a useful tool to monitor the areas in question. This technology is not susceptible to hacking or sabotage, and the only people who had access to it were the head of security and the President of Navio.