To Tame A Thief

10.00 am and under the irritating fluorescent lights that washed out her complexion and made her blonde hair look vaguely green, Lucy smiled fondly at her $1.99 desktop calendar. It was not because she was given to smiling fondly at inanimate objects, but because finally she was able to cross off ‘Day 365′ of her middle management position with Feldspar Technologies. It was a dreary company, but then again, all the companies with the misfortune to hire Lucy were.

Lucy Cox was a scam artist of the most legal and proper kind. Few hiring managers could resist the combination of a stellar resume that detailed management experience on three separate continents and the winning smile that Lucy could turn on and off at will. Of course, every time Lucy was hired, she made sure that her severance package in the event of her termination was generous. Feldspar Technologies had been especially generous with their offer, three years salary and health benefits just for being sent packing. Now that the year of employment required before she could collect on the package was up, Lucy intended on being fired quickly. She’d been hankering for travel, somewhere exotic, China maybe.

She had been preparing for this day for some time now. To Lucy, being fired wasn’t an unfortunate event, it was an art form. It was important that the infraction be serious enough to be grounds for termination, but not so serious that the police would be called. Walking that line required skill, if Lucy was anything, it was skilled.

With a smile, she picked up the receiver of her telephone and dialed a number.

“Mr Clarkson, how are you?” she said in silky smooth tones as she was transferred to the CEO of the city’s most prestigious and indeed, litigious law firm. A few minutes later, she hung up with a satisfied sigh and waited for the inevitable knock on her plywood office door. This was the thrilling part, the part where a year’s planning coalesced into a long holiday.

At 3pm, her office door burst open. Not even a knock. Her manager must be flustered indeed.

Tim did look flustered, his spectacles perched halfway down his nose, his face red, his rotund belly shaking with rage.

“Lucy, what have you done?” he asked in what was presumably supposed to be a whisper but what instead was a spittle-filled wail.

“Hmm?” Lucy feigned ignorance.

“Clarkson is threatening to bring a class action against us,” he said, brandishing a pile of faxed documentation. Lawyers, for some reason, still preferred to fax threats. Paper gave them gravitas that electronic communications could not.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have been shipping those combustible batteries,” Lucy replied.

Tim’s face turned purple. “They’re not combustible!”

The batteries being referred to were the ZX Laptop series, a series known for occasionally melting one’s laptop to one’s lap. By rights they should have been recalled, but the incidence rate was low enough that it was far cheaper to settle out single claims than to recall the whole series. That was, until Clarkson had gotten wind of the potential class action.

“You’re going to be fired for this!” Tim promised, his voice a low hiss as he stalked out the door.

“Oh, I hope so,” Lucy muttered under her breath, restraining a smile as curious heads popped up over cubicle walls in the open plan office beyond her own.

At 4.30 pm Lucy received a curt email requesting her immediate presence before the CEO of Feldspar Technologies. She waited half an hour before replying that she’d be there as soon as she could, and another half an hour after that before she bothered to leave her office. An extra hour to stew in their anger would no doubt tip the scales in favor of her termination.

At 5.30 pm, Lucy made her way to the great glass elevator as she had nick-named the garish clear elevator that was the pride and joy of the company and selected the top floor. When she arrived the CEO’s dour secretary gave her a withering look, then told her to ‘go right on in,’ with the sort of tone a Roman Emperor might have told an early Christian to go on in to the lion’s den.

Straightening her skirt and jacket, Lucy took a deep breath. With any luck she’d be enjoying her favorite Thai food and booking flights out of the country by 8.00 pm. As she entered the plush office, a pair of sharp eyes made the breath catch in her throat. She had been expecting an older gentleman, wide around the girth, gray around the pate. This man was anything but.

“Ms Cox, I presume?” Jason Feldspar, CEO of Feldspar Technologies greeted her congenially, a broad smile on his handsome face. Blue eyes twinkled at her under dark eyelashes, and as she noted that he wore his dark hair long and tied back behind his head, she thought to herself that if it weren’t for the broad shoulders and granite features that made him so very masculine, he could be described as beautiful, rather than handsome.

“Yes,” Lucy confirmed.

He smiled like a shark. “Please, won’t you sit down?” There was no hint of impatience in his tone as he indicated a chair in front of his desk.

Gathering her composure, Lucy sat in the indicated seat. There was no need to panic, sure, he was not who she had been expecting, but that changed nothing, he was a CEO and CEOs fired people who brought the threat of class action lawsuits to their doors.

As she sat, Jason did the same, relaxing into his plush leather chair as if he had not a care in the world. There was a keen intellect about his features that made Lucy nervous. When he looked at her, it was as though she were entirely transparent to him. She shook off the feeling. That was silly, nobody could know what other people were thinking.

“Do you know why you are here, Ms Cox?” he asked.

Lucy put on her best wide eyed, yet obnoxious expression. “Because you’re the only person with the authority to fire me?”

To her dismay, he chuckled and shook his head. “On the contrary, I am the only person with the authority not to fire you. HR wants your head, Ted, wants your head, but I, I don’t think we’ll be losing your services so easily.”

Lucy’s heart sank, but she did her best to remain neutral. “Oh I see, well, that’s very generous of you, Mr Feldspar,” she said.

“Yes and no,” he replied mysteriously. She looked at him askance as he handed her a plastic folder.

“I like to know who is working for me, even if my employees wouldn’t recognize me if they fell over me,” he said. The light mocking tone was back in his voice, and Lucy cast a suspicious look up at him as she opened the file. In it was her resume. Not the resume she’d submitted to the company when she was hired, her real resume, one that detailed the circumstances of every position she’d lost in the past ten years. There were multiple law suits, one small fire and on one occasion, a visit from a SWAT team. Her blood ran cold as she looked over the records.

“It would appear,” Jason said languidly, “that you have a talent for collecting large severance packages. I can assure you, Ms Cox, that will not happen here. If you choose to resign at this time, I will of course, accept your resignation and be prepared to write a full reference for your next position.”

Lucy looked up at him, her eyes full of venom. “You bastard,” she said.

He smiled at her with a predatory leer. “You find yourself in rather a delicate position now, do you not, Ms Cox? I imagine that your previous employers would be very interested to know of the full circumstances surrounding your repeated dismissals. I imagine some of them might even take inconvenient legal action.”

“Are you threatening me?” Lucy asked, her eyes narrowing. Lucy did not like to be threatened.

His gaze grew cold and his eyes seemed to glitter at her as he spoke. “Not at all, I am merely pointing out a few facts, in much the same way you pointed out a few facts to Mr Clarkson, who I will now have to spend a great deal of time and money wining and dining to avoid a law suit. The real question here, Ms Cox, is what am I to do with you?”

Now Lucy saw Jason Feldspar for what he was. Not the charming, debonair business man who had greeted her so graciously. No, Jason was a cut throat predator, and he had her in his sights. There was only one thing to do, play it cool.

Lucy shrugged and tossed the file onto the table. “If I were you, Mr Feldspar, I would fire me and give me my severance package as agreed. It will cost you far less in the long run.” She made the threat lightly, but it was a threat none the less.

That seemed to amuse him. “Oh Lucy, how priceless. You wheedle your way into my company with the sole intention of defrauding it, then threaten me? You have some nerve, I’ll give you that.”

“You’ll give me nothing but what is owing to me, Mr Feldspar,” Lucy replied.

He quirked a brow. “If only someone had given you what was owing to you years ago, you might not find yourself in the mess you’re currently in. Trust me, little girl,” he said condescendingly “you are in way over your head.”

“And what is that supposed to mean,” Lucy sneered. All pretense of a civilized business meeting had faded away now. Now they were little more than two combatants, edging around one another, looking for an opening, a weakness.

“It means that you, Ms Cox, deserve a damn good thrashing.”

Lucy laughed out loud at that. “And I suppose you think you’re the man to do it?”

He cocked his head and looked at her seriously. “Ms Cox, if you do not resign immediately, it seems to me that you will be on the receiving end of a sound spanking sooner rather than later. It is obvious that you refuse to play by the usual norms and laws, but nor do I, and I have no problem enforcing more physical consequences.”

“You’re a pervert!” Lucy spluttered. “I’ll go to the police!”

“Will you? Perhaps I will go to the police too. I wonder what terms they’re handing out for fraud these days. Still you won’t mind a few years in jail, will you?”

He had her over a barrel and they both knew it. To Lucy’s chagrin, Jason seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself.

“Behave yourself and do your job and there will be no problem,” Jason said grimly. “Try to cross me or extort money from my company, and I assure you, Ms Cox, you will find yourself in a world of pain.”

“Oh screw you,” Lucy said, standing up and turning on her heel haughtily. She had lost the encounter, they both knew it. At least Jason was magnanimous enough to allow her to beat a retreat unscathed.

“See you tomorrow,” he called out as she slammed her way out of his office.

She couldn’t let him see her tears, but as Lucy fled down to the car park, she felt them welling up and pricking at her eyes. “Damn! Damn him!” she cursed. A whole year of dreary work for absolutely nothing but her pathetic base salary.

She sat in her car and pondered her options. She could resign of course, but resigning would mean having to find a new mark, and possibly risking Jason going to the police with his information anyhow. That was not a risk she could take.

Staying, as unpalatable an option as that was, seemed to be the better option. Staying meant biding her time, finding another weakness and exploiting that. Jason Feldspar had the upper hand because he had unexpectedly done his homework. Next time, she would ensure that she had the upper hand. He would regret the day he tried to beat her at her own game, she vowed that.

Lucy Cox is a career woman with a difference. Rather than climbing the career ladder, she’s made quite a lucrative living out of sabotaging the companies she works for and being fired repeatedly.

Lucy is on the cusp of receiving her severance package from Feldspar Technologies, when handsome CEO Jason Feldspar throws a wrench in the works by not only refusing to terminate her employment, but threatening her with a good sound spanking if she fails to remedy her wicked ways.

Has Lucy met her match? Or has Jason Feldspar just made the biggest mistake of his life by crossing her?

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