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Brooke blinked and looked at the man standing in front of her. She’d been so caught up in showing off the app, she’d actually forgotten to look for his reaction. Classic sales mistake, but she didn’t have the talent for it that Justin did.
“There are other apps,” she said. “But—”
“No, Tutor2Tutor. They’re right over there.”
He pointed to the right. Brooke leaned forward, and sure enough, there was a big, lit-up white sign with “Tutor2Tutor” in fun, multicolored lettering. Even more surprising, though, was the fact that Justin was standing in front of that booth. He turned and began walking back toward them with a coffee cup in each hand.
“There are many competitors, but let me show you some of the features that set us apart,” she continued, but she wasn’t feeling very confident. Mostly because it was hard to show the features that set their app apart when she had no idea what these other people were offering. She was more than a little relieved when Justin arrived. He set her coffee on the counter next to her and stepped inside the booth, staring down at his phone.
“This is our CEO and founder, Justin Travers.” Brooke turned slightly, hoping her boss would get the hint. He didn’t. He was still focused on his screen.
“I’ll be right back,” Brooke said when the man began going through the features himself.
They’d been here most of the day, but she still couldn’t get used to just handing over Justin’s tablet to strangers. There seemed to be an odd sort of trust in this place that nobody would take off with anyone else’s electronics. She kept an eye on the guy as she edged over to where Justin was standing.
“This man said there’s an app like ours just down the way,” Brooke whispered.
She had to stand extremely close to Justin to avoid the man overhearing—something she actually enjoyed doing. But Justin didn’t even seem to notice she was standing there. He appeared to be going through some sort of crisis.
Finally, he looked up at her. She didn’t like the look on his face. Even with all he’d been through recently, he somehow always managed to keep his cool. This wasnotkeeping his cool. He looked frazzled, panicked even. She wanted to do something, anything to help. But what?
“This app is a carbon copy of ours,” he said. “They’ve managed to reverse engineer our code and create the same thing, only better.”
“Can they do that?” Brooke frowned. She glanced over her shoulder at the man, who seemed to be focused solely on the screen in front of him. She only hoped he wasn’t listening.
“I’m trying to get my attorney to call me, but he’s not answering. I’m going to have to make some calls. Can you handle things here?”
Brooke nodded, feeling more than a little numb. What was the point in even being here if everyone was just going to point out that they’d copied someone else? It all felt like such a waste of time.
Even worse, when she turned around, the man was gone. At least he’d left the tablet on the countertop next to her coffee. Brooke leaned forward and looked down the way, and sure enough, the man was heading in that direction. Frowning, she wondered what that meant.
She had to go see for herself.
Brooke grabbed her purse and the tablet and headed straight toward the big sign. The exhibit hall was fairly empty right now, anyway—it was that way every time a big session started. Nobody would even miss her at her booth.
“Explain to me how you built this,” the man was saying as Brooke approached.
She hung back a little, mostly because she wanted to hear what the guy on the other side of the fancy glowing, white counter would say in response. She knew nothing about developing an app, so she’d have to commit whatever it was to memory so she could report back to Justin.
“We hired it out,” the guy said. “Outsourced it overseas. We’re just a small shop right now but growing. We know the dangers of expanding too quickly.”
That felt like a dig at Justin. But if this guy had outsourced developing the app, would he necessarily know if the code had been copied from Homework Helper? Maybe this wasn’t this guy’s fault at all.
The man was tapping around on the tablet at this booth now. “Is there another app that will do what yours does?”
“There are other apps, sure, but nothing like this. Our interface is easier to use than anything else on the market. We also offer a free personalized coaching session for everyone who signs up for our expert tutoring services. The competitors don’t give out anything like that.”
Brooke had heard all she needed to hear. She spun and headed straight back to the booth, already pulling up the web browser on the tablet. She was going to look up this Homework Helper site herself.
8
The trip back to San Francisco was a tough one. Justin didn’t want to take out his stress on Brooke, but he couldn’t seem to dig himself out of this funk he was in. Homework Helper was his big project. TravTech lived and died on its success. To hear someone had just swiped his idea was devastating.
When they landed, he did his best to thank Brooke for her help. The last thing he wanted her to see was how defeated he felt. He wanted her to view him as strong, capable of tackling any challenge—the person the world seemed to have thought he was before he had to downsize his company and pretty much start over rebuilding his image. But he couldn’t fake that right now, so he just had to give her a halfhearted smile and say he’d see her at the office the next morning.
He was sitting at his desk, refreshing his inbox in the hopes that someone from his legal team might have finally sent over their promised response, when Charlie knocked on the doorjamb. “You have that interview at nine,” she said when he looked up.
Nine. Interview. What time was it? He glanced at the clock in the corner of his computer screen and realized he had five minutes to get to the conference room downstairs for his interview. Before the trip, he and Brooke had discussed that it would be better for the reporter to interview him downstairs rather than in his sizable office. It sent a humbler message.
