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“Justin Travers.” Justin returned his handshake. “This is my marketing director, Brooke.”
“Brooke and I have met,” Ben said. “Although not formally.”
Brooke somehow found her manners and extended her arm to shake Ben’s hand. It would have been awkward otherwise. Hopefully, Ben would clear up what was going on here.
“We met in the exhibition hall.” Brooke looked over at Justin. “You were there, but you were…preoccupied.”
Probably with texting Charlie or something. No, that was catty. He’d been preoccupied with trying to figure out why some other company had copied his app. He’d been trying to reach his attorney, as she recalled, while Ben had been testing out the app on the tablet she’d let him hold.
“It appears you’ve been ripped off,” Ben said. “And I want to cover the story.”
“You’re a reporter,” Brooke said needlessly. Obviously, he was a reporter. She just hadn’t reconciled what had happened here and was struggling to catch up.
“Senior tech columnist. I love investigative pieces like this. Being able to break a story nobody else knows about—even the companies at the center of it.”
“We’re well aware of the trademark infringement,” Justin broke in to say. “My legal team is on top of it.”
Ben nodded, then sat down. “Good, good. Please. Have a seat.”
Brooke immediately sat down, not even looking to see what Justin was doing. To heck with Justin right now. Okay, so she wanted to see the company get through this somehow, hopefully with Ben Eisenberg’s help, but that was just so she could keep her job…until she could find another one, anyway.
“Have you ever heard of Simply Source Code?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Justin nodding. “Company that provides app developers. A lot of startups use them.”
“Yes, not for much longer, I’m guessing.”
Ben passed a sheet of paper across the table, landing it perfectly between the two of them. That meant Brooke and Justin had to lean toward each other to get a better look. She was tempted to hold her ground until he finished looking, then lean over, but she didn’t want Justin to know he’d gotten to her. She just held her breath, told herself to shut off her attraction to him, and leaned over.
And immediately felt that attraction she was trying so hard to fight.
Darn it. This couldn’t be easy, could it? He smelled like soap and…something else she couldn’t put her finger on. Cinnamon? Probably something he’d picked up while hugging Charlie. That was enough to snap Brooke right back to center. She pretended she’d seen whatever was on that paper as she turned her full attention on Ben.
Ben pointed at the page. “Simply Source Code has been stealing code from various apps and selling it as original. A basic web search pulls up complaints from a few people who have paid them and fired them after they figured it out. But I have an app developer friend who’s looking into the apps they have helped successfully launch. This goes much farther than TravTech.”
“So, there are other companies who are using stolen code?” Brooke asked.
“I’m pretty sure. But I need your help. My friend needs access to some things that only your own development team can give them. You can verify my credentials—whatever you need to do. If we’re going to blow this thing wide open, we need to work together.”
Brooke looked over at Justin. Okay, yeah, she was furious at him. But she was also pretty darn excited. For the first time in at least a week, she was hopeful about this company’s future. If they could be at the center of helping blow a big scandal like this wide open, it could be great publicity for TravTech.
“What happens to the companies that unknowingly used stolen code?” Justin asked.
Brooke’s excitement didn’t appear to be shared on this side of the table. Justin still had that anxious, drawn expression that he’d adopted about halfway through their trip to the conference. Right around the time they’d learned another company had swiped his app.
“I doubt they could be legally liable unless they knew.” Ben shrugged. “It doesn’t look good for the future of their apps, though. They’d probably have to pivot, redesign, whatever. Why?”
Justin frowned. “It could happen to anyone. Any startup. Just one wrong decision and your entire business can be destroyed.”
Across the table, Ben was nodding slowly, studying Justin. Brooke knew exactly what he was thinking. Justin was a tough one to read. Initially, you wanted to see him as this guy who’d been handed all his success and expected things to keep going his way. But the more you got to know him, the more you saw this vulnerable side. He seemed to be in perpetual fear that everything was going to come crashing down around him.
Or maybe it was just that, since she’d met him, everything actuallyhadbeen crashing around him.
Brooke pushed her chair back and stood. “Right now, we need to worry about TravTech. Mr. Eisenberg, we’re excited to work with you on this project. Anything you need from us, you let us know.”
“One more thing.”
Ben’s comment made Brooke feel silly for standing. Neither of the two men at the table seemed inclined to budge just yet.
