Page 69 of Evan


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“Evan?” Catherine asked as he was about to end the call. “Go easy on my friend. I won’t pretend to know everything between you two, but I can tell something is up.”

He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “I think you have it backward there. I want to be with her, Catherine. It’s Kayla that can’t make up her mind. I know she’s got a lot going on and I don’t know how much you know, so I won’t say more, but the ball is in her court.”

“It seems a lot like the ball is in her court for everything,” Catherine mused.

“I’m trying. I’ve been stuck between enemy and friend and something more for a while now. I know what I want, but she has to decide what she wants.”

“Fair enough,” she conceded. “I’ll see you shortly.”

Did everyone think he was messing with her feelings? His friends knew from the other day some of what was going on, but who else? Damn.

He grabbed his jacket and headed out. There was no point sitting at home worrying about everything. If he was early, then he’d go see Cade.

Traffic had picked up with the lunch hour, and it took him longer to get to her office than he expected. By the time he showed up, he only had about five minutes to spare. Kayla was already there.

“Perfect. Cade is stuck in a meeting, but he’s nosy so we will probably see him before all is said and done.” Catherine talked as they followed her to a conference room. “I really think this is the best way to handle everything, but if either of you has a problem with it, we can make changes, like always.”

She unlocked her laptop which was being projected onto a screen at the other end of the room. After a few clicks, she had pulled up a presentation.

Evan was impressed as he looked over the sheets she passed to them. She had put this together in less than a day and had it board-room ready. He made a mental note to send her a gift card to some spa place—she needed a break.

“Okay. First thing is our press release. Here is the one that we had come up with before at the top. It still applies, but I think the new one on the bottom is more effective. Let’s hit the blackmailer where it hurts and get the information out to everyone. I want to release the emails you’ve gotten and then the report from Thomas that nothing was hacked or downloaded. Proof that your security systems are up to par and working.”

“Thomas?” Cade laughed from the doorway. “You have Ryker on a mission to figure out who your hacker man is, and it’s his hacker man?”

Cade wiped his tears of laughter as he came in and took a seat.

“Don’t tell him,” Catherine pleaded.

“Oh, no worries there. I’m interested to see how long he keeps it up now that I know the answer.” He continued to chuckle as she slid him a stack of papers. “We are just getting started, and I am going to assume you heard my pitch?”

“Yes. Proceed.”

Catherine stuck her tongue out at her brother. “Anyway. I also want to release the police report and your statement, proving that you were there and there was no way anyone could have accessed anything. This will show that it’s all made up.”

Kayla flipped through the papers. “I don’t know.”

“What are you thinking?” Catherine asked.

“I know we have something, which I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand, that says no one accessed the data, but there’s still the risk of the information being out there,” she said.

“If it would make you feel better, I can set up a meeting with Thomas or a video chat and he can explain everything to you. I don’t know all of it either, but I do trust him completely, as does Ryker, so I believe him if he says he’s sure no one accessed the data.” Catherine took a breath. “As your friend and PR rep, I do need to stress that the faster we move, the better.”

“What can we do to restore trust, though?” Evan asked.

“Next page,” she instructed. “Kayla, you let me know what you want to do about the statement later. I want to run the ads again of Jake and Lauren. Evan, I want you to come out with a statement that you’ve been using it and have complete trust in the system, along with anyone else we can recruit. The more prominent the person, the better.”

“I know a few people who will help,” Evan said.

“Great. Confirm they will and give me their information. Then the next page is full of potential ads I think you should run. I am not an expert in marketing, so you would need someone else to set these up and quickly, but I recommend running ads everywhere about how Kayla protected the information. Work with your tech companies that provide the security, hosting, and systems to partner in ads to show that you have done everything and how secure their systems are.”

“How long did you work on this?” Cade asked.

“Came up with it last night,” Catherine told him proudly.

“It’s good,” Cade said. “Not to inflate your ego, but I can’t find any holes in the plan. Marketing could take a bit to get going and some customers may not come back, but it looks like the impact could be minimal here.”

“Awe, such high praise,” Catherine said, sarcasm dripping from her.

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