Hearts and Aces (Kelsey's Burden Series Book 7) by Kaylie Hunter (great books for teens txt) 📗

“She’s right, though,” Tech said. “It’s kind of a cobbled plan. You started off saying we were disabling a semi full of fabric and somehow landed on emailing employees that they may or may not be sick. You’re all over the place.”

“It’s her fault,” I said, pointing to Tweedle. “All this teamwork crap before I’ve even had a full cup of coffee.”

“Don’t blame, Tweedle,” Wild Card said, throwing a blueberry across the room at me.

I caught the blueberry and passed it to Bridget to eat. I wasn’t a fan.

“You’ve got too much shit in your head which is why you can’t think straight,” Wild Card continued. “Now start over. What’s your objective?”

I sat up straight and answered as if I was a student talking to a professor. “To financially impact Miguel in a way that results in no physical injuries and no long-term financial damage.”

“You also said the plan has to be savvy and intelligent, though,” Maggie said. “You need Miguel to view you as a threat to his legacy, remember?”

She had a point. Causing a semi to break down or a few employees to worry about being drugged wouldn’t earn Miguel’s respect as a rival.

Bridget shoved me, almost making me fall.

“What are you doing?”

“You need to get up.” She shoved me again.

“Why?”

“You think better when you pace.”

I glared at her, but got up, taking my coffee with me. I wandered into the living room and started to pace. What could I do to get Miguel’s attention? If I could somehow shut down production for a day, without anyone getting hurt, that would be ideal. But how? I could take out the electrical system but they’d have emergency generators. Starting a fire would be a bad idea. The email notice had merit, but it would cause more confusion than anything. I’m sure Tech, Carl, or Sara could send a virus to their computer network and really screw some shit up, but I wasn’t sure if they could control the virus before it caused long term damage. Miguel wouldn’t negotiate a peace deal if we accidentally disabled his IT networks.

Think, Kelsey. What can we do to shut down business for only a day? Hell, even a half of a day would be enough. Email. Fire. Sick. Poisoned. Electrical. Email… Great, now I’m repeating myself. “Wait…” I said aloud, turning to face everyone. “Not email!”

“She’s got something,” Bridget said. “I just have no idea what the hell she’s saying.”

“What if instead of emailing, we texted the employees? We can tell them not to report to work until Monday. We can exclude management who might question why they didn’t already know.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Tyler said.

“It could still work,” Maggie said. “The retail mall, bakery, and the trucking company will definitely have employees working over the weekend.”

“The textile mill has a weekend shift from seven to three,” I said. “I remember seeing the shift schedules on one of the hundreds of documents I read last night.”

Bridget nodded. “The pharmaceutical company has so many drug trials going, I’m sure they have employees working this weekend. They do animal testing though, so we’ll want the message to be worded so the animal caregivers still go in.”

“That leaves the health food company,” I said, looking at Tech.

He nodded as he typed. “Looks like they run two shifts on Saturdays.”

“Maggie?” I said, bracing myself for her honesty. “Is the plan savvy enough to get Miguel’s attention?”

“It’s perfect, actually. Having his employees not show up to work at all six of his companies will cause his head to spin. I like it.”

“Tech, is it doable? I don’t know anything about texting mass alerts.”

“I can create a dummy account no problem. I’ll need help to enter the employees’ phone numbers into the app and separating the companies, but yeah, it’s perfectly doable.”

I set my coffee cup on the end table and did a little dance, excited to have a plan.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Katie said.

I turned to see her standing in the doorway of the back slider.

“I was just stretching,” I said, grabbing my coffee cup and returning to the table.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Hours later, we were nearing the end. The bakery’s message said there was an issue with contaminated flour. The pharmaceutical company’s message was that overtime was being discontinued until further notice and that only the animal caregivers were to report in as needed. Both the trucking company and the health food company’s messages stated there was a change in management and that all employees would receive more information on Monday. The textile mill’s message said that there was a gas leak that would require repair before anyone was allowed into the buildings.

My favorite message was for the retail mall, though: Due to deteriorating sales caused by the increase of shoppers looking for quality second-hand apparel, the mall will be closed on weekends, effective immediately.

I knew most employees would predict it was a hoax, but it was too funny to pass up. I was also banking on many of those same employees using the text as an excuse to play hooky.

Tech completed uploading all non-management staff for each company to a different dummy alert account about the same time I narrowed down the delivery times for each message. We both leaned back in our chairs, sighing when we were done.

Sara giggled. Everyone else sitting around the table eating breakfast looked at us with grins.

“How are you going to let Miguel know it was you?” Maggie asked.

“I’m not sure. Which country is he in this week?”

Maggie picked up her phone and made a call. “Hey, Genie. I’m with Kelsey and we need to know what country Miguel Remirez is currently in. This is off the record, by