Irreparable Harm by Melissa F. Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

an achievement during a time when female attorneys were routinely asked how many words per minute they could type. But, Viv’s achievement was sullied by the fact that she’d made partner by backstabbing, undercutting, and sabotaging her peers and sleeping with her superiors.
    After her elevation to partner, her already-unpleasant demeanor took a turn toward vile. She became a screamer; she was a terror to work for and impossible to please. She tore through associates at nearly the same rate she ran through husbands. “Viv” became a verb at Prescott & Talbott. As in, “I got vived hard yesterday” or “If you turn that memo in without proofreading it, the partner is going to viv your ass.”
    Finally, after her secretary had a full-blown nervous breakdown, complete with hospital stay, Prescott & Talbott managed to foist Viv off on its long-time client, carefully praising her work product while never mentioning her personality. And so, Viv Coulter became the Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs for Hemisphere Air. She was Metz’s boss on the organizational chart, but she rarely involved herself in the day-to-day operations of the legal department.
    Sasha, who joined the firm after Viv’s long-awaited and heavily celebrated departure, had heard the in-house gig had mellowed Viv. Judging from Metz’s expression, not by enough.
    Peterson nodded. “I see.”
    “So, Vivian wanted to sign on for the RAGS pilot?” Sasha asked.
    “Oh yeah. She thought it would be great publicity—Hemisphere Air doing its part to fight terrorism.”
    “But we advised you not to install RAGS?”
    “Right. When we told Boeing about it, so we could get the exact specs for the autopilot program, their people said absolutely not to do it. RAGS hadn’t even been tested in flight simulators at that point. They said there was no guarantee it might not malfunction and, well, cause a crash.”
    “But, Vivian wanted to do it anyway?”
    Metz picked his story back up. “Right. So, we asked Patriotech to draft an agreement indemnifying us if RAGS did cause a problem with our systems. They didn’t have any in-house lawyers and didn’t want to spend the money on an outside firm, so I think their CEO drafted it. It was worthless. I sent it over to your contracts review folks to take a look, and they confirmed it offered us no real protection.”
    “Viv couldn’t be reasoned with, so you signed it anyway,” Peterson said.
    “Worse. She said not to even bother with the indemnification agreement. She went ahead and had the RAGS link installed with no protection for Hemisphere of any kind.”
    Sasha and Peterson were quiet for a minute, thinking about that.
    “On how many planes?” Sasha asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “How many other airlines signed up for the pilot program?”
    “I don’t know. Everything was trade secret confidential. Patriotech didn’t tell us much.”
    “Are you sure the system was installed on the plane that went down?”
    “Yes, Viv told me. You can’t tell her I told you. She didn’t even tell the TSA and NTSB. They didn’t mention it to her, so we assume they don’t know about it.”
    “How can that be? Weren’t the Air Marshals part of the pilot program?”
    Metz laughed sourly. “Yeah, funny thing. Right before the links were installed, Homeland Security backed out. They pulled the plug on the program. The official statement was they had concerns about the application falling into the wrong hands. Privately, they told us they didn’t really trust their own people with it.”
    Sasha nodded. “I remember hearing about problems in the Air Marshal Service. After 9/11, they hired a ton of new air marshals, but they pushed through applicants with criminal records, psychiatric disorders, financial problems, that sort of thing. There was a lot of fallout.”
    “Right,” Metz said. “Viv went ahead and had the links installed anyway. She figured she could lobby some senator she used to date or something to