Harder Than I Thought

CHAPTER 1

First Day

Monday, October 26, 8:01 a.m. . . .

Jim Barton barely reacted when the doorbell rang. Immersed in content streaming to a tablet propped up behind his cereal bowl, he waved an empty spoon past one ear, as if pushing away a buzzing insect, then gulped down an abrasive clump of wet high-fiber grain. Sipping coffee to clear his throat, he adjusted the reading glasses he’d begun using last week and couldn’t quite get used to, without shifting attention from the editorial he’d just come across in the business section of the So-Cal Times. He couldn’t quite believe what it said:

Let’s face it. Santa Monica Aerospace had to really be scraping the bottom of the barrel to choose Jim Barton as their new CEO.

I wish it weren’t true. ...