Chapter 11

Just then they heard a horn blowing from the end of the driveway, "That must be the tow truck. The county must have plowed the road already; that's fast for them. I'll walk on down and help get your car hooked up and find out where they're going to take it. If the road is clear I'll see if we can get out of here. I'm sure that you're anxious to get back home."

Bob walked over and put on his boots and parka and zipped it up before stepping outside. Ann watched him as he headed toward the county road. He was out of sight before long and she began to straighten out the kitchen and living room.

Her mind was in a whirl. She needed a job bad and the money that Bob was offering would make sure that Brenda would be able to finish college and go to medical school. The couple that wanted to buy her business wanted a quick settlement and Anne knew that she had to get a job quick or money would become a big problem. What if she couldn't do the job and Bob had to fire her?

Ann knew that her age would be a detriment; she would be thirty-eight in January. She would be competing against twenty-somethings fresh out of college. She made a mental note to look at her resume one more time. She had brought a copy with her to the condo; thinking that she might have a chance to put the finishing touches on it. She decided to ask Bob Long to explain just what his company did before she made a decision on whether to send in her resume.

Ann had the cabin straightened up by the time Bob came back. He walked into the cabin with a load of firewood in his arms and put it down next to the wood stove. He told her that he was going to bring a couple more armfuls in and walked back outside. When he had the woodstove stocked and the firewood rack full he took off the parka and his boots and stood next to the woodstove to get some heat back into his body.

"It's starting to warm up a bit," he said, "The county did a passable job on the road. The roads will be a bit slushy until tomorrow. I was going to stay until Sunday afternoon. Do you want to get back home today or would you like to stay until tomorrow? By tomorrow the roads will be a lot clearer."

Ann paused before answering, "I can stay until tomorrow. I love it up here in the mountains. Brenda is at school, so there's no one at home waiting for me, and I have a lot of questions to ask you about that job. Did the tow truck driver say anything about the car?"

"Let's get some lunch first." Bob said, "I brought lunchmeat and chips if that will be Ok with you for a quick lunch. As for the car, I think that it's going to cost as much to fix the car as it's worth. You should really consider getting another car."

While Bob fixed the sandwiches for them, Ann went to her briefcase and got out her resume. She sat it on the table and waited until he came to the table with the plates holding their sandwiches and chips. As he passed the radio, he turned it on low.

Ann sat down and pointed to her resume, "Here's a copy of my resume that I've been working on. I brought it with me to see if there's anything that I should add before I start looking for a job in earnest. I really can't think of what else I could add; about the only thing that I've done is run a couple of florist shops."

Bob read her resume and ate his sandwich. After reading it he started making notes on it and after he had reread it he pushed it toward her. Where she had put that she was the owner of a florist shop he had changed to self-employed running main and branch facilities, He had added that she was a MBA candidate and had listed several goals. He had made several changes in wording that made her sound much more experienced that she had on her first draft.

She smiled as she read the resume, "This sounds like I'm after your job. I guess it says the same thing but it sounds so much more impressive."

"That's what I tried to do. This is the type of resume that I get all of the time. You quickly learn to cut to the chase and ascertain what the candidate can really do."

The weather forecast came on the radio and Bob turned to listen to it, "Good, the temperature is forty-eight degrees right now and the low tonight will be about forty. That's typical early winter weather for the mountains. That should make a lot of this snow melt."

"Tell me more about your company. I really know very little about what a security company does."

"Come to the computer," he said.

They moved to the section of the office that Bob used as his office and he sat her in front of the computer. He had her boot the computer and get on the internet. He gave her a website address and she entered it in the address bar.

Bob pointed at the screen, "That is the website that you would normally find if you did a Google search. As you can see, it is really pretty generic. That's because the average person doesn't have to know anymore that what is in front of you right now."

He gave her another website address that contained numbers and letters that had no meaning to her, "This is a secure website that only our clients and a few others know about. Word-of-mouth advertising has brought the site to the attention of others that might have a use for our services. Every little ruler of a small country around the world checks this site every day to see if there is some kind of weapon or service that they think they might need. Usually they don't need it but they think they do, so they buy it. Start going through the website and you'll get a good idea of what we do. Click on all of the links and they'll take you to all of our services that we can provide."