"Hey, Viv, how far have you two actually progressed?" Alice asked, nodding subtly toward Nick, who was talking with the guys a short distance away.
The three girls had woken up from their nap, noticing that Nick and the executive team were locked in what looked like a pretty intense corporate debate. Letting their curiosity take over, they started indulging in a bit of typical girl talk. Just as guys inevitably shift the topic to women when they're lounging around, women do the exact same thing, keeping the spotlight squarely on the men.
"What do you mean how far have we progressed? In what aspect?" Vivian asked, looking genuinely puzzled.
Alice gave her a playful nudge, leaning in close with a giggle. "Come on, you know exactly what I'm talking about."
"Seriously, Alice, when did you turn into such a rogue?" Vivian shot back, finally catching the drift as a light blush crept up her neck.
Seeing her act like a shy, defensive schoolgirl, Alice couldn't resist teasing her further. "Oh my god, you're actually blushing? Is this seriously the same total tomboy who once marched straight into a guy's restroom to beat the brakes off a creep?"
"Who marched into a men's room? Stop telling fake history, okay?" Vivian hissed, stealing a quick glance at Nick in the distance before whispering with a smile. "Look, even though this guy has an astronomical IQ—honestly, it's probably clearing two hundred—his EQ is practically underground. He doesn't have a single romantic bone in his body; the man is a total blockhead."
"If he has that many functional flaws, why are you so locked in on him?" Maria asked, trying to understand the appeal.
Vivian's face flushed a deeper shade of crimson. "He doesn't understand standard romance, and yeah, he's a total blockhead and a fool sometimes, but you literally cannot deny how incredible he is. He carries this silent, magnetic aura around him, and he's hiding so many layers that you just find yourself completely compelled to get closer and figure him out."
"And the deeper you go, the more you realize you're hopelessly infatuated. Honestly, I think I walked straight into this bastard's trap."
"Is it really that dramatic? How about you drop his Snapchat or number? I'll do some quality-control testing for you and check his baseline," Alice proposed with a sharp smile, her eyes locking back onto Nick's silhouette.
Vivian shot Alice a cold, defensive sidelong glance, her internal security system instantly going to high alert. As the old survival guide goes: guard against fires, theft, and your own best friends. She was acutely aware of exactly how devastatingly attractive the current version of Nick was to women.
And this best friend of hers, despite only being a year older, was exceptionally calculating and had a notorious habit of "collecting" high-value guys. There was zero chance she was going to expose Nick to that kind of predatory dynamic, even if the person asking was her literal day-one friend.
"Look at you, I barely drop a joke and you're already getting totally paranoid," Alice teased with a laugh, though her eyes kept drifting back to Nick's coordinates.
Right then, Nick and the guys across the grass stood up, signaling over to Ryan and the security detail resting by the trucks. Ryan's team immediately scrambled over. After a few brief directives, they ran back to the Jeep, hauled out a heavy, black tactical pelican case, and brought it over to the central circle.
Watching the sudden tactical pivot, the girls got curious and drifted over to see what was dropping.
By the time they caught up, the work case was already cracked open. Brent was rapidly assembling a matte-black commercial drone from the foam inserts, while Terry held a specialized remote controller with a high-res tablet mounted on top, kicking off the sensor calibration.
"What's the play here?" Vivian asked, looking into the case.
Nick smiled, shaking his head casually. "Nothing major, just want to get an aerial scan of the surrounding geography."
"Are we green?" Terry asked, checking the telemetry.
Brent cleared the airspace with a quick thumbs-up. "We are clear!"
"Everyone back up, launching!"
Buzz!
Under Terry's precise stick inputs, the drone roared to life, launching vertically into the sky and climbing rapidly. Simultaneously, the crystal-clear 4K feed captured by the camera payload streamed straight back to the tablet monitor.
"Push it a bit higher," Nick, Tyler, and the rest of the guys ordered, crowding tightly around Terry's shoulders, their eyes glued to the screen.
"Man, I didn't realize this basin was this massive. Fly it forward, let's see what's over that ridge," Tyler muttered.
Zack nodded, tracing the topography. "Yeah, the acreage is insane. This entire boundary is the wetland conservation reserve, this side runs parallel to the interstate, and wait—what the hell is that?"
Nick and the guys focused on the sector Zack was pointing at, but from that altitude, they couldn't immediately identify the massive cluster of commercial structures breaking ground. Nick turned to Ryan instantly. "Go grab the local county plat maps and the municipal development blueprint from my truck."
Once Ryan sprinted back with the documentation, Nick and the executive committee spread the heavy sheets across a folding table and began cross-referencing the coordinates.
"Scan this sector, this grid, and over here—give me a full sweep. Lock down all the ground-level infrastructure data so we can run the analytics when we get back to HQ," Nick instructed Terry.
"Copy that," Terry replied, his focus entirely locked into flying the grid pattern.
Tyler tracked down a smooth patch of grass, dropping cross-legged straight onto the ground to scan a map. "Barney, look, this development block right here should match this zone. What does the city planning blueprint call it?"
Nick compared the drone's coordinates with the municipal master plan, then shook his head. "This specific project isn't zoned or labeled in our current documents. Run a quick Google search."
"Got it. It's a massive international business hotel development," Zack announced, scrolling rapidly through a localized commercial real estate database on his phone. "It looks like it's being built out as a core supporting infrastructure asset for the Roberts Lake International Business District over here."
"Roberts Lake International Business District?" Tyler asked, his brow furrowing.
Zack nodded, explaining the economic background. "This Roberts Lake commercial zone is a high-end business district established over the last few fiscal cycles. It was a major component of the local city council's policy to aggressively shift the economic center eastward and revitalize the regional zoning blocks.
It was primarily engineered to attract major out-of-state tech firms and foreign-direct investment, but the execution has been a total ghost town. The location is just perceived as way too remote."
Nick looked down at the physical map, slipping into a deep, silent state of thought, his mind processing a dozen unsaid corporate strategies. Meanwhile, Tyler practically laid flat across the blueprint, analyzing the transport grids inch by inch.
"I don't know, man. It's a pretty long haul from the metro center, and the baseline infrastructure looks totally incomplete."
Hearing the critique, Nick snapped out of his trance, a sharp smile breaking across his face. "That's actually a non-issue. Look closer at the grid, Tyler. The interstate runs directly adjacent to the commercial park boundary. Driving from these coordinates straight to the downtown metro core only takes about thirty minutes max."
"And check this out—the plat map shows the nearest transit station for the fully operational Subway Line 5 is barely a mile away. Plus, the Line 9 expansion, which is already under heavy construction, cuts straight through this exact sector. The second those tracks open up, this entire real estate pocket is going to absolutely skyrocket."
"Wait, why are you guys actively auditing industrial zoning maps? Are you secretly pivoting the tech company into commercial real estate?" Alice asked, her eyes wide with curiosity.
Nick, Tyler, and the rest of the executive circle just traded knowing, corporate grins, which immediately triggered Vivian's visible annoyance. "I knew it. I knew there was a catch. Why would you suddenly have the rare, romantic elegance to invite everyone out for a relaxing fishing trip? Turns out this whole day was just a disguised corporate site survey after all."
"Uh, look, it was purely a coincidence, total passing thought," Nick offered, letting out a sheepish laugh as he tried to de-escalate.
Humph! Vivian hit him with an intense glare, crossing her arms and turning her head away to completely freeze him out.
Right then, Terry spoke up, breaking the tension. "Boss, I've completed the full aerial grid sweep over the coordinates. Nothing else unusual to report on the feed."
"Bring the drone back to base then," Nick nodded, before turning back to Tyler with total executive seriousness. "Based on this field inspection, the location looks incredibly viable. I need a comprehensive data dump on this entire sector, along with the official municipal planning maps for the Roberts Lake International Business District."
"I'll pull the files," Tyler nodded, his playful demeanor instantly shifting back to high-level corporate mode. "But you're gonna need to make a few phone calls to the city council to give them a heads-up and smooth out the political runway before we submit the paperwork."
Nick looked out over the sprawling landscape one last time. "The natural environment here is flawless. We need to lock it down before some old-school real estate developer snatches it right out from under us."