Chapter 122 - Making a team (2)

Thursday morning, Sarah and Aiden got ready and headed to the office. As they exited elevator of the building, two bulky men in matching black suits wearing sunglasses approached them and nodded. Sarah looked at Aiden with a mix of surprise and confusion.

Aiden was not surprised at all. It was obvious that he expected them. He looked at Sarah and tilted his head toward the men who were standing in front of them. "You don't want to go back... so they will follow you around.", he spoke smugly, as if he was telling her that she can't run away from this.

Sarah was shocked. It took her some time to recover her senses. "You hired bodyguards?"

"You left me with no other choice.", he explained.

Sarah breathed out in frustration. "Do they have names?"

"You don't need to call them anything. They will follow you around everywhere."

Sarah looked at Aiden in disbelief.

He explained further, "If you know their names you will just tell them to stay behind. Like this, you don't talk to them, and let them do their job."

Sarah frowned, "I can tell them to stay behind without knowing their names!"

"But not knowing will remind you that you should not talk to them. They are already instructed not to listen to you or talk to you unless it's an emergency."

Sarah rolled her eyes in defeat. "Let's go."

They walked to office, as usual. The difference from any usual day, was two bulky men in black suits who followed them closely.

"They are following me only to work and will go away once I enter the building. Right?", Sarah asked Aiden apprehensively.

He shook his head. "No. I got them visitor passes. They will follow you in."

Sarah turned back and glanced at them, then looked at Aiden. "I have meetings... will they follow me into the meeting room?"

Aiden tilted his head, "What do you think?"

"Nooo… " Sarah pleaded. "Can't they stay outside meeting room?"

Aiden thought about it, "Only if they check it first to make sure it's safe."

"Deal.", Sarah was happy that at least they will stay outside. "And they stay outside my office, right?"

Aiden smiled and nodded.

Sarah sighed in relief. With day spent in meetings and her office, she does not even need to see them.

...

Sarah had an interview with one candidate in the morning, he didn't satisfy her criteria. Then she had a meeting with her three team members.

Lee, Harry and Marcus approached conference room together. With confused looks they observed two bulky men standing straight, guarding the door. Two men stopped them, asked for their names, checked their employee badges, and then opened the door to let them in. Sarah was inside, holding her head in her hands.

Lee looked at Sarah when doors closed behind them. "These are...?"

Sarah shook her head, "I really don't know how to explain. They will not come inside... let's just pretend they are not there."

Three men took a seat and waited for Sarah to begin the meeting while exchanging puzzled glances. It's obvious that two men are bodyguards. These three could not help but wonder how come Sarah has bodyguards. Seeing that Sarah is not willing to explain, they had to be satisfied with the fact that they have a gossip topic for later.

She looked at them, "On Monday Alexander will join the company. He is a new hire who specializes in scripting with Python and JavaScript. I will not be here for some time, so I will rely on one of you to wait for him after his new employee orientation, and to be there for him during initial setup. I will be available online. Until we get fifth member, we will not start the upgrade of existing security..."

Sarah talked about her plans, and they discussed how long each of them is in the company, what they are currently doing, what they would like to do in the future. Sarah recommended trainings to get their skills in line with current practices while taking notes.

Lee is the most senior of three of them, and he is currently working on creation and updates of scripts. Sarah gave him the responsibility to be in charge of guiding Alexander in her absence. She also told Lee that he can show Alexander existing scripts and let him analyze them. It will be a good opportunity for Alexander to learn how they do things, and to provide any inputs he might have.

It was lunch time, so they agreed to go to lunch together, and continue their talk.

The moment the door opened, Sarah regretted the lunch idea when she saw two bodyguards who will follow them. On the way out of the conference room she quickly texted Aiden telling him that she has lunch plans, and that he should not wait for her.

Four of them had lunch on a fourth floor restaurant, under watchful eyes of two bodyguards. After some time, they forgot that bodyguards are there, and they relaxed chatting.

Sarah got a good impression of three people. They all appeared friendly, modest and knowledgeable about their area of work. When Sarah started talking about upcoming changes to the existing tools, she noticed that Marcus became stiff and his smile faded away. He is currently in charge of tools, and he does not like that per Sarah's plan they will need to be changed. Sarah took a mental note of this and decided that she will come up with a plan to ease him into accepting that changes to his existing tools are a good thing.

Harry is mostly managing hardware, and he was happy to hear that existing servers will be upgraded to latest versions. He immediately had a good opinion of Sarah, because she secured budget for new hardware.

...

After lunch Sarah headed for her second interview of the day. This candidate was very good, and Sarah was happy with the skillset he demonstrated. Pierre is currently working with another company, and he needs to give two weeks' notice after accepting the offer. Sarah acknowledged this and after the interview she sent a form to HR saying that Pierre should get an offer. With this, if he accepts, she has her five-member team and they can start working. 'After Pierre joins, we can start work on upgrading security of White corp. and I'm leading the efforts.' This thought made Sarah feel proud.