I watched from R1 as the man walked up to the executive assistant sitting at her desk in the Governor’s outer office. He was impeccably dressed and had a confident air about him. A smile curled his lips slightly and there was a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“I have a delivery for the Governor.”, he said as he reached her desk.

“Thank you. I’ll give it to him shortly.” The assistant took the envelope and put it to the side of her desk.

“I’ll need you to sign that you received it. It’s now 3:58. Please indicate that on his sheet as well.” The man handed her a form for her to initial and after she did so, his face broke out into a full smile.

“Thank you! I wouldn’t want to have missed the 4:15pm bid deadline for Project 49117.”

“Excuse me, sir? I’m not familiar with any bid deadline.”

“Of course you are. You sent out the notice for it six months ago to twenty developers and invited them to bid on the property. If I’m not mistaken, seven of them took you up on the offer and have submitted a bid. Now you have an eighth.” The man kept up his smile, as if he hadn’t just called the assistant on her lie.

Clearing her throat, the assistant tried to save the situation. “I’m sorry, sir. I was confused because the bidding for that project is by invitation only.”

“Yes, about that. State law specifically forbids closing the bidding to any qualified individual or organization. Your boss used some extremely convoluted reasoning to justify the classification of this project as vital to state security and bypassing the need to open the bidding to the public at large. However, those rules, even if they were legitimate, and I can assure you that they are not, only apply to the need to notify the general public of the bidding process. They do not remove the need for a formal bidding process, nor do they restrict unsolicited bids from contention.”

The secretary managed to maintain her composure and retorted, “I see. Well, according to the rules of the bidding process, the bids must be delivered to the Office of Administration, Procurement and Contracts division to be valid. I suppose that if you run there, you might make it in time, sir.” The assistant was wearing her own smile now. Reaching that office would take at least twenty minutes and the deadline would have passed by then.

“Not to worry, my dear. My colleague delivered a copy to that location earlier today. In case you’re wondering, we’ve also filed all the proper paperwork to become a qualified bidder for the state and submitted all the forms, including the one about financial conditions. In fact, earlier today, my offices delivered the full purchase price of the bid to the administration office, in anticipation of its acceptance. The administration office confirmed that everything was in order and my client has all the required approvals.”

The executive assistant’s smile vanished just as quickly as it had come and she picked up the envelope to get a better look at it.

“You’re from Rochester and Williams? Your client is the Hannah Foundation?” She was stalling now. Trying to buy time to think of another excuse for why my bid wasn’t valid.

“Yes. I’m Mr. Rochester. The bidding should close in a few minutes and I’m anxious to know the outcome of the bid, so I thought I’d come by and hear it for myself. I believe the process calls for a thirty minute review of the bids by the Governor, with the participants welcome to watch the process and clarify any aspects of the bid that are unclear. Following this process, the preliminary winner will be announced, pending only on their ability to make payment. Will the Governor be having the review in his office or has a larger conference room been assigned? I do so hope that there will be refreshments. I had to skip lunch today to meet with my client.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Alex Rochester was really enjoying himself and I couldn’t blame him. The Governor had rigged things so that this property would go to one of his closest friends, a developer from Salem who also happened to be his largest campaign contributor, for a fraction of its appraised value. A very small fraction. Over the years, several of Alex’s clients had been burned by the Governor paying back his political contributors using sleazy tactics like the one he was employing for this bidding process. Through my perusal of the Governor’s computer, searching to piggy-back on his use of insider information, I came across the upcoming return of this piece of land from the federal government and of his plans for the parcel.

Knowing the Governor’s tricks, Alex had planned for every contingency and he was reaping the fruits of his labors now. He had cut off all of the Governor’s escape routs and used the Governor’s own rules against him.

“Excuse me. I’ll go tell the Governor that there’s a new bid.” She left her desk and disappeared into the Governor’s office. I followed her inside and watched as she broke the news to him. He started off making the same objections that she had made to Alex and she gave him Alex’s answers. Finally, the Governor ran out of options and asked to see the bid. She handed it over and he opened it, sucking in his breath as he read it.

“Shit! It’s higher that Stan’s bid by half-a-million dollars. That’s too much to ignore. Stall Mr. Rochester. I’ll call Stan and see if he can get here with a replacement offer in time. We’ll put the new one in his first offer’s envelope.”

Stan wasn’t pleased that the offer was falling through but he said that he’d be right over with the new bid. I laughed to myself when I heard that because Alex and I had discussed this very possibility and he wasn’t about to let Stan slip anything to the Governor or his assistant. I also decided to stack the deck in our favor by disabling Stan’s car before coming here. The Governor would need some really fancy footsteps to be able to stall Alex past the decision deadline.

I watched the cat and mouse game between Alex and the assistant for the next twenty minutes, as she cited a state emergency that had required the Governor’s immediate attention. Alex asked about the nature of the emergency and the assistant stammered for a few seconds before saying something about water rights. Alex didn’t buy into her attempts at delaying the review and reminded her that the timelines had been set by the Governor and that they had to be respected or he’d be forced to file suit on behalf of his client. He also mentioned that he was wearing a body camera and was recording all of these discussions and attempts at delay for future use in court, should it be required. The assistant paled and ran into the Governor’s office.

Suddenly the Governor wasn’t busy anymore and he invited Alex in to start the review process. He made a big show of it by going through every envelope, one at a time, and agonizing over the details of each one. He was still holding out for Stan to come crashing in at the last minute. Unfortunately for him, I’d also shifted Stan’s cellphone and wallet into L2 with a time-delayed field that wouldn’t expire until 5:30pm. Even if Stan could get a taxi or an Uber in time, he couldn’t pay them. It didn’t help Stan that rush hour traffic was already starting to back things up.

With further delay no longer possible, the Governor had to read out Stan’s bid and soon acknowledged that the Hannah Foundation was the winner of the bidding process. The Hannah Foundation was the new owner of the soon to be decommissioned Ronald Reagan Military Training Base just north of Morganton, halfway between Charlotte and Asheville.

With over twelve thousand acres of land, the military base currently housed over five thousand personnel and was effectively a small, self-contained city, with already build family housing, barracks, gun range, hospital, fire department, police station, administration buildings, theaters, bowling alley, schools, baseball fields, swimming pools, training centers and airfield.

It had everything I would need to take Hannah’s Home to the next level and create a city where victims of human trafficking could come and live and get a second chance at life. Second Chance City would be a place for survivors to call home.

The End of Book Three