Sammy held up his hands. "Here, look at this. I drew up some figures. What they're earning. What we earn from them. Growth estimates over the next five quarters. It's not just some random idea I had in the shower. This makes *sense*." He passed over a sheaf of papers, replete with pie-charts. Hackelberg set it down in the center of his desk, perfectly square to the corners. He flipped through the first five pages, then squared the stack up again. "You've done a lot of work here, Samuel. I can really see that." He got up from his straight-backed chair, lifted Sammy's papers between his thumb and forefinger, and crossed to the wall. There was a shredder there, its maw a wide rectangle, the kind of thing that you can stick entire hardcover books (or hard drives) into. Calmly, Hackelberg fed Sammy's paper into the shredder, fastidiously holding the paper-clipped corner between thumb and forefinger, then dropping the corner in once the rest had been digested. "I won't ask you for your computer," he said, settling back into his chair. "But I expect that you will back up your other data and then send the hard-drive to IT to be permanently erased. I don't want any record of this, period. I want this done by the end of business today." Sammy's mouth hung open. He shut it. Then he opened it again. Abruptly, Hackelberg stood, knocking his chair to the ground behind him. "Not one word, do you understand me? Not one solitary word, you goddamned idiot! We're in the middle of being sued by these people. I *know* you know this, since it's your fault that it's happening. I know that you know that the stakes are the *entire* company. Now, say a jury were to discover that we were considering buying these assholes out? Say a jury were to decide that our litigation was a base stratagem to lower the asking price for their, their *company* --" The word dripped with sarcasm -- "what do you suppose would happen? If you had the sense of a five year old, you'd have known better than to do this. Good Christ, Page, I should have security escort you to the gate. "Turn on your heel and go weep in the corridor. Don't stand in my office for one more second. Get your computer to IT by 2PM. I will check. That goes for anyone you worked with on this, anyone who has a copy of this information. Now, leave." Sammy stood rooted in place. "LEAVE, you ridiculous little dog's-pizzle, get out of my sight!" Sammy drew in a deep breath. He thought about saying something like, *You can't talk to me like that*, but it was very likely that Hackelberg could talk to him just like that. He felt light-headed and a little sick, and he backed slowly out of the office.