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A part of Rick wanted to head back to the office, to corner that Pricilla bitch on her way out to her car and pay her back for the way she'd treated him. But common sense overrode that. Sure he could probably mess her up. But so what? She was doing her job. If she didn't do it, someone else would have. It was the corporate suits that were the real problem... jerks who didn't give a shit over who worked twelve hours a day at least six days a week to put together the marketing pitch that led to their multi-million dollar bonuses. For them, he was a tool. He'd done his job, gotten the marketing message squared, and now he was just an expense item they didn't want to bother with.

He thought about going down near Bachman Lake and hitting a strip club but decided against that, too. He was horny and mad... but he wasn't crazy enough to want one of those bouncers to toss him and he wasn't flush enough to afford a VIP room handjob, much though he wanted one.

His apartment was a trashy place off Independence in Plano, a Dallas suburb with pretenses of class that definitely petered out before getting to his neighborhood. He pulled in next to a dumpster and hefted the cardboard box security had handed him when he'd gotten the boot. Once, the crap in the box had been his most prized possessions. A framed letter of commendation from Pete, a photo of him shaking hands with the lab director who'd put together the alpha-level virus delivery system, and a bunch of mock-ups of the early marketing materials where he'd refined the idea of Bio-DNA, where he'd come up with the pricing model that screamed scarcity and need. Where he'd... Well, shit. He tossed the box in the dumpster. They weren't going to let him use that crap in his resume, anyway.

He slapped his hands together like he'd accomplished something and headed for his apartment... now equipped with a notice out front.

EVICTION

Shit, what?

Violation of lease agreement by reason of unemployment. All personal property seized in partial payment of outstanding lease term.

Rick couldn't believe it. He knew that the big corporations had pretty much rewritten all of the legal code for their own benefit, especially in places like Texas where nobody got in the way of the big corporations. Still, didn't a guy have a right to try to make rent payment on his own? And shouldn't they have let him keep his stuff?

He went back to his car, got in, and realized he had no place to go.

A couple of minutes later, it hit him.