Rough Country

Rough Contry Excerpt

The agency, over the years, had accumulated footdraggers, timewasters, slow-witted weeds more suited for a job, say, in a newspaper than in a hot advertising agency. Getting rid of them-she had a list of names- would generate an immediate twelve percent increase in the bottom line, with virtually no loss in production. Bodies were expensive. Some of them seemed to think that the purpose of the agency was to provide them with jobs. They were wrong, and were about to find that out. When she got the stock, when she nailed that down, she'd move.

The question that plagued her was exactly how to do it. The current creative director, Barney Mann, was smart, witty, hardworking, a guy she wanted to keep-but he had all kinds of alliances and friendships among the worker bees. Went out for drinks with them. Played golf with them. Lent some of them money. He was loved, for Christ's sakes. He was the kind of guy who could turn a necessary managerial evolution into a mudslinging match.

And he'd done an absolutely brilliant job on the Mattocks Motor City campaign, no question about it. Dave Mattocks thought Mann was a genius and the Motor City account brought in nine percent of RHM's billings in the last fiscal year. Nine percent. If you lost an account of that size, you lost more than the account-other buyers would wonder why, and what happened, and might think that RHM was losing its edge.

McDill wanted to keep Mann, and wondered how much of a saint he really was. Suppose she took him to dinner and simply put it on him: a partnership, options on ten percent of the stock, a million bucks up front, and no fuss when the ax came down.

McDill drifted, thinking about it. And her thoughts eventually drifted away from the agency, to the upcoming evening, about her sneaky date the night before, and about Ruth. She'd outgrown Ruth. Ruth was settling into middle-aged hausfrau mode, her mind going dull as her ass got wider. She was probably at home right now, baking a pumpkin pie or something.

In a way, McDill thought, the takeover of the agency changed everything.
Everything.
The agency was hot, she was hot.
Time to shine, by God.

The eagle came back.  She saw it coming a half-mile out, unmistakable in its size, a giant bird floating along on unmoving wings. A thousand feet away, it carved a turn in the crystalline air, like a skier on a downhill, and banked away. McDill wondered why: the eagles had never been bothered by her presence before. She was farther away now than she had been last night, when she coasted right up to the tree trunk.

Huh. Had the eagle sensed something else?

McDill turned and scanned the shoreline, and then, in her last seconds, saw movement, frowned, and sat forward. What was that? A wink of glass . . .

The killer shot her in the forehead.

(c) 2009 by John Sandford