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Chapter 4
Holland
I waited until late afternoon to unroll the schematics Pamela had given me, but not before checking around to make sure no one was paying any attention to me.
“What’ve you got there?” Josh Fredericks wandered behind my desk, appearing out of nowhere, his eyes glued to the schematics I was quickly rerolling.
I shoved them back in my bag and tapped a tab on my keyboard to pull up my Outlook pane to cover the presentation he’d probably seen on my display. “Nothing.” My voice was cold and emotionless. The guys in sales were mostly sharks, and they all seemed to share the belief that those of us without that additional appendage between our legs were less than astute when it came to sniffing out their nefarious intentions. I trusted no one, least of all Josh.
“Was that StrokeStat?” He leaned on the short wall that surrounded my desk and lifted an immaculately trimmed eyebrow.
I suppressed a shudder. Josh was the poster child for the over-groomed metrosexual male in his thin tie, tight skinny-leg suit slacks, and hipster chin curtain trimmed way too thin. “Nope,” I lied. I gave him my sweetest smile and turned my attention back to my screen.
“You know,” he drawled, draping himself farther over my desk in a way that made me think of a cheese slice wilting under high heat, “I could give you a few tips, Holland. Help you get on to some bigger accounts.” His voice was soft and creepy now, and it made the hair rise on the back of my neck. Ew.
“That’s generous of you,” I said, my voice a full octave higher than my regular speaking voice to mask my desire to head-butt the guy, or to run away and throw up into a potted plant somewhere. “But I think I’m doing just fine.”
He shrugged, peeling himself out of my space. “Suit yourself.”
As he walked away, I couldn’t help but mumble a few choice phrases, which might have contained words like “asshat” and “fuckmunch.”
“What?” He actually moonwalked back to my desk.
“Just remarking on your thoughtfulness.” I smiled brightly.
He looked confused and wandered away again.
I watched him until he was out of sight, mostly to see if he was going to channel any other eighties pop stars, but I was disappointed. I turned back to my screen, bringing the presentation back up and focusing on the thing I was actually working on—a modification to one of Cody Tech’s existing technologies that would change the way people placed odds on baseball, and one that would mean a whole new business for Cody Technology. It was going to be a late night—one that came in a long string of late nights. I couldn’t work on this stuff much during the day, thanks to guys like Josh. No one here was above stealing someone else’s ideas, and I wasn’t about to let this out. This was my ticket to getting out of sales and marking plan item one off once and for all. When I’d gotten the right job, I could start working on item number two. But for now that would have to wait.
When I looked up again, the day was almost over. I took the schematics down three floors to graphics and went straight to the copy room. It was the only place they had a machine big enough to reproduce the prints Pamela had gotten for me. Adrenaline shot through me as I waited for the copies, fear making me shift my weight back and forth as the machine ground and whooshed and beeped. There were a few people sitting at desks at the far sides of the sprawling open-format office area outside the little copy room, but none of them seemed interested in what I was doing. That was good.
I finished the copies and folded them, tucking them into my notebook. The schematics rolled back up easily and I slid them into their tube. Now I just needed to return them to Pamela to put away.
Pamela didn’t answer her phone. I decided to go see if she was still around. I didn’t want to risk either of us getting in trouble for taking plans neither of us had any real business having.
The plaza was mostly empty as I walked between the four towers that made up Cody Technology. The executive tower lay directly across from the sales tower, and that’s where I needed to go. It was also where the coffeehouse was, just off the lobby. The smell of coffee hit me as I flashed my badge to the guards and went to the elevators to head up to the top floor. Maybe I’d grab some coffee on my way back out. I was an addict. I could admit it. I lived for the flat white that Sam, the barista, made.
When the elevator doors opened to the executive reception area, I knew immediately something was wrong. A man’s voice was raised in anger, and a lot of strong language was being thrown around. I tiptoed past the empty reception desk and peeked around the corner to see what was going on. A man was in the center of the space where Pamela and the other secretaries usually sat, though they weren’t there now, and Rob Eastburn and Tony Delgado stood staring in shock as the guy screamed and stormed around. Whoever he was, this guy was scruffy. I didn’t see his face, but he was wearing ripped jeans and an old faded green T-shirt with a ball cap over messy blond hair. It was impossible to tell his age or much else about him, and the entire situation was such a shock that it took me a minute to register what was happening. His voice was angry and full of something that sounded like anguish, but when he threw a potted plant with all the force he had, smashing it against the wall about a foot from where I crouched to watch, I decided I probably didn’t want to stick around for the rest of the show.
Adrenaline spiked my blood as I ran back to the elevator bank and hit the button for the lobby. The ride down seemed to take forever as my mind spun, and I bolted for the security desk as soon as I hit the lobby.
“There’s some vagrant crazy person up there in the executive suite!” I shouted at Sal. “He’s throwing things and threatening the CFO!”
The two guards dashed for the elevator and disappeared, and I was left standing in the lobby, gasping for breath with my heart in my throat. How the hell did that guy get up there in the first place? I waited a few minutes, and then decided I might as well go get that coffee. Pamela clearly wasn’t around, and I wasn’t going back up tonight.
A few minutes later, I had my coffee in hand and watched through the windows of the lobby’s coffeehouse as the guards opened the front door of the building to escort out the man I’d glimpsed storming around upstairs. He still looked angry, his shoulders tense and high as he stalked out the front door, but I was glad to see him leaving without a fight. He glanced around as he passed through the doors, and I got a better look at his face, though the ball cap was pulled so low it was hard to discern much beyond the brutal angle of his jaw and the scruff of his beard. He was big, too, with broad shoulders pulling the fabric of his T-shirt tight, and powerful legs that challenged his jeans to keep up as he strode out of the building. How the hell had he gotten in here?
I shook my head and waited until he was gone, then darted back over to the sales tower, throwing a smile at the security guards on my way out.
