And since when do I listen to the company grapevine?
Shame flooded me, and I knew the decent thing, no matter what a conceited ass Marcus Storm might be, would be to apologize for the accusation.
He might be a jerk, but that didn’t mean I had to act like one. I was a Sheridan. I had standards.
Deciding to right my wrong felt good…until I recalled part two of my disaster of a Friday. My brother’s phone call had ended my less-than-perfect day perfectly.
I wanted to cry, but I wasn’t the wallowing type. Though my life had taken a dramatic turn for the worse lately, I could only be glad for my family’s odd penchant for weirdness.
Without Tom’s precognition, I would certainly have walked into work on Monday, completely unprepared for the charges of fraud and misappropriation of funds. Now I knew what awaited me.
I just had to find out who wanted to frame me and how in order to avoid jail time. Marcus Storm came immediately to mind. But…no. Storm, though a ladies’ man, seemed to be an honest man.
Tom had experienced his premonition right after my altercation with Storm though. Almost to the exact minute when I’d locked lips with the handsome devil.
I wrestled with anxiety, trying to figure who wanted me out of the company so badly. I twisted and turned, unable to come up with any ideas and equally unable to go back to sleep.
With reluctance, I rolled out of bed, took my time preparing for the day, and after dressing, did chores and applied logic and reason to my main problem at work.
The remainder of my afternoon passed swiftly while I planned and plotted. Between dusting, laundry, and general clean-up, I devised a thorough if shaky idea to find the culprit behind my frame-job.
Unfortunately, I came up with several suspects with designs on my job and reputation.
After forcing myself to eat dinner, needing the energy, I cleaned up after myself and dressed in dark clothing.
The sky had shifted from indigo to black, while the waning moon hid behind a thin blanket of clouds. But all of today hadn’t been a total waste.
On the bright side, at least I now had plans for what would have been a boring, dateless Saturday night.
Sneaking into the office had been frighteningly easy. The Harmon building was open twenty-four hours a day, the elevators unrestricted up to the seventeenth floor. Taking the stairs, I huffed up eight flights and carefully exited to find the lobby dark.
The security guard I thought I’d have to avoid was nowhere in sight.
Hmm. I’d have to hint to my boss about security gaps on Monday, after I made sure my neck had vanished from the chopping block.
Temita had an eerie feel at night, with only a faint amount of light shining through the large glass wall, at the other end of the floor by the elevator. The lobby seemed fairly safe, mostly dark. But as soon as I pushed through the doors into the main work center, I would feel exposed by the frail moonlight that played peek-a-boo with the clouds and greedily poured through any hint of a window or glass wall.
The layout of each floor was consistent—an elevator at one end, and the stairwell at the opposite end, like bookends holding together private offices along the outside of a large square, with a center full of partitioned cubicles.
I had five rooms to check at the end of this particular floor, and the tentative moonlight really bugged me. Uneasy about my visibility, I lowered the brim of my nondescript ballcap and used my flashlight sparingly, relying more on memory to guide my than artificial light.
Four security guards patrolled the twenty-story Harmon building. And with any luck, none of them would spot my handy little flashlight.
An hour and a half later, after nosing through several of the offices of the suspects I imagined might want me fired, I ducked into a dimly lit storage room to regroup.
I gathered my thoughts and went over the list, where I’d jotted down several names.
So far, I’d eliminated the people I’d competed with for my current position in the company. Nice to know my peers had taken losing their last promotion in stride.
Now, on to the remaining five. I continued to linger on Marcus Storm, a name which, in good conscience, I’d been unable to leave from my notes. After our confrontation yesterday—my pulse leaped at the remembrance—and with Tom’s timely premonition, I’d be foolish to write Storm off.
Irritated at how much I wanted him to be innocent, I decided to check his office next. Davis and the others could wait until after I’d taken care of Storm.
I shoved the list in my pocket and listened at the door for a moment.
Hearing nothing, I hurried out and prayed no one had seen the flash of light behind me. Whoever thought keeping the storage closets lit twenty-four hours a day needed a lesson in energy conservation.
I’d talk to Jonas about that on Monday too, after discussing Temita’s lacking security.
