I swallow back the more realistic answer, which is,Uh, yeah. You’re pretty much fucked.Frank doesn’t need to hear that right now.
“It’ll be fine,” I say instead, touching his elbow for reassurance. “He’ll cool down.”
“I really didn’t mean to?—”
“I know,” I interrupt. “Look, Frank, here’s what you need to do: Get me a complete list of every issue we’re talking about right now. Don’t sugarcoat anything, but don’t catastrophize, either. Just facts.”
Frank gulps and nods, looking slightly less like he’s about to have a coronary.
“And then we’ll fix it,” I continue. “If you do, Bastian will move on. He doesn’t hold grudges against people who own their mistakes and solve problems.”
He slaps some color into his cheeks and sighs. “I’ll do my best. They don’t tell you about these things when you’re first getting into my business, you know. It gets dark faster than you’d ever suspect.” He stares off into the distance for a weirdly long time, like he’s seeing ghosts out there. Then he shakes his head. “Anyway, that’s for me to worry about, not you. Seeing as how Mr. Hale just jetted off, if you’d like, I could give you a ride back?”
“No.” That sounded way ruder than I intended, so I add, “I mean, no thanks. I’ll walk. I need to clear my head anyway.”
“It’s three miles.”
“That’s why the Big Man Upstairs gave us legs, right?”
Frank still looks queasy, but he nods. “Alrighty then. Suit yourself. I’ll get that report over to you as soon as I can.”
The February air bites at my face as I start walking. I pull Bastian’s borrowed pullover tighter around myself, breathing in the faint aroma of his cologne still clinging to the fabric.
This wintergreen scent is killing me.
Don’t think about it,I command myself.Better yet, don’t think about him at all.
But that’s like telling yourself not to think about elephants. The second you say it,boom—elephants everywhere.
By the time I get to the office, I’m too cold to think about anything at all. That’s good news for my sanity, bad news for the impending frostbite in my toes and the tip of my nose.
I’ll take it, though.
In other good news, Bastian is nowhere to be seen. Patricia says he hasn’t been back, so he must’ve gone somewhere else.
Or is he avoiding me? He’s probably avoiding me. I’m halfway between devastated and grateful. Devastated because I’m still squirmy on the inside after the Great Elevator Debacle, and grateful because it’s best for everyone involved if we never speak of that again.
Frank’s email is waiting for me, like he promised. I warm myself up and then get to cataloging the various issues. It’s grim, to say the least. Widespread systemic issues that are gonna be a nightmare and a half to solve.
What I don’t understand is how all this happened to begin with. Iknowthese systems. Iapprovedthese systems. I talked to everyone from the engineers on the eighteenth floor to the boots on the ground who are wielding the screwdrivers, and at nopoint did problems this serious ever get brought up. As far as I was aware, it’s been relatively smooth sailing for two-plus years.
Did Frank break a mirror and earn seven years’ of bad luck? Have all of Bastian’s many unspoken sins finally come back to haunt him?
Or is something else going on?
Like…is someone sabotaging Project Olympus?
I don’t know and truthfully, I have neither the brainspace nor the level of seniority required to figure it out. I’m not exactly Chicago’s Sherlock Holmes.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t help. For the rest of the afternoon, I’m firing off emails and drafting contingency plans. Hours fly by in the blink of an eye.
If my phone didn’t ring at 4:45, I probably would’ve kept working long into the night.
“Hello? Is this Ms. Hunter?”
“Hi,” I say. “Yes, it is. May I ask who’s speaking?”
“This is Angelica from Dr. Haggerty’s office. We were wondering if you were coming by for your appointment today?”
