“You need the experience.” Donahue swung in with the two of the one-two punch.
Scowling, I crossed my arms and snarked, “The CEO should get therealworkers, right?”
Kyle squared off with me and the amusement in his eyes made me relax a little. He hadn’t ever done anythingreallymean. In fact, the people who worked at Budget Busters were some of the nicest I’d ever met. They were right; it didn’t hurt that I was usually coming to the rescue. They weren’t wrong that us fixing the office equipment made people extra fond of us.
Donahue shuffled closer with a crooked smile. “Casey Uhlig, our CEO, is hopeless. The man can make Excel jump hoops, but give him any other program and he screams at it. I’ve heard him swearing in his office frominsidethe elevator before the doors opened.” His smile spread wider. “Once he literally threw a laptop from his window. Legal shit bricks for weeks. It landed on the roof of a car in traffic. As in, the roof of a car of someone going down the street. There were police involved.”
Kyle snorted out a laugh that was damned close to a giggle.
My stomach curdled. They might think this was funny, but I knew bullies and how they worked. People who yelled weren’t jokes. I’d grown up with one—my dad. Yelling led to one thing—hitting.
“Never mind all that,” Kyle said fast. He studied my face, and maybe he saw how uneasy I was becoming because he gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “Uhlig forgot to update his password again and locked himself out of the computer. It happens about once every three or four months. It’s pointless to try to get him to do anything on his end, so I’ll reset the code and you go input the new password for him, okay?” He tugged the tablet we used when we were out in the offices from its charger on his desk and then handed it to me.
My hand trembled when I took the tablet, so I tucked it under my arm in the hopes that he wouldn’t notice.
Kyle gave me a small encouraging smile. “I’ll message you. It’ll besupereasy.”
“Fine,” I growled, but my heart pounded faster. I’d seen the CEO from a distance once or twice. He was a giant in a flawless, unwrinkled suit. There wasn’t a crease on the man at any time of the day—even late. It wasn’t natural.
And he was like an Ent.
Staggeringly huge.
Gargantuan.
Or maybe it was just that I wasn’t very big? I didn’t know, but he freaked me out based on size alone. I was fucked up, though, so maybe it was just me and I was imagining the hard look on his face.
If Mr. Uhlig was a comic book supervillain, he would be the Grey Gargoyle, capable of turning himself to stone—a cold guy. My mind took a dangerous turn and conjured up a sinister smirk I’d never seen on the man to go with my strange thoughts. He had a short dark beard and thick eyebrows that made him appear slightly murderous. Every time he came into view, I made sure I was decidedlyoutof his because his body language radiated tight-ass conservative. He walked with his shoulders stiff and swaggered. When he was in the main office, I might have ducked under a vacant desk, once or twice, to change out a power strip unnecessarily.
“If Mr. Uhlig gets one look at me and fires me, this is totally your fault.” I pointed between the two of them.
They both burst into laughter and didn’t seem worried, which likely meant they didn’t think unemployment was in my cards today, but if he did tell me to pound pavement, it wouldn’t be the first time people were shocked at the things that happened around me. I attracted bad luck. My superpower was the ability to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’d thought about getting T-shirts made.
“Better hurry.” Donahue took a long, annoying slurp of his coffee and his eyes gleamed with amusement. “The longer he waits, the madder he’ll get.”
“At me?” I didn’t squeak, but it was close. Okay, maybe I did, because Kyle snickered again.
“No, he’ll be madder than a hornet at the computer, but you know, you’ll be there with him.” Donahue shrugged. “Run, little assistant.”
“Calm the raging dragon, right,” I grumbled, and they were cackling so hard they snorted as I cradled the tablet to my chest and stormed out of our world apart from the rest of the office. In my safe haven of servers we hadD&Dposters and schematics on the walls, and I had a framed Captain America print above my desk. I glanced back at him for courage. He was one of my favorites because he was always the good guy, always stood up for what was right. He would never let anyone get bullied. In the print beside him Spider-Man slung a web and prepared to swing away.
Ugh, if only I could get away that fast.I stepped into the hallway, which was so much brighter I wished for a pair of sunglasses, exiting into a corporate hell. The walls were shockingly white and all hung with mirrors and bland flowers-in-vases type artwork. The carpet was the hard, pebbled gray stuff that could take a spilled pot of coffee without even hinting at staining.
In short, I hated it.
The air out here made my lungs feel like they were on fire. I knew it was just performance anxiety getting to me, talking to strangers was always a strain, but the knowledge didn’t stop my heart from clattering faster. I used my tongue to spin the hoop of my lip piercing.
Carefully I walked along the side of the hallway, keeping my head up enough to see where other people were but not enough to make eye contact. It was a precarious dance because if I did it wrong, I would run into things. I didn’t want to get sidelined in a conversation right now and take even longer. The burnished gold elevator doors slid open and were only a few feet away. Elated, I was focused on the enticing glimmer of the elevator floor, and my small victory of reaching it without—
“Oh, Angel, sweetie?”
Sighing internally, I glanced up, my anxiety ratcheting higher. Jan, a nice woman in her sixties, cut directly toward me as she stepped out of the elevator. Her makeup was dark and flawless; her black skirt suit neat with a razor-straight pleated skirt; her glossy black shoes spindly spikes, and none of that matched her hair, which was up in a brilliant red mini-beehive that had jeweled butterfly pins stuck in it. She grinned at me as she came close and patted the top ofmyhead. “Love this, when did you do the blue tips?”
“Last night,” I said, flushing and standing still, even though I hated to be randomly touched. She wasn’t too bad, though, just sort of brushed her hand across the spikes of my styled hair. It was almost nice.
“Looks good with the black base, sweetie. Can you stop by my desk? I have something for you.”
My face heated as I glanced down and tried to slide around her, but she stubbornly moved with me. I tapped the tips of my Vans, and she fluttered the angular points of her heels.
