He was trying to get me to smile. I gave in because it was easier to smile at men who think they’re funny than to tell them the truth. Well, not easier—but better for my chances of keeping the peace around there. Though that hadn’t stopped me from giving Grant the occasional side-eye. He was the exception.
Colin Slade walked away, drumming the envelope in his hand all the way down the hall. Grant hovered over me as I logged in with my 20thiteration of my favorite password: Pa$$word20.
“You have no clue who that is, do you?” he asked. I could faintly smell the coffee on his breath, and I wanted to pretend to gag, but I thought that might take it too far this early in the day.
“I don’t care who he is. I’ve never seen him before and probably never will again. There are like two million employees in this building.” I logged into the email system, and, funnily enough, the first email I saw was from Colin Slade. It was a companywide email, and for a split second I imagined he’d goofed and meant to forward a stupid meme to someone but had accidentally sent it to everyone.
“I bet you feel pretty dumb right now.” Grant took his seat and began typing on his keyboard.
The email was, in reality, Colin introducing himself, picture included, as our new Vice President of Sales.
He’s Margaret’s boss?!
And he didn’t know where she was. I looked at the blue eyes in the picture of my boss’s boss and wondered if I should rule him out. I usually wasn’t right about my intrusive and over-the-top theories anyway, and her kidnapper most likely wouldn’t be a new boss she had never met.
My stomach sank as I replayed every sarcastic thing I’d said to him, and the horror of that slowly dawned on me. I put my head in my hands, dreading the next time I’d run into Colin Slade.
Perfect. Just perfect.
CHAPTER TWO
As I sat there at my desk, awash in shame, a thought struck me. “Are you just getting here, too?” I asked without turning around.
“No… yes,” Grant said as he stopped typing. “I took a long break. Are you going to tell on me? To Colin? The guy you couldn’t even be civil to?”
“I wasn’t mean,” I defended myself, knowing full well it was a lie. It’s something I’d been doing since the debacle with my ex-friends (though Iwastotally blameless in that situation).
“Sure,” he replied. Ihadbeen snappy with our new boss. I mentally chastised myself and came back to the present moment, pushing away the image of the tall, commanding executive who would sign my paychecks from now on.
Whatever Grant had been up to this morning, he obviously didn’t want to share. What ifhe’dkidnapped Margaret?
I found her profile on the company intranet and pored over it. Headshot, awards, polished bio—everything about her screamed competence. I scrolled, hoping for something human, something that said, “I oversleep too,” but found nothing.
Grant kicked back in his chair and rolled back until he was facing me.
“I tried calling her, but it goes to voicemail. I’ve left a couple,” he said.
I leaned back. “Wow. That’s some stalker shit.”
“What areyoudoing now?” He flicked his pen against my armrest.
“I’m trying to find some information that can help me get in contact with her,” I said, knowing perfectly well I had nothing but a generic description of all her awards and business articles she’d written.
“What if you had her address?” He looked at me with a poker face.
“You don’t have her address.” I said it like a statement, but it was really a question.
He rolled back to his desk and came back with his cell phone, shoving it in my face. The screen glowed with an address a few blocks from the office building.
“Is that where you were?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “No, I was getting the address this morning downstairs. I had to wait a very long time for the HR lady to walk away from her computer. She didn’t log off or anything.”
“And nobody saw you?” I was pretty sure someone would be up to fire him any second now.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s an isolated desk behind the bathrooms.”
I squinted at him. “Why are you confessing all of this to me? What if Ididgo tell Colin Slade?” The idea of approaching my superior after having bombed our first encounter made me want to crawl under my desk and hide forever.
