Page 33

“Oh,” said Jack. “No, that’s cool.” And it was, because Jack had no idea what the Honeysuckle was or who Roger happened to be. But his words elicited a furrowed brow from Brenda. “I mean,” he added quickly, “I completely understand. There’s a lot going on, murder-wise. You’ve got your hands full.”

“If people could just stop killing each other for a few weeks,” Brenda tutted. “Or at least stick with one victim at a time. We had three agents at one scene on Wednesday. The paperwork is a nightmare.”

Jack gave a sympathetic nod. “Speaking of paperwork,” he said, tone as casual as possible, “I was just thinking about my list of clients for the day, and it occurred to me that I have no idea where those names come from. But you must, right? Being a manager and all.”

Brenda snorted at this, the sound a stark contrast to her manicured appearance. “Oh, you’re cute. You know they don’t tell us shit.”

“None of you?” Jack asked, unable to smother the surprise in his voice. Sure, department managers weren’t at the top of the death industry pecking order, but they were a full rung above Jack and his colleagues, so he assumed they must know more than agents were allowed to. “You don’t know where we get our case files from?”

“We get them from the higher-ups.” Brenda’s voice was a shrug. “Where they get them from is anyone’s guess.”

Anyone but Jack’s. He knew exactly where they got them from. What he didn’t know was— “Who are the higher-ups?”

The question was out before Jack could stop it. Before he could assess whether or not this was something he should know. But Brenda’s expression only shifted to a thoughtful glance into the middle distance. “Now, let’s see,” she said. “You’d have met Mr. Bajwa at the company baseball game last summer, though he didn’t stay long and doesn’t leave much of an impression. Ms. Summers works almost exclusively from another branch and is, if you’ll forgive me, terrifying. Then there’s Ms. Cook and Mr…. gosh, something with an F. I’ve only ever seen either of them a handful of times around the office. The only one I ever see with any regularity is Ian—that is, Mr. Grant. He’ll pop his head into my office every once in a while. Cute tush. The rest only show their faces on Teams meetings for the most part, or for quarterly reviews. Though rumor has it they’re in here when the rest of us aren’t. If I’m honest, Margie, I barely even know what they do, but I know they can fire me, so I don’t go around asking.”

Jack forced Margaret’s face into what he hoped was an engaged expression, but his mind was too busy cataloging names to be sure he didn’t just look constipated. In truth, he was also that, but neither were his main focus just now. He muttered something in commiseration with Brenda that, in hindsight, was probably a verbatim lyric from “9 to 5” before rising creakily to his feet.

“Manicures next week?” Brenda asked, examining the vivid pink on her nails. “I’m thinking it’s time for something bold.”

“Me too,” said Jack, and then he left the office.

19

Bajwa. Summers. Cook. F. Ian Grant.

Bajwa. Summers. Cook. F. Ian Grant.

Bajwa. Summers. Cook. F. Ian Grant.

Jack repeated the names over and over to himself as he made his way back to his desk. BullShit Crap Fucking Idiot Goldfish. There were a depressing lack of cuss words beginning with g in the English language, Jack realized, but it didn’t matter. The mnemonic device did its job. If he was right, he wouldn’t need to remember the entirety of the higher-ups’ names anyway, just their initials, but he wouldn’t be able to test that theory until lunchtime, and it was only nine-thirty a.m.

He dropped into Margaret’s chair and wheeled himself up to the desk, rummaging through drawers until he found a pad of lined paper. He plucked a pen from the neat little porcelain holder on the desk and scribbled down the names. Bajwa. Summers. Cook. F. Ian Grant. B S C F I G. BullShit Crap Fucking Idiot Goldfish. The ink curving through each letter was a faded blue.

When he looked up from the notepad, he found The Eagle’s eyes sharp on him. Jack quickly ripped the page from the pad, folded it, and slipped it down his bra without breaking eye contact with The Eagle. Of all the inconvenient times for his nosy cubicle neighbor to be spying on him, this ranked up there with the first time he’d tried wearing one of Margaret’s designer thongs to work. The Eagle slunk back into his nest as soon as Jack stopped being interesting, and time slowed its pace to something between a crawl and a gentle creep as Jack turned his full attention to the little clock at the top of his laptop screen. Finally, the office began filling with the sound of squeaky chair wheels rolling back from desks and business casual shoes on linoleum floors. Lunchtime had arrived.

The yogurt stink bomb had been subdued, which meant everyone had returned to eating on their designated floors, but Jack wasn’t concerned. By this point he’d spent enough of his lunch hours on the second floor to know that no one up there really left their desks after they’d finished the last of their reheated lasagna. He just needed to keep his head down and he’d be fine.

The fact that his coworkers in the Murder department brought tuna sandwiches for lunch utterly baffled him. Had they learned nothing about the motives of workplace homicide from their jobs? Still, the hour passed odorously but otherwise without issue, and Jack was climbing the stairs to the second floor by 1:05 p.m. The upstairs break room stood still and dark, a distinctly microwavable ramen smell still clinging to the air. Jack made his way back through the hidden door and down the winding staircase to the Room of Records, the temperature dropping as he spiraled down, making him regret not bringing the tasteful dusty rose cardigan he’d left at his desk.

The secret chamber looked as it had the last time he’d snuck in, except the glass dome now lay empty of its doubly forged contents. Jack’s gaze lingered on that empty space, as if he could somehow stare long enough to conjure a play-by-play recap of everything that had happened to it over the past few days. Unfortunately the glass revealed nothing, which Jack decided was fair, and so he shifted his focus to the whiteboard on the wall. He plucked the piece of paper from his bra and scanned the marker scribbles in front of him. Beside the dates written down the center column were the initials he’d spotted last time. Now, paper full of names in hand, he examined each set. GS. OB. JF. IG. PC.

Ms. G. Summers.

Mr. O. Bajwa.

Mr. J.F.

Mr. Ian Grant.

Ms. P. Cook.

The paper trembled in Jack’s hands, his palms suddenly moist. Every one of the higher-ups Brenda mentioned had access to this room, to the Master List. One of these sets of scribbled initials must belong to the thief. This was now his list of suspects for the crime he should’ve been the one committing. BullShit Crap Fucking Idiot Goldfish. The only question remaining was which one had beaten him to the list, and why.

Jack took a shallow inhale, every nerve in his elderly body alive and tingling with electricity. He hadn’t experienced an adrenaline rush like this since he and the You Agains had stolen an Xbox from the local Walmart, and this time he didn’t even have to outrun a burly store security guard to get his heart racing.

He followed the initials down to the bottom of the whiteboard, where they stopped beside the most recent date. The last letters inked in dry-erase marker were PC, making Ms. Cook the last documented employee in the Room of Records. That gave Jack a place to start, though tracking her down wouldn’t be easy. He only had a surname to go by, and S.C.Y.T.H.E. didn’t exactly have a website listing its employees. As far as the World Wide Web was concerned, outside of the darkest and most conspiracy-based parts of it, at least, the company didn’t exist. Still, documentation of S.C.Y.T.H.E. staff had to exist somewhere, if only for the sake of the employee payroll. The archives were his best bet, but with the Exclamation Mark in charge, access would be tricky. What he needed was a way around the archivist, but when she wasn’t there, the archives were securely locked, and Jack could no longer flirt his way into a key card.

This would require something more complex. This would require strategy. This would require bugs.