Austen
Monday morning.
Despite waking up on time, Austen found herself running a step behind. A heavy fog lingered in her mind and her morning routine seemed to take twice as long because of it.
Part of her dreaded the workday ahead. She had to watch the footage of her interview with DeHardt from the beginning until the embarrassing end. She knew she’d be cringing heavily during the partafterdinner, when she grilled the hockey player over the note …
He must think I’m a complete nut.
But she had her reasons for acting the way she had, of course. And really, who cared what DeHardt thought of her? She’d probably never talk to him again.
Besides, the only people who’d witnessed her outburst were Johnny, Frederick, and DeHardt himself. That footage, along with DeHardt’s commentary about her boss, would obviously be edited out.
No one had to see it, no one had to know—all she had to do was cut it.
By the time she ran out to her car, she was already thirty minutes late. She jumped in and turned the key. The dash lit up, but the engine didn’t make a sound.
“Not this again!” Austen swore. Lately, her car sometimes randomly decided it didn’t feel like starting. The solution was to sit and wait.
She waited and tried again.
“Come on, come on, ple~ease.”
***
Austen arrived an hour late, once her car finally decided to fire. Though it was out of character for her to be late, it wasn’t a big deal—other employees showed up late all the time. And she’d called Thayer, of course, to give him notice. He’d told her not to worry, to take her time, to drive safe.
But when she arrived at the office, she had a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right today. The blinds to Thayer’s glass-windowed office were drawn. Heneverclosed those; it was part of the “transparent working environment” philosophy he always preached.
She dropped her bag off at her cubicle and stared at her phone, waiting for it to ring. But how could Thayer greet her when he couldn’t see her arrive?
She went to the video editing room instead. She found Johnny browsing the web as he ate his daily breakfast, a ham and cheese sandwich with bacon.
“Morning,” she said.
“Hey, Austen.” He washed down a mouthful of sandwich with coffee. “How was the rest of your weekend?”
“Good, good,” she said.
“I still can’t get over that DeHardt guy,” he said with a laugh. “What an ass that guy was. He’s even worse than advertised.”
“Yeah. Totally.” She paused. “Speaking of, where’s the tape? I’m going to get straight to work on editing. The sooner it’s over, the faster I can move on and forget all about him.”
Johnny shook his head. “No need.”
Her face scrunched up in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Big boss. He grabbed it from me first thing this morning.”
“What?” Austen asked. She could feel her cheeks turning red with the realization that Thayer would see the way she’d acted during dinner—the fact that she’d obviously gotten a little tipsy, tipsy enough to let DeHardt trash her boss on film, tipsy enough to have a shameful meltdown over some stupid note a waitress had slipped him …
“Why would he take the tape? What did he say?”
Johnny looked skyward to jog his memory. “Hm. Well, uh, he asked how it went, and I told him that The Big D was A Big Douche, but the interview went without any major hitches.”
“Did he ask anything else?”
“Yeah, actually. He asked if that dead guy, Campbell I think, came up during the interview. I told him no, but—er …”
