Chapter 22 #2
“Jude,” she says with a short, ill-fitted smile.
And I know immediately that I’m screwed.
She must have the ATM footage already, and Calvin has sealed my doom with his doctored reports and evidence of my false identity.
I wonder what he has. Police reports? Hospital records?
Just how much money will I be going down for, how many years in federal prison is it going to earn me?
“Mr. Doyle,” Calvin begins. “Thank you for coming. Jessica and I have arrived at some pretty compelling conclusions about what’s been going on here at Pacific Creative without your consent.” He flashes me a mocking grin.
Mr. Doyle eyes me speculatively. “Yes, well, let’s get on with it. I’m a busy man.”
I want to wither to the floor and hide, but I refuse to give Calvin the satisfaction.
He slides a stack of papers across his desk. “First, we came across these expense reports in accounting. You’ll note the charges are, in some cases, quite extreme. Many have been attributed to Ms. Clark. Or should I say, Ms. Cole?”
My face reddens. If anyone cared to check, I’m sure they’d see that the bogus reports began long before I got here, but I’m an easy target, and Calvin has probably gotten his buddy Eric to scrub out anything suspicious prior to my hire date.
I make a mental note to pay Eric a little visit soon, to give him my personal thanks.
But Mr. Doyle doesn’t touch the papers. Instead, he glares at Calvin. “Don’t speak in riddles, man. Say what you mean. And, as I heard it, there are other names on some of those reports as well, yours included. We’ll need confirmation to charge anyone.”
Calvin looks befuddled. “Uh. Yes, sir. I mean that Jude Clark is not her real name. She’s been posing as someone she’s not. Her real name is Judeth Cole, and she has a criminal record. Something we don’t tolerate here at Pacific Creative.”
It takes everything I have not to drop my face in my hand.
Criminal record? Please. They were minor shoplifting and possession charges.
I was nineteen. Barely graduated, with no income, no family, no help.
But Calvin makes it sound like I spent my twenties robbing gas stations.
It certainly makes me look a heap guiltier than him by comparison.
David squints. “You have proof of this?”
Calvin smiles victoriously, back on top. “Yes, sir,” he says tapping a second, smaller stack of papers.
“I’m not posing as anything,” I try to explain. “I made a legal decision to change my name for personal reasons—” But Jessica interrupts before I can finish, her previous ambiguity conveniently dried up.
“I can provide the confirmation you spoke of, sir,” she pipes up.
“This footage was sent over this morning. It’s from the ATM where a large sum of cash was recently withdrawn using a company card, the same card listed time and again on those reports.
The person on this video is our embezzler, sir.
Without question. Which should clear anyone else indicated. ”
Turning to Jessica, David signals for her to press play, leaving Calvin’s papers on the desk.
The footage is grainy at first, dark and gray. But it’s clear enough that they’ll be able to tell me from Calvin or anyone else at this company. I glance sidelong at Calvin’s pompous face and the urge is so immediate and intense that it’s rolling through me before I can totally register it.
A shadow is just emerging from the far side of the footage when Jessica’s laptop shuts down, the screen blackening in an instant.
“Excuse me,” she says nervously. “Must have crashed. Give me one moment, sir.” In a few minutes she has it booted back up, ready to play again. But no sooner does she press the button than it crashes a second time.
I hide a smile and pretend to study my nails. Calvin gurgles with rage. “For Christ’s sake, Jessica,” he exclaims, quickly apologizing to David.
Finally, she gets the laptop up and running a third time, and prepares to play the video, making sure everything is in working order before she does—battery life, the fan, the barrel jack on the charger cord.
This time, the video starts to play before glitching multiple times and falling into an aberrative fit. The laptop clicks off.
“I just don’t understand,” Jessica is saying as she futilely pumps the power button. “It was fine this morning.”
“The file must be corrupted,” I suggest innocently, and she glares at me. I actually feel a little sorry for her. It was cruel to lead her on that way. I should have just shut it down with no hope of recovery from the start. But frankly, I couldn’t help myself. It was too easy.
Calvin pushes his paper stacks at David. “Leave it, Jessica,” he barks. “We don’t need the video. If you’ll just look at these, sir, I think you’ll see what we’ve been trying to show you.” He shoots poor Jessica a look that could curdle cream.
David is leaning over when the smell hits him. He sniffs. “What is that?”
Smoke begins to fill the room, a thick haze obscuring everyone’s view. I point nonchalantly to the corner where a healthy blaze is dancing in the trash can and licking up the wall. “It must be that, sir. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.”
As the words leave my mouth, both stacks of damning evidence against me ignite into glowing orange flames right on Calvin’s desk.
“What the devil?” David shouts, jumping from his chair.
Calvin shrieks and scrambles to his feet, reaching for a bottle of water to put the fire out, but a streak of flame chases across his desk, singeing his arm, and he drops the water bottle to the floor.
Drawing back, he looks panicked as Jessica and David rush out of the room and alarms begin to drone in the hall outside.
Sadly, this particular building isn’t equipped with a sprinkler system.
But I’m not worried. These aren’t the runaway flames of my youth, a pyre to my repressed emotions rushing out of me in a flood, rampaging like a beast of its own making.
This fire is connected, extending from me like tentacles, every point centered within.
I can find the place where we meet, and I can pull them back inside as if drawing in a breath.
Enough damage will be done and not a spot more.
However natural my power felt as a child, it was never like this.
Never this controlled. Never this connected.
Calvin was right. I am Judeth Cole. And the Cole women are an inferno, a lesson he deserves to learn.
His eyes find mine through the smoke as he moves to exit behind the others, and I see my grandfather’s fear in them, the mortality flashing across his face when he realized he’d lost control that night, that he’d been outmaneuvered.
It was a small grain of satisfaction that I didn’t have time to savor as I fled.
One I came to regret, to deny, in the tragedy that followed. But I can savor it now.
I’m still in my chair. And when he sees me, he knows. Maybe it’s the shit-eating grin on my face or the way I’m staring him down. Maybe it’s how the smoke dances around me, never coming too close. Or maybe it’s the way I can’t even feel the heat.
“Told you so,” I say through the din of the alarm, and from the expression on his face, when he looks at me, he no longer sees a woman—he sees a witch.
Before he can reach the doorway, flames erupt across it, hemming us in.
“P-please,” he begs, turning to me.
“Give me one good reason to let you go,” I say, standing.
He coughs into his hand. “Please, I’ll do anything. I promise, okay? You’ll keep your job. I’ll drop the stuff about your background and make sure Jessica’s footage never sees the light of day. Whatever you want. I fucking swear it.”
I fold my arms, watching him squirm, liking it more than I care to admit.
“I don’t want the job,” I tell him. “But I don’t want to be fired.
I want to leave quietly, with an Irish goodbye.
And I want to be exonerated from the embezzlement claims, the needless concerns over who left the money on Sue’s desk. Generosity is not a crime.”
“Y-yes,” he stammers. “Absolutely.”
“If someone has to take the fall, let it be you or Eric. Not another unsuspecting bystander.”
He nods emphatically, head bobbing like his neck is made of jelly. “Of course.”
“If I ever find out you’re stealing again, Calvin, I will toast you like the fucking marshmallow you are. Do you understand me?” Flames crawl up the wall beside him, eating at the ceiling to drive the point home.
He cowers, whimpering as he coughs, and I think I see real tears. “Yes, yes. I promise.”
“Good,” I tell him, glad to get that part over with. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”