Chapter 7 #2
Despite Melv’s best efforts, the mention of a break only frayed everyone’s nerves more.
Telling someone to calm down was the quickest way to make them angrier.
Tension ratcheted up until the air in the sitting room grew so helplessly thick, Fletcher felt like a stapler floating in a mound of green Jell-O.
Neither salesman budged. Melv’s fingers strained against their chests.
“Gentlemen,” Melv said, firmer this time and far too generous. “Maybe Waylon had the right idea. We could all take a minute to ourselves.”
Theo turned to the room, eyes blazing and jaw set. “No, Jackie’s right. Dyer knew what he was doing. This is exactly why he brought us here. If that old bastard wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him myself.”
Joplin cried harder at this.
It nearly drowned out Rick’s moaning. “Dyer invited us all. Not just the execs. It’s anyone’s company.”
In the center of the conversation pit, Theo’s attention returned to Rick, still fuming. “You’ve never bothered showing any initiative before, Rick. I don’t expect you to start today.”
“Initiative?” Rick echoed. A dark sneer wiped across his lips.
“Initiative?” He marched across the living room and stripped the rifle off the mantel.
Melv reared in shock as Rick slammed the barrel against Theo’s chest, the brittle rib cage, and the beating heart beneath. “How’s this for initiative?”
It was Fletcher’s own voice she heard shouting, “Stop!”
She lunged forward, the adrenaline in her system clearly mistaking her for some kind of hero. A gun like that was ornamental. It wouldn’t be loaded. It was decor. Nothing worse. Nothing bad could—
Her hand reached Rick’s shoulder a second too late.
The blast rang Fletcher’s ears into oblivion. Her lungs choked on gunpowder.
Then, there was blood on her face.
Sticky. Hot. Metallic. Dripping onto her cheek, her chin, her chest.
Theo wilted. Barely alive. His eyes lowered to half-mast as a corsage of red sprouted at his breast pocket. Weak, he drooped against the seat cushions, a hand feebly coming to his chest.
“Rick, what have you done?” Fletcher shouted.
They had all kinds of corporate trainings—sexual harassment prevention, cybersecurity awareness, regulatory compliance—but no lesson on what the hell to do when one of them got shot through the heart.
The world didn’t slow. Opal and Sheila hunched together in the corner, whispering.
Bertram counseled the Brians with meaty hands on their shoulders.
The rest formed an angry mob around Rick.
Everyone hollered over one another, making it impossible to comprehend their words. Didn’t anyone want to say goodbye?
Fletcher’s body moved, desperate to do something.
Fix something. Anything. She hefted one of the fur throws off the sofa even though it was about a million degrees outside.
She had half a mind to hide under it, but instead pressed it firmly against Theo’s chest, despite the queasy spinning the room was doing.
Theo looked up at her. She looked down at him. He was about to die, and there was nothing she could do. What was the right thing to say to a man like him on his deathbed? (Deathcouch?) She hadn’t liked him all that much in life, but even he deserved…something.
It’s okay was a blatant lie.
The Sales team will be nothing without you was equally untrue.
They were feral creatures, clearly rabid enough to kill their own leader.
And the company as a whole would easily chug on without him.
If he’d died under ordinary circumstances, she would have sent condolence bouquets to the Groffs and forged Dyer’s signature on the sympathy card.
As Theo writhed and sputtered, blood crusting his lips, she landed on something in the middle, the only honest thing she could think. “You gave everything you had to Cartwright Media. You were good at your job. You can rest now.”
A sigh left Theo, like that was all the validation he needed for his eyes to glaze over. She was certain the moment he was gone. It didn’t take long. The light dimmed in Theo’s eyes, the wax of a candle dripping until there was nothing left.
That was when the Holy shit I’m going to throw up all of my intestines set in.
There was a finality to death she learned early—hogs on the farm, bacon in the skillet. But this? Theo was dead, and he wasn’t orchestrated-my-own-demise dead, like Dyer.
He was shot-by-his-direct-report dead.
Murdered-in-cold-blood dead.
Dead dead dead.
The useless violence of it. Rick’s blatant arrogance. His disrespect for the fragility of life. All Fletcher could do was suck down a half-formed gasp and wipe the stray tear trailing down her cheek.
Some desperate part of her wanted to believe it was a clever ruse. Her heart continued beating, a steady drum: not real, not real, not real.
But it was.
There was no saving Theo.
There was no saving any of them.
Fletcher’s pulse throbbed in her throat, and sweat pilled on the back of her neck. Melv had read the fine print, and now Theo had a bullet hole through his chest. This entire house was filled to the brim with old hunting contraband. Who would be next?
No. No.
She stamped a towel on the grease fire of fear burning behind her ribs.
Rick had always had a short fuse. He threw tantrums. He picked fights.
No one else was going to hurt anyone. These were her coworkers.
People she knew. People she’d scheduled team-building Central Park picnics with, roller rink retreats, and ax-throwing offsites.
Well, on second thought, ax-throwing was not particularly comforting right now.
Fletcher peeled herself away from Theo’s rapidly cooling body to see Raul land a punch square on Rick’s jaw as if to knock some sense into him. The salesman staggered backward, but his sly smirk didn’t flinch.
“Is that all you’ve got?”
“This isn’t Call of Duty, asshole,” Raul barked. Despair contorted his dark skin. “He’s not going to respawn at the next checkpoint. You killed him. He’s dead.”
Rick wiped a smear of blood off his face with his cuff. “You heard Dyer. The hunt’s already started, baby. I’m trying to inherit a fortune.”
Raul’s face scrunched up in disgust. “You’re an animal.”
Unfortunately, in his adrenaline-induced haze, Raul had clearly failed to bring Rick’s familiar Remington into the equation. Rick cocked the barrel and pointed it toward Raul’s chest. “You want to say that again?”
Cries went up. For the first time all morning, Fletcher was at least marginally convinced that everyone on this island hadn’t lost their minds. Just Rick. (And she truthfully wasn’t sure he’d ever actually had his.)
Deepti threw herself between Rick and Raul. The barrel pressed against the buttons on her blouse each time she breathed. One rasped command left her mouth. “Don’t.”
It was enough of a distraction for Brian to knock the gun out of Rick’s hands. An awful clanging rang through the sitting room.
Finally, Rick seemed to notice the shift in the air. The breeze lifting strands of Fletcher’s braid buzzed dangerously, tinged with the scent of iron. He wanted more blood to be shed, but it could easily be his next. They outnumbered him, twelve to one.
Both hands went up next to Rick’s face. He took a hesitant step backward, then another. Waiting to trip the snare wire, caught in his own trap.
“You know what?” he said. A strand of greasy black hair slid over his forehead, and he brushed it away with his forearm. “I’ll go. But you’re no better than me. I came here for the career development like the rest of you. You think I’m an animal? Watch what you’ll become.”
The week had only just begun.
“Opal. Sheila. Come find me. Sales sticks together,” Rick said, conveniently sidestepping the fact he’d just single-handedly executed the VP of Sales. He scooped the shotgun off the floor on his way out.
No one trailed after him. For a long moment, no one moved at all.
When she heard the front doors open and close, Fletcher watched Rick through the wide windows, tracking his steps toward the garage.
It didn’t take long for an engine to rev.
The tires of an ATV kicked up clouds of dust as Rick sped down the baobab-lined drive, spearing across the savanna.
At once, everyone exhaled.
It did little to settle Fletcher’s stomach. One look around the room proved everyone else was thinking the same thing. Even if Rick was rotten to his core, he wasn’t wrong.
Who could they trust when one of them could turn as fast as Rick turned on Theo? There was a multibillion-dollar inheritance on the line, and only one of them could claim it in the end.