Chapter 17 Harper
HARPER
Two days without any more threatening texts. Two days of going into the office and avoiding the three men who made me whole. I’d never been much of a crier, except when Dad passed, but these last two days had the waterworks threatening at the slightest provocation.
I kept staring at the message from Julian like it would change.
I sensed the command in it and a hopeful feeling teased the edges of my frayed conscience.
I checked my phone one last time. After messaging the anonymous texter back demanding to know who they were and what they thought I’d done, they’d gone silent.
Maybe they didn’t know anything after all. Could I take that risk? No. Better for all of us if I continued to lie low and hope they moved on to someone else. If I didn’t give them a story, they’d find something else to obsess over.
Hell, maybe it had all been a random prank. I rubbed my temples and tried to focus on the papers strewn across my desk.
Julian’s marketing strategy meeting gave me a chance to talk to them in a professional capacity. I just had to keep myself together.
Jarrad and a few others on the marketing team huddled around my desk with their own reports. “Things are on the upswing.” He tapped a blunt nail on the spreadsheet I’d printed.
I nodded and flipped to the previous years’ stats. “We’re definitely higher than at this point last year. What else? We need to make sure everything is on point.”
I expected them to back me up at this meeting. We all needed to present a united front, and so far, despite my lack of experience, no one had argued against my strategies.
Jarrad rattled off a string of numbers that projected a ten percent growth by the end of the month.
“Good. Good.” I stacked the spreadsheets and my notes into a pile according to dates and slid them into a manila folder. I’d been going over these numbers since receiving Julian’s text.
If they wanted to test me, I’d done everything I could to prepare and I would put my best foot forward.
“With our current projections and strategies, we’re enhancing the brand while staying loyal to the company and its values.
Good work.” I closed the folder and slid it into my messenger bag.
A moment of hesitation stalled my hands.
Should I offer to carpool with them to the meeting?
It helped present a united front, but did I really want to spend the next hour in the car listening to more business talk?
Not really.
I reached behind me for my jacket and shrugged into it. “Great work everyone. I’m heading out for the meeting. I’ll see all of you later.”
A confused look spread around the room, but they all backed out and dispersed to their desks.
I should be more open to showing a united front at the meeting, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the feeling they were talking about me behind my back.
It had gotten better over the last day, but the falling silent and watching me as I walked past continued.
I hated it. Part of me wanted to confront them.
The other part remembered what happened last time I’d tried .
The people I’d thought were my friends laughed me out of the classroom. I would not go through that again.
I checked my phone, then my map app. I had just enough time to stop for a coffee. Coffee and time to think. That was what I needed.
Ten minutes later, with coffee cooling in the cupholder, I turned on my favorite playlist and merged into traffic. The upcoming meeting and the treatment of my coworkers consumed my thoughts for the long drive.
Eventually, the GPS prompted me about an upcoming exit as my phone rang and Lila’s name popped up on the screen. I used the car’s Bluetooth to answer. “Hey, Lila? I’m in the car. What’s up?”
“I’m not sure. It might not be anything.” Concern laced her tone, growing thicker with every word. “A journalist was at the house.”
“Oh?” I signalled for the exit and joined a long line of cars heading south. “What kind of journalist? Did they want to do a story on your research?”
“No. They asked about you.”
My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. I peeled one hand free and stretched my fingers to ease the sudden ache. “What?”
“That’s what I said. I asked why they wanted to do a story on someone who works in marketing. I mean, yeah, you work at one of the city’s fortune 500 companies, but it made no sense.”
I tried to talk but words stuck in my throat.
I prided myself on my professionalism. It was the only thing in this world that earned me any respect.
I’d sacrificed that when I chose to sleep with Dante and the others.
If I lost that in the eyes of the world, I had nothing.
My lungs tightened. The seatbelt dug into my skin and pressed into my neck, making it hard to breathe. Hard to focus.
Another prompt from the GPS turned me down a side road and took me through a run-down section of town that pressed my foot harder on the accelerator.
First my coworkers judge me behind my back, and now I had reporters showing up at the house within a week of that text?
I’d never cared for coincidences, and I liked them even less when they stacked up like this.
“What did you tell them?”
“I gave them your bio. Told them about your high scores in college.”
“What else?” I barely managed to keep from shrieking. “Lila, please. Tell me exactly what you said.”
“That’s it.” Lila sounded so genuine that the panic abated.
Not completely, but enough that breathing came easier.
“It was super weird. They kept asking about your personal life. They knew about your dad. Which, I guess, that’s not really unusual.
Not like that was a secret or anything. But I hate it when people like that try to dig for dirt or something.
I told them to get off our property and if they came back I’d call the police. ”
“Good. Thank you. That is really weird. If anyone wanted to interview me, you’d think they would set something up with the company.
And why me? I’m a nobody at Elevate. Maybe they thought they could get dirt on the company since I’m the newest and youngest employee.
” The more I talked, the more sense it made.
They couldn’t know about my relationship. This was all just a really weird string of coincidences.
Dad would’ve laughed and told me I should write mysteries because my head always went to conspiracies instead of thinking the best of people.
Because people had always failed me.
Except for Dad and Lila, no one had ever been trustworthy.
“Thanks for calling to let me know.” The GPS directed me through another series of turns. I concentrated on that as the terrain changed. I drove up a rocky hill and slammed my foot onto the brake. “Lila, I need to go. I’m at the meeting and I need to prep. I’ll call you back later.”
“Okay. Good luck. Sorry to call and distract you. I would have waited, but I knew you’d want to know.”
“Yeah, definitely.” I ended the call, barely even listening to her response, and silenced the GPS. A log cabin stretched in front of me. I craned my neck left and right, peering through the windows and trying to make sense of the woods on either side of my car.
I’d been so wrapped up in my thoughts and then the conversation with Lila that I hadn’t paid attention to the city turning into dense woods. When was the last time I’d passed a house? What kind of brainstorming session did they have planned out here in the middle of nowhere?
Julian’s message read like they were looking for a new vision for Elevate. I’d spent every single second since that text pulling information and compiling it into a cohesive presentation.
I opened the car door and stepped out into a pine-scented forest that reminded me more of a fairytale than I wanted to admit.