Chapter 39
Scottie was grateful her mom had sent them home with enough food to feed both Greene sisters for a week because Willow hadn’t had time to breathe, much less cook, since they’d returned.
Willow was struggling to keep up with her usual workload while also preparing for the looming presentation, plus trying to make up for the time she lost whenever her computer or software acted up.
As a result, Scottie hadn’t seen her outside of the office since they’d returned from Corvallis.
Finally, for New Year’s Eve, they’d made plans to spend the evening together, and Scottie couldn’t wait.
By three o’clock, she was itching to leave work. Mateo had already clocked out early, and Gordon was only delaying going home because his in-laws were visiting.
Just as she shut down her computer and shouldered her laptop bag, her phone buzzed with a text.
It was from Willow.
I’m so sorry! I know we wanted to go see the drone show at the square, but I’m still stuck in the middle of a thousand things. PowerPoint nuked every single transition, and I’ll have to redo all of them. I’m going to be here until at least eight.
That would be cutting it pretty close since the drone show started at nine, and she didn’t want Willow to get there totally exhausted. We could go to the later one, at midnight, Scottie texted back. Or we could order Chinese and stay in. Let’s see how you feel once you make it out of here.
Three little dots appeared, then disappeared, as if Willow wasn’t sure she should accept the offer. Finally, her reply popped up. Are you sure you really don’t mind? I feel awful about changing our plans last-minute.
Scottie sent back a hugging emoji. As long as I get to kiss you at midnight, I’m up for anything.
I can promise you that, Willow answered right away. I’ll be with you at the stroke of midnight, even if I have to threaten PowerPoint with a stapler.
Scottie chuckled and was about to reply when the door swung open.
Miles Donnelly, her direct supervisor, stood in the doorway. “Scottie. Can I talk to you for a minute before you leave?”
“Sure.” Scottie pocketed her phone, slid the laptop bag off her shoulder, and followed him to his office, ignoring the what-the-hell-did-you-do-now look Gordon sent after her.
Miles closed the door behind them, which was not a good sign.
He settled into his leather chair and gestured at her to take a seat.
With growing tension, she sank onto the visitor’s chair.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk, and regarded her with a serious expression. “You might remember the conversation we had back in October.”
“Uh, which one?” Scottie asked. The one that immediately came to mind was, hopefully, not the one he was talking about.
“I asked you what the heck was going on with Willow Greene up in Operations because she’d already submitted a string of tickets not even two weeks into the job.”
Scottie’s stomach tightened, and she struggled to keep a neutral expression in place. “I remember.” Somehow, she managed to keep her voice even.
“You assured me she wasn’t sabotaging her devices,” Miles said, “just having a bit of bad luck.”
Scottie nodded tersely. “And that’s still my assessment.”
“I told you to keep an eye on her,” Miles continued as if she hadn’t said anything.
“I did.” Oh yeah. I really did. She was looking at Willow any chance she got, watching the way she scrunched up her nose when she focused hard, tracing the elegant line of Willow’s collarbone, admiring every graceful movement. But, of course, she wasn’t going to tell her boss that.
Miles’s gaze didn’t soften. “I talked to her supervisor, Ms. Covey, this morning, and she mentioned Ms. Greene having some issues with Outlook before Christmas. So I checked the system to see if we’d managed to resolve the problem.”
Alarm bells went off in Scottie’s mind. She knew what he had found—or rather: what he hadn’t found.
“Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find a single ticket for it.” He let the words hang in the air.
Scottie’s stomach seemed to plunge to her ankles.
That wasn’t the only ticket missing in the system.
At least a handful of times, she had slipped upstairs after five, when almost everyone was gone, or had casually dropped by during lunch, pretending to do a quick update when she had really fixed Willow’s latest glitch.
Plus she’d helped her on the phone nearly every day, all without official documentation.
She waited for him to bring up the other incidents, but he didn’t.
Apparently, he didn’t know the full extent of her VIP girlfriend support. He only seemed aware of the Outlook problems, not all the other glitches that had occurred since Mr. Sorensen had told Willow he wanted her to assist him with his important presentation.
Scottie’s mind raced, scrambling for an excuse.
“Sorry, boss, you’re right! Totally my mistake!
I happened to be upstairs, in Operations, when Outlook started acting up, so I fixed it on-site right away.
I was going to create a ticket later, but it must’ve slipped my mind.
With the new year approaching, I was focused on wrapping up the backlog instead of documenting an already resolved routine incident. ”
There, that sounded halfway reasonable while also downplaying the Outlook snafu.
Miles squinted at her, his bearded face a wall of disapproval.
“Documentation isn’t optional; you know that.
You need to create a ticket for every problem you work on, even if you fix it in two minutes.
What if it reoccurs? Or it turns out it’s part of a network-wide, bigger problem?
We’ll never find out if it’s not in the system.
” He tapped a pen against his desk as if to drive home his point.
“From now on, you need to document every single issue, especially for an employee like Willow Greene.”
An employee like Willow? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Scottie clenched her jaw. She wanted to snap at him, but, of course, she knew she couldn’t. A confrontation would help neither her nor Willow.
With a herculean effort, she swallowed down an angry reply. “Of course. You’re absolutely right. Won’t happen again.”
He gave her a terse nod. “See that it doesn’t.”
Stiffly, she rose and walked to the door.
“Oh, and Scottie?”
She turned, her tension skyrocketing.
“Enjoy your New Year’s.”
She nodded and murmured something—hopefully “happy New Year to you too” and not “screw you!” Her head spun so fast that she wasn’t sure.
Then the office door closed behind her, and she slumped against the wall. Shit. That had been close. Too close.
She stumbled back to her office on shaky legs.
Gordon immediately looked up from his screens. “What did he want?”
“He reamed me a new one for not documenting Willow’s Outlook issues,” Scottie muttered.
He swiveled his chair around to face her fully. “I take it he doesn’t know about her SAP issues, the Teams glitches, or her ongoing feud with the printer?”
Shit. Scottie stared at him. “You know about that?”
“Please. You might be able to fool Mateo and even Miles, but I’ve been around since people thought floppy disks were high tech!”
She should have known. For someone who rarely left his desk, he had eyes everywhere.
“She’s not tanking her devices on purpose just so she can see you, is she?” His question didn’t sound like an accusation…or even really like a question.
Scottie didn’t want to lie to him, but neither could she explain the full truth, so she just said: “No.”
He nodded as if he’d already known that too.
She waited for the expected interrogation—for him to dig for the real reason Willow was experiencing so many tech disasters.
Instead, he just asked, “So, what’s your plan?”
Scottie rubbed her hands over her face. “I don’t really have one. I’ll have to be more careful, I guess, but I won’t stop helping her, and I can’t create a new ticket every time one of Willow’s devices glitches. She’s already under scrutiny, and I can’t let her lose her job.”
He adjusted his wire-frame glasses and gave her a somber look. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to lose yours.”
His quiet words hit her like a punch to the gut. She had willingly stepped onto a ledge, and now Gordon had pointed out how steep the drop would be. “I know. Trust me, I know. But what can I do? I’m not going to let her fend for herself.”
“Does she know you’re not creating tickets for any of her issues?” Gordon asked.
Scottie hesitated. “She…might.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we didn’t talk about it. She didn’t ask if I’d document her problems, and I didn’t tell her I wouldn’t.”
“Christ on a bike.” He dragged his hand through his graying hair, disheveling the perfectly styled strands. “You’ve got your very own don’t-ask-don’t-tell situation. Sounds like it’s getting really messy. How long do you think you can keep that up?”
“No idea.” Scottie sighed. “As long as I have to. At least until Sorensen’s presentation. After that, things should ease up a little.”
When he opened his mouth, she held up her hand. She didn’t want him to ask her what she would do if things didn’t ease up or escalated before the presentation. Right now, she had no answers.
“I’d better get going.” She slung her laptop bag over her shoulder and walked to the door but then paused and glanced back. “You won’t mention this to anyone, will you?”
He gave her a blank look. “Mention what?”
“Right.” She tipped an imaginary hat. “Thanks. And now go home before Lin files a missing person report.”
“Nah. She knows exactly where I am—and why. I’m not keeping secrets from my wife.”
Was that supposed to be a dig at her for not telling Willow she wasn’t documenting her tech issues?
Maybe she was just imagining things because her nerves were raw.
She gave him a short wave, then walked out into the hallway and toward the elevator, relying on muscle memory to guide her because her head felt weirdly hollow.
Her thoughts were too slow and too fast at the same time, and yet they didn’t come up with one useful solution.
She forced herself to focus on the one positive thing: She would see Willow tonight.
Whatever awaited her in the new year, she would worry about it later.