Chapter Eight
Savannah kicked off her shoes and collapsed onto the sofa. “Aaia, massage, stat!”
Geez, I sound like Stratos. “Please,” she amended as magic fingers in the sofa began kneading tense muscles. “Oh, perfect.”
“Would you care for your usual cocktail?”
“Yes, please.”
A drink popped out of the coffee table, and she gratefully cupped it in her hands and took a sip.
Stratos had run her ragged today. Today? Every day this week. Besides dealing with his requests and demands, she had to learn a whole bunch of new stuff while playing catch-up with the tasks that had fallen by the wayside when he’d been without an assistant.
She never got a chance to tell him about the Personnel memo. One meeting had led to another, and then he’d gone to the lab and hadn’t returned by quitting time. Tired, her energy tank on empty, she postponed the discussion until she could figure out how to approach such a touchy subject.
Or whether to approach it at all. She still wondered if she should tell him. I’m just the temp help. Maybe I should mind my own business. Look after number one. It was well and good to watch out for the boss, but she had to protect herself first.
The scale balanced 90 percent tell, 10 percent don’t, the debate going round and round in her mind.
Walking home from work, she’d passed the Moonshot Tavern and considered popping in for a drink to relax.
However, she was tired of peopling, and Aaia would know better what was potable for her than a bartender, so she continued home.
With Aaia’s knowledge of what other humans ordered, it had only taken a few tries to find an alcoholic beverage she liked.
She wished she could bring Aaia to work.
Finding palatable cafeteria meals involved trial and error, mostly error.
Most of her lunch meals had gone uneaten.
Between skipping meals and speed-walking across the complex, she’d lost a couple of pounds.
I can’t say I’d recommend the Oberian diet as a weight loss program, though.
Unless she got dispatched on an urgent errand, she avoided the tube because of the queasiness it caused. She could get to most places in fifteen to twenty minutes.
She propped her feet on the coffee table drink dispenser and relaxed into the sofa cushions. I’m still here! I lasted the week!
Her face flamed as she recalled how he’d overheard her call him a stupid jerk. She could think it, but to say it was unprofessional and self-defeating. He could have fired me. Instead, he’d taken the insult rather good-naturedly.
There’d been a few occasions during the week when she feared he would fire her, and an equal number of times when she’d considered quitting.
He didn’t request; he ordered. Please and thank you were not in his vocabulary.
If she did something well, she didn’t get so much as a nod of praise, but if she goofed, he pointed it out every time.
She couldn’t fault him for being a perfectionist because she was one too, but did he have to be so darned impatient?
None of his demands were unreasonable, but his communication style left a lot to be desired.
Would it kill him to show a little appreciation?
To cut her some slack for being new and saddled with the backlog he’d created?
His files were an atrocious mess. No wonder he’d never seen the message from Personnel.
He didn’t deserve her concern, but she empathized on this issue. Being outspoken and direct herself, she did not abide backstabbing. If someone had a problem, he should address it head-on.
By pure luck, Stratos did an end-run around Corona’s evil plot. She must have been fried to find out he’d hired me through GAL Friday! Savannah felt a spark of vicarious satisfaction. Thwarting Corona’s plot was like a fuck-you-by-proxy for Gavin.
First thing Monday, I’ll show him the memo. She relaxed against the massaging sofa cushions and took a sip of her drink. “Aaia, what’s for dinner?”
* * * *
Monday morning, she raced to the office to ensure she arrived before him.
She’d weighed the options all weekend about how best to deliver the information.
She could take the coward’s way out and forward the message to him as if it had belatedly just come in.
But she was no coward, and he might wonder why she didn’t include it in her daily comm report.
Which was another way of handling it—say nothing and put it in the report. But that, too, seemed cowardly.
In the end, she decided on the direct approach: tell him what she’d found and present the evidence.
She went to the cafeteria first and got him a kaffii and a nuknuk then rode the tube to the office. It made her nauseous as usual, but some of the queasiness could be due to nerves.
She’d just settled at her desk, hadn’t had a chance to retrieve the memo, when he blew by her without even a good morning.
As she was going to ruin his day, she could overlook the impoliteness.
Taking the kaffii, the nuknuk, and a deep breath, she entered his office.
“Here you go.” She set the offering on his desk.
He narrowed his gaze. “I didn’t ask for those.”
“If you don’t want them, I’ll take them away.”
“No, I’ll keep them.”
“You’re welcome,” she said sarcastically.
He stared at her unblinking. “What is it now?”
She took a breath. “I, uh, stumbled across an unread message from a few months ago that you should see.”
“I’m sure there are a lot of unread messages.” He took a drink of kaffii and a bite of his nuknuk.
“May I access your system?”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
She logged on and went to the folder. Scrolled down. Scrolled all the way to the end. Where is it? Her heart began to pound. It has to be here!
Conscious of his growing impatience, she scanned line by line. It’s gone!
“Is this going to take all day? I have work to do.”
“After you went to the lab on Friday…did you come back to the office?” She’d left without seeing him again. Maybe he’d returned to work late, seen the message, and deleted it.
“No, I left straight from there. Why?”
“You weren’t on the system then after you left?”
“What is this about?”
I probably misfiled it. “I, um, need to check on something.”
“If you’re not going to show me what you were going to show me, perhaps I could get on my system? I have designs to review.”
“Uh, um. Sure.” Thrown for a loop, she fled to her desk.
The message had to be in the system. Maybe because he’d been staring at her and she’d been nervous about telling him, she’d missed what was right before her eyes?
Accessing the folder, she scrolled through the messages again. Nope. Not there. Nor was it in any of the other places she might have moved it to, if she’d been inclined to move it, which she hadn’t. It’s gone. Maybe the system automatically deletes old messages?
I should tell him anyway. But would he believe her without proof?
She’d gathered that there was no love lost between Stratos and Corona, but outright sabotage was a serious allegation.
He would confront Corona, and when he did, she would demand proof.
Without the evidence to back up her claim, Savannah could be deemed a troublemaker.
I need the message before I talk to him.
Organizing the files leaped to the top of the priority list.
The comm system dinged, and Kyra from the lab appeared in holographic form. “Is he in?”
The lab manager was on a short list of individuals with unrestricted access.
“He is. I’ll transfer you.”
She’d no sooner put the comm through when Quality Assurance dinged.
“He’s on a comm now. I’ll have to take a message.” She blew a huff of air into her bangs as she heard another ding. It’s going to be one of those days.
She did manage to get his comm brief done in between taking messages and returning and reconnecting holograms and audio calls. This was why she tried to get in before him—once he entered the office, she didn’t have a spare moment. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a set arrival time.
The day flew by, and she never got a chance to work on the files or search more for the missing comm.