Some Kind of Right

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Iwanted to be like Margaret Flame, or Maggie, as everyone called her—from the CEO to the mail cart delivery kid. The recognition, the praise, the awards, the gifts, the bonuses, the high-profile boyfriends, the awe...she had it all.

And then one day she disappeared.

"It's weird... I haven't seen Maggie today," Grant said, eyeing the hallway by the elevator. He’d been looking that way all morning, tapping his pen against his desk like a nervous tic.

"Uh-huh." I looked back down at my phone, pretending to study a client email while really just hiding my eye-roll.

"I should call her. Make sure she's not out sick," he suggested.

Impossible. Maggie hadn’t taken a sick day in her three years with the company. A couple of times she’d obviously been under the weather, but she still managed to come in. The flu was going around though.

"Geez, Grant, keep it in your pants. She is human. And if she’s sick, she doesn’t need you bothering her." I stood beside him, lips pursed, one brow raised.

He grimaced, squinting at me. He did, however, remove his hand from the phone.

"You know, K, if you want me to take you out again, all you have to do is ask,” he said. “It's kind of cute that you're jealous of Maggie, but I'm always here for all of your needs."

I rolled my eyes and dropped into my chair, turning my back to him.

I'd rather not get into all the details, but it's pretty obvious from our exchange that Grant and I had a strained working relationship.

It stemmed from the one time he asked me out, called it a date, and then ignored me the whole evening for his buddies at the nightclub.

But maybe he was right. Maybe I was jealous of Maggie.

I didn't know her all that well (she never accepted anyone's invitations for happy hour), but she seemed to have plenty of friends and traveled extensively.

Meanwhile, I was stuck at my desk with Grant behind me, and my only plan for the entire week was driving two hours to my mom's place after work on Friday and spending the weekend with her at her new beach condo.

At first, I went every weekend to help her unpack and so she wouldn't feel lonely. It was the first time we hadn't lived in the same city, and she knew only one other person in the area.

Not too long after, she began introducing me to "the gang,” and I was the youngest person lounging by the complex's pool at their weekly Saturday night luaus. It made me look forward to retiring, but it also put my lack of a social life with people my own age (something else I’d rather not get into right now) front and center.

So maybe I wasn't jealous. Maggie simply motivated me to rethink my life.

She would be my inspiration to change the things that weren't working.

Except... Maggie actually cared about her job.

I mostly cared about surviving mine. If someone told me the office building had exploded, I probably would have shrugged (as long as no one was inside, of course).

I might even be the one accused of arson (not that I complain that much).

Still, it was strange that Margaret Flame wasn’t at the office.

Every hour, someone would come by to ask Grant and me—as the ones who sat closest to her office and were her direct subordinates—if we had heard anything. Apparently, no one else had either. Her desk sat neat and untouched, the coffee mug still half full from yesterday.

Maggie had always been extremely professional, and never once did she call us after work hours. I felt silly texting her because, well, she’d never even given me her phone number, and looking it up in the company directory to ask her if she was okay seemed like the first step in a stalker's manual.

When the CEO peeked into her office and then looked at me and Grant, I expected him to ask us what we had done with her. “I’m not her keeper!” I could hear myself crying out.

What Mr. Gordon actually said was, “Tell Maggie to call me as soon as she’s in.”

“Of course,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief. He walked away, eyes glued to the phone in his hand.

Grant’s chair squeaked as he shifted in his office chair.

“You know, K,” he started, as he most often did, “if Maggie up and quit, you and I might be competing for a promotion.”

I stared at my monitor blankly. “It’s all yours, Grant.”

“Really? You wouldn’t go for Director?”

The last thing I wanted was to get into a deep conversation about my fear of failure with a fuckboy like him.

“Nope.” I got up to go to the bathroom and glanced back at Grant. He was playing with a pen and watching me.

“When are you going to give me a second chance?” he asked.

I sighed and took the long way to the bathroom so that he couldn’t watch me all the way down the hall.

It didn’t matter how good-looking and charming he was. There was no way a second chance would erase my first impression of him as a dating partner. When I thought about how he gave more attention to his phone during our dinner before the nightclub…

Ick.

Without Maggie’s usual chatter from her office, an unusual quiet and mystery hovered over us.

“What do you think happened to her?” Grant asked as we rode the elevator down together at the end of the day. “I looked up her phone number, but it went straight to voicemail.”

“It’s strange that she didn’t show up, I agree, but why are you so obsessed with her?” I asked.

“Come on, K. You’re just as titillated by her whereabouts.”

I looked over at him and his roguish smile and laughed. “Titillated by her whereabouts? This isn’t a murder mystery novel, and you most definitely aren’t a private eye or detective. She’s probably sick. Or some other emergency.”

“Then why didn’t she call in to inform anyone at work? Or answer her phone?”

I shook my head. “It’s weird, but it doesn’t mean anything nefarious. Relax, Sherlock.”

The elevator doors opened, and a group of gossiping young women joined us.

Grant eyed each one from head to toe. When he caught my eye, I made a gagging face and stuck my tongue out.

He laughed out loud, the giggling girls turning to him, witnesses to his dazzling smile.

I shot out of the elevator after the girls, racing to my car and away from any more of his Grant-ness.

The next morning, I walked into the office several hours late after not having fallen asleep until 4 AM.

That had been happening a lot lately. If only Grant hadn’t brought it up so often, I would have gotten more sleep.

My lack-of-sleep-middle-of-the-night ruminations had spiraled, and pretty soon I’d imagined she’d been kidnapped the day before on her way to work.

I woke up to a text from Grant saying Maggie wasn’t there that day either, so no one important had probably noticed. I texted him back, telling him I’d overslept.

Maggie gone for a second day? This was getting curiouser and curiouser. Could she really be in some sort of danger? A sinking feeling began to take hold. But what could I do?

While most people were heading to lunch, I turned on my computer and stood rifling through a couple of large envelopes left on my desk, impatiently waiting for the login screen.

One seemed to be a waste of my time, and as such, got its deserved place in my trash bin. The other was addressed to someone else—Colin Slade. Who the heck was that, and how could the mail kid get that name confused with mine?

"Is there any chance that's mine?" a voice asked behind me. I jumped and tried not to shriek, loudly sucking in air instead.

Behind me stood a man amused by my attempt, stepping closer with an easy, unhurried confidence that made the office suddenly feel smaller. He took a step closer as if the room belonged to him.

"Sorry," he said, raising his hands. "The mailroom said my papers had been delivered to the fourth floor. I've been around to everyone except you, since you just got here. I didn't want to rifle through your mail."

"That was a good idea, not going through someone else’s mail. Very smart. Colin Slade?" I shoved the envelope toward his chest, a little sharper than necessary, and immediately blamed the fact that my morning had already gone sideways. "All yours."

"Thank you. I can't understand why they'd bring it here. I'm on the ninth floor. And..." he glanced at my nameplate and said, "you’re the other Katelynn.”

My name is Katelynn. I was born during the Kaitlyn/ Kaitlin/ Katelyn/ Kaitlynn/ Katelynn/ Caitlin, etc.

boom, which I learned during my school years as people constantly misspelled my name.

Now, at work, I still had to face off with two more of the bunch.

Kaitlin Lafferty. And Caitlyn Cross. The second one was sweet as pie and had everyone call her CeCe.

Miss Lafferty, however, seemed to find a rival in me as a K mutation of the name.

“Wrong. I’m the Katelynn. The others aren’t real.” I was itching to log into the computer and search for Maggie’s official company profile.

Something akin to a snort or chuckle escaped Colin Slade, and I looked up at him.

Tall. Strikingly well put-together in his fitted suit. And now that I’d had a chance to inspect him…

“I’ve seen you before…” I started, then felt silly, because of course I’d seen him if we worked for the same company.

“Hi, Mr. Slade. I’m Grant Walker, Assistant Director of Accounts,” Grant said with a tone of voice I’d only ever heard him use around Maggie. He’d just come from the break room, and his hands were occupied with coffee and pastries. He quickly put them down and extended his hand to shake Colin’s.

Colin observed Grant for a beat, as if he weighing the decision, and finally accepted the handshake.

“I’m told Margaret hasn’t reached out to anyone. Have either of you heard anything?” Colin asked, his intensely blue eyes sliding back to me.

“Nothing here,” I replied, pulse picking up under his stare. He didn’t look away, studying me as if I might have the answer.

I still had no idea who he was, but it made little difference to me.

He obviously thought he was hot stuff. For all we knew, he was a pretty boy with a dark heart who’d asked Margaret out and then kidnapped her.

It’s possible he had her hidden in his basement somewhere.

Damn Grant for enabling me to jump off the deep end about Maggie.

“You’ll let me know if you do?” Colin pointed to the name on the envelope I’d handed him earlier. “That’s me. I have an email address. I work for here—the Gordon Agency.”

He was trying to get me to smile. I gave in because it was easier to smile at men who think they’re funny than to tell them the truth.

Well, not easier—but better for my chances of keeping the peace around there.

Though that hadn’t stopped me from giving Grant the occasional side-eye. He was the exception.

Colin Slade walked away, drumming the envelope in his hand all the way down the hall. Grant hovered over me as I logged in with my 20th iteration of my favorite password: Pa$$word20.

“You have no clue who that is, do you?” he asked. I could faintly smell the coffee on his breath, and I wanted to pretend to gag, but I thought that might take it too far this early in the day.

“I don’t care who he is. I’ve never seen him before and probably never will again.

There are like two million employees in this building.

” I logged into the email system, and, funnily enough, the first email I saw was from Colin Slade.

It was a companywide email, and for a split second I imagined he’d goofed and meant to forward a stupid meme to someone but had accidentally sent it to everyone.

“I bet you feel pretty dumb right now.” Grant took his seat and began typing on his keyboard.

The email was, in reality, Colin introducing himself, picture included, as our new Vice President of Sales.

He’s Margaret’s boss?!

And he didn’t know where she was. I looked at the blue eyes in the picture of my boss’s boss and wondered if I should rule him out. I usually wasn’t right about my intrusive and over-the-top theories anyway, and her kidnapper most likely wouldn’t be a new boss she had never met.

My stomach sank as I replayed every sarcastic thing I’d said to him, and the horror of that slowly dawned on me. I put my head in my hands, dreading the next time I’d run into Colin Slade.

Perfect. Just perfect.