Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
As I sat there at my desk, awash in shame, a thought struck me. “Are you just getting here, too?” I asked without turning around.
“No… yes,” Grant said as he stopped typing. “I took a long break. Are you going to tell on me? To Colin? The guy you couldn’t even be civil to?”
“I wasn’t mean,” I defended myself, knowing full well it was a lie. It’s something I’d been doing since the debacle with my ex-friends (though I was totally blameless in that situation).
“Sure,” he replied. I had been snappy with our new boss. I mentally chastised myself and came back to the present moment, pushing away the image of the tall, commanding executive who would sign my paychecks from now on.
Whatever Grant had been up to this morning, he obviously didn’t want to share. What if he’d kidnapped Margaret?
I found her profile on the company intranet and pored over it. Headshot, awards, polished bio—everything about her screamed competence. I scrolled, hoping for something human, something that said, “I oversleep too,” but found nothing.
Grant kicked back in his chair and rolled back until he was facing me.
“I tried calling her, but it goes to voicemail. I’ve left a couple,” he said.
I leaned back. “Wow. That’s some stalker shit.”
“What are you doing now?” He flicked his pen against my armrest.
“I’m trying to find some information that can help me get in contact with her,” I said, knowing perfectly well I had nothing but a generic description of all her awards and business articles she’d written.
“What if you had her address?” He looked at me with a poker face.
“You don’t have her address.” I said it like a statement, but it was really a question.
He rolled back to his desk and came back with his cell phone, shoving it in my face. The screen glowed with an address a few blocks from the office building.
“Is that where you were?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “No, I was getting the address this morning downstairs. I had to wait a very long time for the HR lady to walk away from her computer. She didn’t log off or anything.”
“And nobody saw you?” I was pretty sure someone would be up to fire him any second now.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s an isolated desk behind the bathrooms.”
I squinted at him. “Why are you confessing all of this to me? What if I did go tell Colin Slade?” The idea of approaching my superior after having bombed our first encounter made me want to crawl under my desk and hide forever.
“You’re going to tell Daddy on me?” He feigned a pout and returned to his phone, scrolling until he found something and showed me a video. It was of me at the Christmas party.
“So what?” I asked as I watched a drunk me stumble into the very chair I was sitting in. As the video continued, I started to get flashbacks of the scene that would play on the screen in a few seconds. Somehow, I’d forgotten all about my drunken plan.
Sure enough, there I was, my hair tossed drunkenly to the side as I suggested to Grant that he make a video of me defiling Maggie’s new painting.
He followed me around as I gathered scissors, a stapler, and many Sharpies from several desks.
It ended with me ramming into the door hard because, fortunately, it was locked.
The recording ended with Grant laughing so hard he tripped and fell backwards on his ass, being rather drunk himself.
“How would that look to our new boss? Especially now that Maggie has disappeared. How would the cops see it?” He raised an eyebrow, and I swat his phone away.
It wouldn’t look great, but also, I certainly didn’t want my new boss to see me acting like a drunken fool.
“I can’t believe you’re blackmailing me.” Why was I even entertaining this empty threat?
“Not blackmail. An insurance policy. Excuse me for wanting to make sure you don’t get me fired.” He slid back to his desk.
“Have you been holding on to that, waiting until the perfect moment that you could hold it over me?”
Grant once again rolled over to my side. “I like to watch it sometimes when I’m alone at night. I get into bed and make sure I have a box of tissues—”
I smacked him on the chest. “Fuck off.”
“Oof. You’re feisty. Kate, if you ever need to release some of that tension, you know where to find me.” He rolled back one last time.
I decided to stop feeding the troll. There was no way he’d ever show that video. He wasn’t like that. Grant just knew exactly which buttons to push to get me riled up, and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
But he seemed to be the only one taking a genuine interest in finding Maggie. How long might someone be missing without the police getting involved?
She didn’t live with or talk about any family—as far as what little information she’d shared at work.
Unless she spoke to a friend or neighbor daily, it could be a few days.
Was she dating someone casually? She had never brought a date to any of the company events, though she’d been in photos on social media with several big names. Yes, I stalked followed her Instagram.
It wasn’t that I had much affection for Maggie. Like I’d said, we’d worked together for years and never even approached a non-working relationship. But I simply needed to believe someone would notice if I vanished too.
“Grant?” I muttered as I stared at my bright computer screen.
“You want to go knock on her door?” he asked, also without moving.
“Now?”
His chair scraped against the floor, keys jingling. That was a yes. I stood, slipping my purse over my shoulder as I looked him squarely in the eye.
Then I gave him a last warning. “Let me make this perfectly clear. You have nothing over me. The only reason I would never go to HR about your snooping in their files is because that information interests me just as much as it does you. And if I ever want to release any tension… well, it won’t be you who will be taking care of that. ”
It was obvious from the smug half-smile on his lips that the intended effect of bringing him down a peg did not land.
“I’ll drive,” he said and led the way to the elevator. I settled next to him as we waited for the door to open, and when it did, a mess of chestnut curls greeted us.
“Kate! Good, I wanted to talk to you.” Kaitlin Lafferty (and her sing-song voice) stepped out of the elevator. Grant put his hand in the doorway to hold the elevator.
I was going to feign a smile, but wondered why I’d bother with Kaitlin. “What about?”
She slowly slid a curl from her face and placed it behind her ear. “Colin Slade wanted to know if your team would be ready by tomorrow to present on the incoming accounts.”
That’s right. Kaitlin was his assistant now that the old VP was gone. What had happened to the old VP? Maybe HE had something to do with Maggie’s disappearance.
“I’m surprised this didn’t warrant an email or calendar invitation,” I said, stepping into the elevator. She frowned. “You can tell Colin we’ll be ready.”
For some reason, his name seemed to slide right out from my tongue to my lips with a smoothness that made me pause.
She put a hand on her hip. “I’ll see you there. Bye, Grant.” She walked toward the break room, her hips swaying widely from side to side as if she were auditioning for a perfume ad.
The doors closed as I wondered why the name Colin Slade had made such an impression on me. I blinked a few times, dismissing the slight surge of excited anticipation.
“How come you don’t move on to pester another Kaitlin, huh? Why me?” I asked Grant.
He grinned. “You sit next to me.”
If we ever found Margaret Flame, I was begging for a desk transfer.
We found parking across from Maggie’s building. I struggled to take off the seatbelt. The door opened next to me, and I looked up to find Grant waiting for me.
“It’s stuck,” I said, tugging on it for emphasis. “Your car’s holding me hostage.”
Without warning, Grant reached over and magically released the seatbelt. I barely had enough time to protest the amount of cologne I was forced to inhale from his person when he freed me from the grip of his car.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“I could have left you there.” He started for the building, and I followed with a groan.
The doorman avoided eye contact with us and didn’t even try to be helpful when we raised our concerns with him.
“Ms. Flame does not have you on her visitor list and is not answering our calls. I cannot allow you upstairs,” he repeated for the third time.
Grant countered, “What if she’s in trouble or hurt?”
“Since you are neither a police officer nor a paramedic, I doubt you can do anything either,” he said, eyes fixed straight ahead at the door.
I exhaled and grabbed Grant by the arm. “Let’s go.”
“That’s it?” he asked when we were outside. He rested his hands at his waist, tipped his head back, and studied the tall building.
“What? Are you planning to scale the side of the building?”
He looked up, jaw tight. “There’s something going on. She’s not answering anyone. Not even the doorman.”
I hesitated. Then I thought of something. I wanted to shout “Eureka!” but instead I said, “The garage! Her car would be in the garage if she were home!”
He nodded with a knowing smile and led us to the garage, which was thankfully unmanned. Soon enough we found her apartment number and an empty space.
“Well, that’s a relief, I guess,” I said. “If she were at home and not answering any calls, it might be grim.”
He walked into the space and looked around at the ground, along the wall. I think he really believed himself a detective at a crime scene. “But she could be anywhere. And not answering calls…missing work. I didn’t tell you this, but she has no emergency contact listed in her file.”
I raised an eyebrow and said, “Maybe she’s a spy and someone was about to disclose her identity, so she bailed.”
He rolled his eyes and walked out of the garage. I was about to follow him when I noticed something shiny under the car next to Maggie’s space. I lost sight of it as I got closer. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and stooped down close to the ground.
A set of keys.
I gasped as I stood up straight and realized that attached to several keys was a separate key ring with a smaller key. It wasn’t a key to a door, but I quickly shouted for Grant. He stepped back into the frame of the garage opening.
I jiggled the keys and frantically waved them in the air.
“Are they hers?” he asked as I raced over to him. I showed him the company logo on the separate key ring.
“How many people could possibly work at our company and lose their keys next to Maggie’s parking space?”
He was thoughtful for a few seconds as he splayed them on the palm of my hand and said, “No car keys.”
I shook my head. “Well, she went off with her car,” I said.
“Or she was taken in her car,” he suggested.
“Or the car was stolen.” I thumbed through the other keys. “You think one of these is for the apartment upstairs?”
“He’s not going to let us up there to find out,” Grant said, taking his own keys out of his pocket. The sound of his car unlocking reminded me that we had to go back to work. I studied the small key.
“This is a key for a cabinet or drawer or something,” I said as we walked toward Grant’s car.
Grant’s smirk returned. “Then let’s see what it opens—back at the office.”
I held the keys proudly, wondering what we might find.