CHAPTER FOUR
“Is he alone?”
The secretary was typing on her desktop computer and didn’t bother to look up. “Is who alone?”
“Who do you think, Rita? The man on the moon. Is the boss alone?”
“I have no idea. He hasn’t come in yet.”
Sloane Drummond froze in place. “He’s not here?” Her voice belied her panic.
But Rita heard the panic and looked up. “That’s what he hasn’t come in yet usually means. What’s wrong with you?”
But Sloane didn’t have time to say another word. She hurried out of the secretary’s office and downstairs, to the thirty-fifth floor, to the chief of staff’s office.
Bobby Latham, standing behind his desk, was just putting his desk phone back on the hook after a long conversation with HR. When he looked up and saw Sloane rushing in, he smiled. “There you are!”
“Have you heard from him?” Sloane was asking the question even before she made it all the way to his large desk.
Bobby didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean have I heard from him? You were supposed to fly in with him this morning.”
“I flew in last night. He decided he was going to drive.”
“Drive?” Bobby’s baritone raised an octave. “All the way from New York? That’s a twelve hour drive!”
“You don’t think I know that?”
“Well where is he now?”
Sloane hated to admit it. “I have no idea.”
“No idea?” Bobby couldn’t believe it. “Gotdammit, Sloane!” He quickly picked back up his landline desk phone and pressed a button. “Meeka, get Mr. Skeffington on the phone and I mean right now.”
“Yes sir!”
Bobby put the phone back on its hook and then looked at the woman whose very job was to keep up with the boss. “All you had to do was phone me. Why didn’t you phone and tell me there was a change of plans? Why didn’t you tell me he decided to drive, Sloane?”
“I didn’t think I needed to tell you. I thought he already ran it by you. I thought you knew.”
Bobby stared at the white woman in front of him. That used to be the line they all loved to use: I thought you knew. It took the blame off of them and put it squarely on him.
He remembered when he first got hired as chief of staff five years ago.
Back then he was the only African-American and, at thirty, the youngest chief of staff in Skeffington history.
Back then he had to battle his own subordinates who felt entitled to disrespect him.
He warned them that he would take the matter straight to Mr. Skeffington himself, but they felt the boss would view him as some kid who was over his head anyway and dismiss him rather than them.
But when Skeffington fired every single one of those staffers he named, the rest of them got the memo.
And it had been smooth sailing ever since.
Until now.
Until Sloane Drummond became the newly hired private secretary to the founder and Chairman of Skeffington PR. She believed, like those fired staffers believed, that no black man could ever be her superior. She was wrong.
And he had no problem reminding her, as she stood in front of his desk, of just how wrong she was.
“I told you from day one that if anything occurs out of the normal course of business, and I said anything, you were to report it to me no matter what you think I know or don’t know.
It’s not your job to make assumptions about my knowledge.
It’s your job to do what I tell you to do. Do you understand me, Sloane?”
Sloane knew Bobby was her boss and that he was a Princeton man who graduated at the top of his class and all the rest of it, but she just couldn’t see some uncultured person like him telling her what to do.
They both were in their mid-thirties. They both were smart and talented.
But she hailed from one of the best families in Westchester County.
Her parents used to go to garden parties at the Skeffington family estate.
But he was her boss? It just seemed inexplicable to her.
“Do you understand me, Sloane?” Bobby repeated himself.
Sloane smiled that fake smile she always tried to lay on him, although she wasn’t fooling him in the least, and then she nodded her head. “Yes, Bobby. I understand.”
“What about Ed?” Bobby asked her. “Please tell me Ed at least is with him.”
“I haven’t spoken to Ed,” Sloane said.
“Geez Sloane! What about security? He has security with him surely?”
When Sloane looked constipated rather than admit what a fuck-up they had on their hands, Bobby’s heart dropped. And he plopped down in his chair. “Terrific,” he said as he shook his head. “Just terrific!” Then his phone’s intercom buzzed.
He quickly pressed the button. “Yes?”
It was Meeka, his secretary. “His phone goes straight to Voice Mail, sir. I tried it three times.”
Bobby exhaled. “Thank you,” he said and ended the call. Then he pulled out his cell phone and called the boss himself. It still went to Voice Mail. “He’s got it turned off,” he finally admitted to himself. Then he quickly phoned Ed Rivers, William’s driver.
“Hiya Bobby.”
“You’re with him, right?”
“The boss? No sir, I’m not.”
Damn! Bobby mouthed the word but didn’t say it out loud. Sloane was getting even more concerned too and unsteady on her feet. She sat in the chair in front of Bobby’s desk.
“He told me to take a couple days off,” Ed added.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” a now-frustrated Bobby asked. “You and Sloane answer to me, but neither one of you thought to let me know that our billionaire boss is making a twelve-hour drive alone after what happened to him last year? You geniuses didn’t think I needed to know that?!”
“I thought you knew,” Ed said.
Bobby almost threw his phone across the room. “That’s what you get for fucking thinking!” he yelled into his phone and ended the call.
“What can we do now?” Sloane asked. Her voice was near-panic too. She didn’t work at Skeffington back then, but she heard what happened last year. And the horrors of it.
Bobby leaned back in his chair again and covered his face. He didn’t have to hear about it, he lived through it. “What time did he leave New York?” he asked her.
She didn’t know that either. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I was at his house Sunday morning for a confab with his New York staff before we met with Exxon. He told me to take his plane back and he’ll see me tomorrow morning.
I asked how he was going to get back, and he said he felt like driving. I assumed---”
“I don’t want to hear what you assumed.”
“I flew back last night,” she said. “He told me he’d see me this morning. I thought he was back in town too. I thought you was handling his security and all of that.”
“How could I handle any of that when nobody, not you, not Ed, not his pilot, not his flight crew, nor anyone else bothered to phone me and alert me of a change in plan? All of your asses answer to me, but not one of you thought to give me a call!”
Sloane was genuinely upset. “I know you don’t want to hear it, Bobby, but I thought you knew. I’m sorry, but I did. And I’m sure everybody else did too. We all figured he’d tell you before he told us.”
“The man that hates security being anywhere near him, but only agreed to a bodyguard and a driver after what happened last year, would not phone the one person that he has given the authority to order all of those things he hates to happen. Why would he phone me first???”
Sloane realized it too. “I’m sorry, Bobby.”
“Save it,” Bobby said angrily as he pressed 22 on his desk phone. “What car was he driving?” he asked Sloane as the phone on the other end began ringing.
But Sloane could only hunch her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said.
Bobby pinched the bridge of his nose. “Call his house manager at the penthouse. What’s his name?”
“Benjamin.”
“And ask him which car did he drive back to Chicago.”
“Yes sir,” Sloane said as she pulled out her cell phone, got up and walked across the room.
The ringing phone on the other end finally stopped ringing and Maximus Bluff, the head of security for Skeffington PR, answered. “What’s up, Bobby? I’m in a meeting.”
“Get out of the meeting.”
“What’s up?”
“The boss decided to drive back.”
“What?” Maximus was as shocked as Bobby. “At least his driver is with him?”
“Nope. Ed’s not with him. He told Ed to take a few days off. And from the shock in your voice it’s obvious he has no security with him either.”
“None. He told the guys he’d see them the next time he was back in New York. They assumed he was going to fly with security onboard like he always does. He never told them anything about driving back to Chicago or they would have alerted me and I would have alerted you.”
“At least somebody would have.”
“I can get choppers in the air.”
“Do so.”
“Which one of his cars is he driving?”
Bobby looked at Sloane. “The Jetta,” Sloane said.
Bobby frowned. “The whatta?”
“The Jetta,” Sloane said. “He’s driving his Volkswagen Jetta.”
“I didn’t know he had a Volkswagen.”
Well you know it now, Sloane wanted to say.
“What happened to his Mercedes?” Bobby asked. “That’s his road car.”
“The same thing that happened to his Lambo and his Aston-Martin and his Porsche. All in his garage.”
Bobby shook his head. “If I live to be a hundred-and-ninety-nine I still won’t understand that boss of ours,” he said to Sloane. “He’s driving his Volkswagen Jetta,” he said to the security chief. “Do you need the plate number?”
“No, I got it on file. And I’m on it. But damn, Bobby. I’m not going through that shit we went through last year.”
“Neither am I! That’s why it’s vital that you find him. Keep me posted.”
“Will do,” Maximus said, and ended the call.
Bobby sat his phone back on its hook. Then he pointed a finger at Sloane. “If anything happens to that man, and I mean anything, it’s all our asses. But your ass will answer to me.”
“Why are you jumping all over me?” she yelled out. “I thought you knew, Bobby!”
“It is literally your job to keep up with that man and you couldn’t even do that. Don’t you talk to me about what you thought I knew. It’s about what you knew and you did nothing about it! Now get your ass out of my office and keep trying to reach him.”
Sloane wanted to cuss him out, but she knew that would be the end of her ability to be around William. Which was all she was after. “Yes sir,” she said with gritted teeth as she hurried out of his office and closed, although he knew she wanted to slam, his door.
Then Bobby shook his whole body in virulent anger. “Gotdammit!” he yelled out so loud that his secretary rushed in.