Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“She had what?” Gage stared at the HR rep as if the man spoke a foreign language.
After a day spent interviewing everyone in Audra’s department and auxiliary departments under the authority of Lt.
General Higgenbotham, with no insight into where and why Audra had gone, he’d gone to the Human Resources Department.
“I said she had applied for leave of absence.” The skinny thirty-something in his crisp blue button-up tapped away on his keypad with barely a glance in Gage’s direction.
Gage waited for the younger man to continue, but no further explanation was offered. He cleared his throat. “What reason did she give for her leave of absence.”
Fingers paused over the keyboard long enough for the rep to shoot Gage a withering look, like he was an utter dumbass. “There are a variety of reasons why someone might take FMLA. Look them up.”
“But that doesn’t tell me why Audra Muir took it. This is what Lt. General Higgenbotham has tasked me to uncover.” The tapping continued while Gage spoke, and he ground his teeth at the sheer contempt of that annoying, strident clacking on the keypad. “Can I at least see the form she submitted?”
An annoyed sigh accompanied a stop to the typing.
The man looked up at Gage with all the disdain of someone confident in his superiority.
He even managed to roll his eyes. “Lt. General Higgenbotham signed the paperwork himself. And HIPPA laws prohibit me from sharing that information with someone who isn’t family or an authorized representative.
You are none of those things. Good day.”
With those clipped words, he returned to his tapping.
Gage tried again. “You say Lt. General Higgenbotham signed those papers. He juggles a lot of responsibilities. He’s obviously forgotten, and has tasked me with retrieving that information. Any chance you could send a copy of that paperwork?”
“The Lt. General has to make that request himself. The forms are on his employee portal under the managerial tab, records request. He’ll need to sign them electronically”—the rep paused tapping to spear Gage with a stink eye before resuming—“and the signature needs to match the one on file. Once approved by his supervising officer, he’ll get the records in two to three weeks delivered via intra-office mail currier.
Orrrr, he could simply find the automated confirmation email he received after having signed the FMLA paperwork in the first place, assuming he didn’t delete it, which he shouldn’t have because that would be reckless as a manager because everyone knows our server dumps deleted emails after a month. ”
Gage waited several breaths in case there was more. There wasn’t. “So, what I hear you saying is that there’s no way I’m getting those records, and Higgenbotham sent me on a fool’s errand.”
“Pretty much. Maybe you could have asked her about it yourself when you boinked her on Higgenbotham’s conference table.”
“We were a little preoccupied.” Gage spoke through gritted teeth.
He didn’t bother to deny the truth of their sexcapade.
As friendly as she had been, Audra had been amazingly tight-lipped about anything personal.
No one seemed to know anything about her aside from the fact she’d worked at the Pentagon for several years.
But they all knew she and Gage had desecrated a conference room.
Every person he’d questioned today looked at him with the same shocked expression, like the entire world assumed he and Audra were dating and he should already know the answers to the information he sought.
The tapping little prick merely snorted in disdain.
Stonewalled yet again in his efforts to learn something about Audra and her current whereabouts, Gage scrubbed the back of his neck, frustrated with his lack of progress.
Yes, her boss discouraged his department employees from getting too chummy with one another, but she seemed to have carried that into all other areas of her interactions with Pentagon employees.
Professional and competent were words most people had used to describe her.
Gage was the only one who seemed to have been privy to her feisty, passionate nature.
Facing another dead end in his search for information about Audra, he would have to have to go to her apartment.
Maybe she would be there and could explain why she’d completely ghosted everyone.
Hopefully she wouldn’t be there, dead. If she wasn’t there, surely, he could dig up some personal information to help answer why she’d left, where she was, and when would she return.
With no other course of action to take, he sighed and rapped a knuckle on the rep’s desk.
“Thank you for—”
Your time was drowned out by a loud “Hey, Carter, I’m grabbing a coffee. Can I get you anything?” An older woman stood at the department entrance, one hand on the doorknob and another waving a gift card.
For the first time since Gage had entered the department, the man in front of him looked up and smiled. But not at Gage. “You’re a lifesaver, Mags. I’d love a caramel macchiato, extra sprinkles and a pump of soy milk. Thanks, sweetie!”
Gage took the hint and exited the department, nodding to Mags as she held the door for him.
He paused in the hallway, not sure what his next steps should be.
He could go ask Higgenbotham to look through his emails once more for the automated confirmation, as Carter had suggested.
But Higgenbotham had claimed to have already done that with no results, and he wasn’t the kind of man who took kindly to being doubted or second-guessed.
Gage was of the opinion that maybe Audra hadn’t wanted anyone to know what she was doing.
If that was the case, knowing how much Higgenbotham obviously depended on her, she’d likely secured his computer password and had deleted the email.
She might have even signed the approval document on Higgenbotham’s behalf.
Had she planned from the beginning to disappear?
And had she planned to seduce Gage the week she disappeared?
Had he been merely a cover story for all this?
Being a tool to be used by others was not new to him.
He was a soldier and a cyborg. His life’s mission had been whatever the United States government decided it needed him to be.
All he could be. But being unknowingly used by the woman to whom he’d been silently attracted to for so long…
he was a real chump for falling for her charms. A total boob for thinking she was actually into him.
Sure, the Army could train him in bomb detection and outfit him with a weaponized leg, but that didn’t make him smart where dealing with people was concerned, especially when he lacked practice after all these years of avoiding interactions that might reveal his cybernetic status.
Someone grabbed his arm and tugged him down the hall.
“Follow me. I can help you.” Mags whispered in his ear.
She pulled him down a side corridor and into an empty conference room.
Gage spared a quick hope this wasn’t another impromptu tryst opportunity before turning to face Mags.
She’d shut the door and stood, wringing her hands, looking torn between concern and nausea.
“I can get fired for this, but I was the one who advised Audra Muir about her FMLA options. I tried to talk her into utilizing the employee short-term and long-term disability first, but she refused so I walked her through the process.”
Gage took a reflexive step toward Mags. His voice was a harsh whisper. “So you know why she’s gone? Tell me what happened to her. Tell me how to find her.”
She shook her head and backed against the wall, her hand on the doorknob and the other up as if to fend him off.
Her eyes were wide. She looked like a terrified deer, ready to bolt at any moment.
“Look, I’m only telling you this because she doesn’t have anyone to help her.
She’s all alone, which might be okay for everyday situations, but not this.
She even broke down in my office a couple months ago—not that I blame her—sobbing and lost and, oh my, I had to give her a big hug.
I… it wasn’t professional of me, but she desperately needed it.
I’m just glad she came to my office and not to Parker.
God that man had absolutely no empathy. Why he’s in HR is a mystery. ”
Mags shot off the wall while Gage struggled to keep up with her rushed and convoluted monologue.
She paced the cozy area of the conference room.
“Audra came to talk about taking time off. Didn’t want her boss to know, which is understandable because Higgenbotham is a complete and utter asshat totally undeserving of an admin of her caliber—but you never heard that from me—and I…
I’m concerned for her welfare. She needs a support system.
I can’t even imagine what the poor thing is suffering.
I mean, who knew it was even possible anymore?
I certainly didn’t, and I’ve been in HR for decades.
It seemed so… so unreal, you know? Like a practical joke. But it wasn’t.”
She stopped her pacing and waved a hand at her eyes as if trying to preemptively dry approaching tears. Gage backed up. He could mow down an entire enemy garrison with his cyborg leg, but comforting a crying woman was out of his skill set.
“I couldn’t live with myself if I let…”
She continued her breathless ramble, but Gage shook his head against the barrage of partial information.
His heart raced and his muscles tensed with the instinctive need to leap into battle.
But what battle? Where? What enemy? He held up his hands to stop Mags’s prattling.
“Please. I’m a simple man and I need you to break it down. Why did Audra take FMLA?”
“You mean, she didn’t tell you?” Mags stared at him like he had two heads. “I thought you two were dating. Everyone knows you fu—”
“Yes, we had sex, but… surely a woman with your… profound experience and… maturity—well beyond your years, of course—understands that sex isn’t always the… culmination of … attraction and…”
God, he sounded like an idiot. And his awful attempt at flirting should be a crime. But Mags fluttered a hand over her heart as if spouted poetry. As if he was Shakespeare himself. She nodded with understanding. “She ghosted you, didn’t she?”
Gage preferred the knowing glances to the look of pity Mags shot him. But he swallowed his pride and nodded. “Her boss and I are both desperate to make sure she’s okay.”
Mags’s expression morphed into a combination of sympathy and annoyance that he hadn’t already figured out the truth from everything she’d said.
“She had chemo treatment. Recovery takes up to a few weeks, depending on how complex the procedure needs to be and if there will be a need for reconstruction, and that’s only after finding a qualified surgeon to do it. ”
“Why would she have chemo treatment? What would she need reconstructed?” Gage blinked, his brain working to keep up with this bit of news.
The withering look Mags shot him reminded him of Parker. “Because she had breast cancer.”