Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
Nell left her apartment with her work bag over her shoulder and her keys in her hand. As she pulled out of her parking spot, morning rain pattered on the windshield without it opening into a downpour.
Nell drove downtown through wet streets crowded with buses, cyclists, and delivery trucks. A MAX train crossed ahead of her while she waited at a light. She missed one turn, let the navigation system reroute her, then finally found her office building.
In the garage, she parked near the elevator, took a picture of her row number, and headed upstairs. She stepped out onto the fourth floor, walked through the glass doors of Hartwell & Moss, and found a receptionist behind a curved desk.
“Hi, I’m Nell Meadows. It’s my first day.”
The receptionist smiled. “Welcome. Dana is expecting you.”
The staff door opened and Dana Wilcox came out to meet her. She wore charcoal trousers and a pale blue blouse, her silver-streaked black hair cut to her jaw.
“Good morning, Nell,” Dana said, offering her hand. “How was the drive from Fate Mountain? Are you all moved in?”
“The drive was fine. I had some friends help me move, so it went well.”
“Good to hear. Come on in.” Dana motioned for Nell to follow her. “I’ll show you where everything is.”
Reception occupied the front of the suite, with two glass-walled meeting rooms nearby.
Beyond them, the space opened into the main accounting floor.
Desks were arranged in clusters separated by low partitions, with a wide aisle running through the middle and windows along the outer wall.
Dana’s office and several other private offices lined the far side, while the copy room, break room, and restrooms were farther back.
Most of the floor was open enough that Nell could see people talking across aisles, answering phones, and working at their monitors.
Dana pointed toward one of the glass rooms. “We use those when we need privacy. Most of your day will be out here.” Dana stopped beside Nell’s workstation. “This is yours.”
A woman at the desk across the aisle looked up. She had straight black hair tucked behind one ear and wore a green cardigan over her blouse.
“Nell Meadows, this is Sasha Kim,” Dana said. “She works mostly with healthcare and nonprofit clients.”
Sasha smiled. “Nice to meet you.”
Dana nodded toward the nearby row, where a stocky man with dark curls and a close-trimmed beard turned from his monitor.
“And Luis Ortega. He works primarily on construction and property accounts. You’ll be near both of them, and you’ll probably work with each of them while you’re getting started.”
Luis gave Nell a small wave. “Welcome, Nell.”
“Thanks. I’m glad to meet you both.”
Dana gave her an onboarding schedule and the first practice file. By noon, Nell had learned the basic office systems and where everything in the office was located.
“Ready for lunch?” Luis asked.
“Absolutely.”
Nell, Sasha, and Luis took the elevator downstairs and walked two blocks to a food-cart pod tucked between office buildings.
The rain had stopped, but cold drops still shook from the awnings.
Sasha carried no umbrella. Luis had one folded beneath his arm and claimed Portland rain didn’t justify opening it unless it threatened to drench his hair.
The food-cart pod occupied a fenced half block.
Carts lined the perimeter with their service windows facing the shared tables in the center.
Smoke rolled from a grill at the far end and carried the smell of charred meat across the pavement.
Hot oil, coffee, garlic, and sweet pastry crowded together whenever the breeze changed.
“First rule,” Sasha said. “Walk the whole loop before you decide.”
“That’s Sasha’s rule,” Luis said. “My rule is to know what you want before you leave the office.”
He headed toward a cart selling dumplings. Sasha stopped at Stretch the Noodle and pointed through the service window. “Check that out.”
Behind the counter, a cook stretched a thick rope of dough between his hands. He folded it, pulled again, and slapped it against the steel counter. The dough struck with a soft, rapid thump before splitting into thinner strands.
“I was going to get a sandwich,” Sasha said, “but now I want those.”
Nell did too.
They ordered chile-oil noodles and watched the cook drop each portion into boiling water. The cook tossed his noodles with red oil, dark vinegar, and scallions, then tucked the paper bowl into a cardboard sleeve.
Luis returned with a bamboo tray of dumplings and led them to an open end of a picnic table. The bench was still wet from the rain. Sasha pulled a few napkins from the dispenser and wiped it down before they sat.
“How do you like working at Hartwell & Moss?” Nell asked as she took her first bite.
“I came from a larger franchise where nobody knew what I was working on. Dana knows. That took getting used to,” Luis said.
“I’ve been here three years,” Sasha said. “They’ll let you learn, but tax season is busy.”
“Tax season is busy everywhere.”
Nell ate until heat spread across her lips and cheeks and the bowl held only scallions in a streak of red oil.
Around them, orders were called from opposite sides of the pod.
A bus sighed to a stop beyond the fence.
Someone carried a paper tray of grilled meat past their table, trailing wood smoke and roasted onions.
On the walk back, Sasha pointed out the coffee shop that stayed open late.
The afternoon gave her software tutorials, practice work, and a headache that started behind her eyes. She caught herself attaching the wrong version of a spreadsheet before she submitted it. Sasha showed her where the file name changed after review, and Nell wrote the distinction in her notes.
At home, Nell changed into soft pants and an old sweatshirt, made herself a mug of tea, and settled into the corner of the couch beneath a blanket. A lamp glowed beside her, and the apartment finally felt quiet after a day of new faces and unfamiliar routines. Her feet hurt, but she was home.
Over the next few days, Nell settled into the office routine. She learned the firm’s systems, grew more comfortable with the work, and started getting to know Sasha and Luis better.
On Wednesday evening, Nell stopped at Powell’s Books instead of going straight home.
The store was bigger than she expected, with rooms spread across several floors and shelves packed with new and used books.
She wandered longer than she meant to, stopping in the Portland and Oregon sections as she learned more about the city she had just moved to.
She grabbed a used field guide to Oregon birds.
Nell got turned around badly enough to need help from a clerk. When she was pointed in the right direction, she took a picture of the store map for Ryder. He’d think it was funny that she got lost in a bookstore.
On the way back to the front, a staff recommendation caught her attention.
It was a mystery novel about an accountant who solved a murder through tax records.
The premise sounded ridiculous, which made her want to read it.
At the counter, she bought the mystery and the field guide.
As she walked back to her car with her books, she found herself looking forward to telling Ryder about it.
On Thursday evening, before heading home, Nell stopped at Voodoo Doughnut again. She chose a doughnut covered in strawberry frosting and rainbow sprinkles called a Homer. She then carried the pink box toward the park near the Willamette River.
A paved path divided the open lawn from the seawall. Cyclists passed in quick bursts of tire noise. Gulls shouted above the river. On the opposite bank, cars moved along the highway beneath the jumble of bridge supports.
A delivery van stopped at the curb behind her.
Its sliding door slammed. Nell gasped as the metal crash became the door the traffickers had shut after they took her.
Nell stopped so abruptly that she almost dropped her doughnut.
She took a deep breath, then another. The van remained across the parkway, but she continued to the seawall and opened the box.
She wasn’t going to let her paranoia and trauma keep her from enjoying her after-work treat.
Strawberry frosting had stuck to the side of the box.
She lifted the doughnut and took a bite.
It was soft and warm and sugary. The taste of strawberry and yeast filled her mouth.
Sprinkles dropped into the box and melted against the frosting on her thumb.
When the van pulled away, she let out a relieved sigh and turned her attention back to the water.
A small boat chugged upriver, its engine muttering in the distance. Wind whipped Nell’s hair across her face and into the last of her doughnut. She wiped it back with a sticky finger and laughed at herself. Everything was fine. There was nothing to be afraid of.
At work on Friday, Dana stopped at Nell’s desk. “I have your first client assignment. Northline Commercial Construction. I want you to compare the final costs on several completed projects with their budgets and flag anything that looks unusual.”
Nell spent the morning going through the records. Most of the projects had used some of the money set aside for unexpected expenses and left the rest untouched. A handful had spent nearly all of it just before the projects closed.
She checked the figures again. One late expense had a clear explanation, but the others didn’t. Dana reviewed Nell’s summary at her desk.
“There’s no explanation for the late charges?”
“Not in the files I reviewed.”
Dana nodded. “All right. Next week we’ll look at what those charges were for.”
At home after work, Nell changed into sweatpants and made tea before settling onto the sofa. She tucked her feet beneath her and pulled a blanket over her lap.
She and Ryder had agreed to talk that night, and she had been looking forward to it all day. Nell set her mug on the coffee table, picked up her phone, and called him.
He answered on the second ring. “Hey.”
Nell smiled. “Hey.”
“How was the rest of your week?” he asked.
“Good. Busy.” Nell leaned back against the couch. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of the office. Sasha and Luis sit near me, and they’ve been taking me to lunch.”
“You like them?”
“I do.”
She told him about the food carts and the noodles she had ordered on her first day. Then she told him about getting lost in Powell’s and the mystery novel she bought about an accountant who solved a murder through tax records.
Ryder laughed. “Is it good?”
“I haven’t started it yet.”
They talked for a while about Powell’s and the places she still wanted to see. It was easy in the same way talking to Ryder had always been easy.
“I went back to Voodoo too,” Nell said. “Then I took the doughnut down to the river.”
“How was it?”
“Good. Until a delivery van stopped behind me. The side door slammed, and it sounded like the van they used when they took me.”
“Nell.”
“I’m okay.” She looked down at the blanket gathered over her knees. “It scared me. For a minute I wanted to leave. But I still wanted to eat by the river, so I stayed.”
“I’m glad.”
Nell smiled a little. “Me too.”
For a few seconds neither of them spoke.
Then she said, “Tell me about home.”
Ryder told her about work, about Blaze spilling coffee across a workbench, and about a few things that had happened around Fate Mountain that week. None of it was important, and Nell found herself wanting every detail anyway.
“I keep expecting you to walk into the diner,” Ryder said after a while.
Nell pulled the blanket higher over her legs. “I like it here. But missing you makes it kind of inconvenient.”
Ryder laughed softly. “Yeah. Same.”