Page 43 of Rock Bottom

Chapter Nine

Preparation

Maggie reached the newspaper office at the crack of dawn. She wanted to review the list she’d begun the day before and get it to Charles and Fergus as quickly as possible so she could have the rest of the day to get ready. The skeleton crew on the night shift was wrapping up and leaving the building as she arrived.

“You’re early,” the metropolitan night editor grunted at her.

“Catching the worm . . .” Her voice trailed off. She knew a lot of her coworkers were envious of her relationship to Annie, the big boss. Too bad. So sad. Boo-hoo. That wasn’t to say Annie wouldn’t go all out for any one of her employees. It just so happened that Maggie had a special connection with Annie.

Maggie powered up her computer and accessed the archives she’d saved from the day before. She categorized them by type: bridges, buildings, and so on. Then she sorted them by year. Hundreds of articles appeared on the screen. She started with the bridge failures. At least fifty came up, with the most recent on top: a bridge in Pittsburgh. Then Katihar, in Bihar, India, where a bridge collapsed while still under construction. One official blamed “negligence” and another called it “collusion.” A few years back there was another bridge in India, this one crossing the Anjarakandi River. Farther back there was a pedestrian bridge that spanned a street near Florida International University, then the infamous bridge collapse in Genoa, Italy. Maggie read on. Fifty-nine people were facing various charges. She let out a low whistle. “Well, at least someone is being held accountable,” she said to herself. The list went as far back as the 1800s. Many were railroad bridges. She also noted the high rate of failures in countries like Cambodia, India, and China. It was making her sick to her stomach, something Maggie rarely experienced.

She switched to the file she’d made for buildings. First up was the building failure in South Florida, where a condominium collapsed, killing ninety-four people. Maggie made a note to see if the two South Florida incidents had anything in common besides political corruption and incompetence. She also discovered there was a one-billion-dollar settlement pending within the year. Someone wanted to get it out of the way, pronto, with no indictments or accountability.

Maggie shook her head as she read on. There were so many more disasters. Some of the incidents resulted in no injuries, while others resulted in hundreds of deaths. Then add the more than eighteen hundred people who’d died due to the levee failure in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It was one thing to hear someone talk about it. It was another to read about it all in great detail.

Maggie culled the information from the past ten years and sorted it so Charles could cross reference to see if there were any similarities, such as contractors and materials. She copied the file to a flash drive and then emailed Charles the info with a note: Not a pretty picture. By the time she was finished, the rest of the staff had begun trickling in for the workday. It was time for donuts and coffee.

* * *

Zoe left her apartment at six thirty that morning. She had sent a text to Sasha the night before alerting her to the earlier-than-usual departure. As Zoe stepped out of her building, Sasha was already waiting across the street, ready to roll. Zoe walked to the corner of Twenty-First and Park Avenue and hailed a taxi for the ride to her Midtown office. Every so often she would glance into the sideview mirror to see Sasha keeping up with the early morning traffic. When they arrived at the sleek office building on Fifty-Third and Madison, Sasha pulled over, gave Zoe a nod and pointed to her wrist. It was a reminder for Zoe to alert Sasha via her wrist device if she was going to leave the building.

Once inside, Zoe checked the halls for any other colleagues. Empty. She scooted over to Kyle’s desk and logged on to his computer. She knew his password was LADY-GAGA and hoped he hadn’t changed it after their recent webinar about cybersecurity. She quickly typed in LADY-GAGA. Red letters appeared: Incorrect password. Dang! She thought for a moment and began to go through all of Kyle’s favorite Broadway plays. KINKYBOOTS. Nope. She knew she only had one more shot before she got locked out. She looked up at the cubicle wall. There was a ticket stub from The Music Man. Of course! Kyle couldn’t stop talking about it. She gave it one more try. She resisted the temptation to start humming “Seventy-Six Trombones.”

Zoe realized her palms were sweaty, as was her forehead. She was not the type of person to do anything underhanded, so being a sneak was not a comfortable activity for her. She opened the browser in Private Mode. Theoretically that allowed the user to surf the web undetected, with no tracking. Theoretically. She went to the company’s homepage and then to the Human Resources tab. She scrolled down to the Job Postings, and then to the Dominican Republic. Just as she’d expected, the list of job openings was quite long, particularly in the factory division. Obviously those would not be appropriate for Alexis. She checked under the Management tab: Assistant Office Manager, Inventory Management, Legal Associate. Perfect! She copied the last link and sent it to Alexis and Charles, then clicked the tab to Erase History, just in case . . . although nothing was ever really, truly erased, even if you thought you were in stealth mode. It would just make tracking her a tad more difficult.

She checked her watch. Only eight. Still early. She decided to go down to the café on the corner. As she entered the elevator she realized she’d forgotten to ping Sasha. The café was only two doors from the main entrance. It seemed silly to bother Sasha for a quick cup of java. When she exited the building she noticed a woman on a bench across the street. She looked familiar, but Zoe couldn’t quite place her. Then it hit her. It was the woman in the town car from the train station. She began to get anxious. So she was, in fact, being followed. By two people. She wanted to kick herself for not alerting Sasha. She thought about hitting the panic button, but she didn’t feel as if she was in immediate danger.

Zoe tried not to stare and hightailed it into the café as the woman crossed the street. Now the sweat was pouring down the back of her neck. Before Zoe knew it, the woman following her was bumped by someone on a bicycle. The cyclist stopped and made profuse apologies while Zoe rushed into the coffee shop.

“You people!” the woman who’d been bumped growled. “Watch where you’re going! You should be on the street, not the sidewalk!”

“Sorry. Sorry.” This gave Sasha an opportunity to get a good look at the other woman and take a quick snapshot of her face with her watch, which doubled as a camera. Sasha moved her bike to the street and sent the photo to Avery. She pedaled a few feet to a spot where she could keep an eye on the café door.

Inside the café, when Zoe got to the counter she could barely speak. “Hi. I . . . I . . .”

“I think you need some decaf, Zoe,” the barista said.

Zoe regained her composure. “You’re right, Diane. Thanks.” She looked over her shoulder. The woman following her was now pretending to be window shopping, and Zoe could see Sasha was not far away. “I’ll have a chocolate croissant, too.”

“Going wild today, eh?” The barista smiled.

“Maybe just a little crazy.” Zoe laughed nervously. She pulled out her wallet, paid the tab, and then stepped to the side as they got her order ready. She was visibly shaken. She took some slow, deep breaths. She’d thought after her meeting with Fielder the day before, they would no longer suspect her of being suspicious. It occurred to her that Fielder might not be the one having her followed. Maybe it was Walsh. He seemed to be much more squirrely about things. She bit her lower lip in contemplation. Then she jumped when she heard her name being called.

“Zoe? Decaf cappuccino?”

“That’s me.” She grabbed the cup and moved quickly through the crowd, all getting coffee on their way to work. She thought she was going to hyperventilate. When she got outside, the woman was back at the bench across the street. Sasha had repositioned herself as well, and Zoe was still in her sights. Sasha would remain outside the office building from the minute Zoe entered until the minute she left to go back to her apartment. If Zoe had any plans after work, Sasha would be biking along.

Zoe stood by the elevator bank, anxiously watching the numbers on the light above the doors indicating what floor the elevator was on. Why are they always so slow? It was a thought every New Yorker had at least once a week. The elevator finally reached the lobby level. She wiggled inside as a throng of people tried to smush themselves into the tiny car. Zoe found herself looking at the notice about the weight limit. She started counting heads and noticed how much bigger people seemed, especially after COVID. She’d read that a weight gain of ten percent was average. Then she tried to calculate the weight gain times the number of people in the elevator. Did the engineers consider the possibility of a pandemic and people getting fat? She was starting to get goofy. Get a grip, she admonished herself. Then she gave it more thought. Her engineering brain kicked in. It would take ten three-hundred-pound people to max out the elevator’s weight limit. Or twenty-one hundred-fifty-pound people. That wasn’t too farfetched if you thought about it. Zoe’s mathematical musings were interrupted by someone saying “Yoo-hoo!” It was Kyle in one of his ever-so-fabulous moods. He was wearing his thematic bow tie of the day.

They squeezed through the swarm of people as they exited onto their floor. Would Kyle know this was not Zoe’s first trip in the elevator today? She decided to say nothing. She knew she’d left the light on in her office and her beautiful D & G bag behind. Big mistake. She’d left it sitting on the chair in her office under her jacket. She’d been so anxious to get to Kyle’s computer, she hadn’t hung up her jacket or stowed away her tote. At least she’d had the smarts to lock the burner phone in her desk drawer after she’d removed it from her pocket.

When they passed the reception area, Zoe saw there were a handful of other employees scattered about and that all of the overhead lights were now on. Kyle probably wouldn’t notice. Then she froze. The Dolce & Gabbana bag. Kyle would certainly notice that! She walked swiftly ahead of him to move the bag before he saw it. It wasn’t that she hadn’t planned on showing it to him; it was that she didn’t want him to know she had already been at work. He would wonder why. Then she thought if he asked she would say she’d had a zoom call with someone in England. This lying and storytelling was coming a little too easily to the normally straightforward, upstanding Zoe Danfield. She comforted herself with the notion that she was part of a grand play and she was one of the players. Produced and directed by Annie de Silva and Myra Rutledge. She could imagine the credits rolling in her head.

Kyle couldn’t resist stopping by one of his coworkers to gossip. Zoe took the opportunity to dash into her office, and pretended she’d just arrived there for the first time that day. She sat back in her chair and gave a huge sigh of relief. The past fifteen minutes had produced more adrenaline than she’d experienced since . . . since she couldn’t remember when. When Izzie said I’d get used to it, I should have asked her to clarify how long it would take. She made a mental note to inquire the next time they spoke. She also wondered how often they would have their private conferences, and if she would be kept in the loop with everyone else’s activities. Zoe knew her only job was to keep doing her job, nose to the grindstone and to keep Charles and Fergus informed of anything unusual. The challenging part was to pretend as if nothing was happening behind the scenes. But Zoe was becoming a good liar. She simply had to remind herself of the production she was part of and play her role accordingly. If she needed any moral support she could count on Izzie, and Sasha was also within reach.

She removed her glasses and gave them a good wipe with a special cloth. There was nothing else for her to do that day except her normal job. She checked the timeline log to see when the shipment would release for the school in Italy. It was within the week. She had to let Charles know as soon as she could. Kyle was approaching his cubicle and waved to her. Zoe waved back, then gestured for him to come in.

“Look what I got!” Zoe said with amusement, holding up the bag.

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