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“Just so we’re all on the same page, I’m officially being held here against my will,” I shouted at the door.
It occurred to me that having picture and video evidence would probably strengthen my case, and I started to regret wasting the last ten percent of my battery watching cats knock things off shelves while maintaining unwavering eye contact with their exasperated humans.
Sort of. Some of them had been really,reallyfunny.
I bet Adrien keeps a few chargers in here somewhere…
My eyes darted around the space, looking for white wires either snaking out of outlets or coiled neatly on wooden surfaces.
It wasn’t the easiest task. The large office was crowded with a shocking number of plants. There were so many of them that it made the air smell different in here. Less stale than the rest of the office.
I wandered around, checking each outlet individually, but they were all empty. So, I decided to check his desk.
The mahogany surface was kept impressively neat, free of all dust, clutter, and any signs of human life, save for the glaringly out-of-place black box that sat right beside the wireless keyboard.
I ignored it and tried opening the top desk drawer, but it was locked. So was the second and the third and… all of them. They were all locked.
I sighed and dropped into his chair, immediately resentful of how much more comfortable it was than the one I had downstairs. I bethewasn’t plagued by a stiff lower back if he sat in this thing for too long. It felt ergonomic as fuck.
I whirled around on it a few times, tapped my foot, my fingers, checked the ends of my hair for split ends, and tried holding my breath to see if it would alleviate some of the boredom. (It did not.)
Another ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. Twenty.
I was so bored by this point that I was tempted to start counting the leaves on the nearest fern as I watched them grow. But then my eyes fell back on the black box.
What if there’s a charger in there?
I knew there wasn’t. It didn’t look like the type of box that would house random office accessories. It was too sleek and expensive-looking for that.
What was in it, then? A gift? Cold hard cash? Virgin souls?
Open me, the box whispered seductively.I’m filled with so many phone chargers, you don’t even know. I’m bursting with them. I swear it on Pandora herself.
Two things were for absolute certain. One, the box was a liar. And two, my mind was folding in on itself because of boredom. It was bending and twisting and making up increasingly farfetched theories about the contents of the package, just so it would have something to do.
Like, for example, what if this was one of those psychology experiments? Like when you put a kid in a room with a button and tell them not to press it, so all they want to do is press it. What if there was a camera set up in here and Adrien was watching the whole thing, waiting to see how many hours it would take for me to break?
Because it was weird, right? It was weird that this entire office wasAmerican Psycholevels of organized and clean, and then there was this one random, ominously black box sitting right in the middle of Adrien’s desk, completely out of place and begging—pleading—to be opened.
Or maybe it was a genie-in-a-lamp type of situation. Adrien Cloutier was trapped inside the box and that was what was taking him so fucking long. Opening it would release him, and he’d be so grateful that he’d forget about the whole cane-to-the-balls thing and grant me three wishes.
Or maybe—and more reasonably—it was a box full of evidence he’d gathered to prove I was Waldo. Close-up snapshots of my face taken with security cameras and stuff.
But also, it could just be a decorative, diamond-encrusted butt plug. (Rich people were, er, aneccentriclot. You never really knew with them.)
Or, again, it might be a charger. So maybe a small peek wouldn’t hurt, just to be sure…
My hand was moving before I could think better of it, reaching for the smooth corner of the dark lid so I could—
BOOM!
I jumped as everything erupted. The second my finger nudged the lid open, it triggered a loud explosion of gold confetti and red glitter.
So. Much. Fucking.Glitter.
It was everywhere. Floating in the air, dusting the desk, the chair, the floor, the plants, the keyboard. And a shit ton of it had gotten inside my gaping mouth.
I stood there, shocked, holding my trembling hands in the air like I had a gun pointed at me. Because that was exactly what the explosion had sounded like. A gunshot. And it had scared the living shit out of me, holy fuck.
