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Cafeteria vending machine it would have to be. Maybe if I was lucky they would still have the Garden Salsa flavor of Sun Chips, and the Snickers would have been replaced recently enough that their peanuts wouldn’t have turned to brittle dust with age.
Yeah, I know, dream big.
I had almost trotted down to the cafeteria when I heard the not-so-dulcet tones of bragging Douchebros, their voices extra loud, like they wanted to make sure that no one suffered the tragedy of not hearing their extremely important conversation.
Worse, their voices were heading directly towards me.
I so didn’t have the energy to deal with their bullshit right now. Their ‘lighthearted’ teasing about my failure to secure the Knox deal, their leering comments about my outfit and my body, their sexist speculations about the way I had earned this job. All of that took way more energy than I had at this moment. It probably took more energy than a power plant produced in a year.
So I hid instead.
I looked around, rapidly locating a blind spot behind some tarp where the maintenance guys still hadn’t finished installing the new water fountain. I’d been annoyed about this for months—how hard is it to put the new one in after you’ve taken the old one out?—but now I sent a silent thank you to them for dragging their feet, and ducked behind the blue plastic.
Oh God, please let this tarp be too opaque for me to cast a shadow. If they catch me hiding out here from them, they’ll never let me hear the end of it.
As they drew closer, I began to be able to make out some words and sentences. Something seemed off about the conversation, though—there were long stretches of silence, something the Douchebros would normally never tolerate. Were they on the phone?
“Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome, Chuck,” Chad was saying as he and his entourage drew level with me. “So you got this takeover offer when?”
My blood ran cold. A takeover offer. That they were discussing with Chuck.
They had to be talking about Knox Liquors.
What would this do to Hunter?
“What’s the problem, bro?” another Douchebro put in. “Sounds like easy money, so why’s he dragging his feet?”
The distant sound of Chuck’s voice grew muffled as Chad covered the speaker with his hand. “Because of Hunter f**king Knox, bro, duh. There’s a lot of legal jazz that means we’d need Hunter’s agreement and voting shares to sell. There’s no way that tool’s going to go for it.”
Relief washed through me, and a spark of hope. So it wasn’t a done deal. There still might be a way to stop this.
“No, no, dude, I totally hear what you’re saying…” Chad’s voice and the footsteps of his coterie began to fade, and then die away.
My mind was already racing ahead of them.
I was furious, yes, and worried, and still guilty—but most of all, I was thinking.
This might not just be a travesty, it might be….an opportunity.
It was time for some espionage.
#
I cast a surreptitious eye over the rest of the office. Empty. Good. The Douchebros had long since headed home along with everyone else. No one had batted an eye at me working late, since every time I had managed to make it in lately I’d been staying until the wee small hours; I had to, just to keep even vaguely on top of things.
I left my computer running and took the route with no security cameras to Chad’s desk.
Of course he got an actual office room, instead of a cubicle, even though he hadn’t been with the company much longer than me and, numbers-wise, had a much worse track record. Still, however much I resented that, it did give me a tiny bit of privacy once I picked the lock.
During the day, this was Douchebro Central, and in the dim half-light of evening, you could still see the signs of their presence, the chip bags and the energy drink cans they’d left littered across the floor or snagged in the miniature basketball hoop over the door. Because why pick up after yourself when Housekeeping will be in later to do it for you?
I cut off my mental censure before I could really get going; if I let myself, I’d just stand here judging them all night. I went straight to Chad’s computer and breathed a sigh of relief. The as**shole never shut it down or even logged it off, but I’d still spent the last few hours worrying that he’d suddenly become environmentally conscious or something.
I pulled up his work e-mail; we used Outlook, so that didn’t require a password either. Quickly scrolling through the recent exchanges—and doing my best not to roll my eyes at his terrible attempt at flirting with Andi from accounting, which was either going to end in a harassment lawsuit or Andi’s fist in his face (Andi did roller derby and she was hardcore)—I located a long e-mail string from Chuck, and began to speed read.
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