I try not to roll my eyes.
They’ve all been working under me for at least a year. They are the ones who’ve stuck it out, despite what a pain in the ass I am to work with. They should expect it.
I don’t normally have to put up with this simpering bullshit from them.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Jaxon, despite his initial show of bravery, glances at Gwen.
In the end, she’s the one who answers. “We can’t get in the lab.”
“What? Did you all lose your badges?”
They immediately protest, fumbling to pull out badges as visual proof. I wave them aside. “Never mind, let me try mine.”
They scatter to grant me access to the door and its keypad.
It doesn’t open with my badge either.
Not that I actually expected it to.
“Did you—” I start to ask.
“I already called Clarissa,” Priya answers. “She called maintenance. They’re already working on it. Apparently there was some sort of surge during the night. And now our badges have to be reprogrammed.”
“Can’t maintenance just unlock them remotely?”
“No?” Gwen answers, her voice rising like it’s a question, which is something she only does when she’s nervous. “Apparently they have to come do it in person.”
“So all the rooms in the building are locked?”
“Just the ones on the north wall,” Jaxon answers.
Which means I can’t get into my lab. However, my office is on the south side of the building. So I can go there. Or I can go home and catch up on my reading.
“When is maintenance going to get to manually reset the badges?” I ask, already unhooking my badge from its retractable holder so one of the grad students can do the job for me.
“They should be here within the hour,” Jaxon says.
I pause and look at each of the grad students. They look nervous. None of them look any happier about this than I am.
We all have work to do.
In that lab.
But this weird delay to my workday has all the trappings of some sort of prank. The offices are locked on only one side of the building on only one floor? Please.
No doubt I’m going to head to my office—because why would I go all the way home when the matter will be resolved in an hour?—only to find it full of helium balloons. Or rubber snakes or something.
This is exactly the kind of thing Tavey would do. The kind of thing she has done. In college, I once returned to my dorm room to find it stacked full of National Geographics, May 1984 through January 1997.
I am tempted to go back home just to thwart her plans, but head to my office on the other side of the building anyway. Just in case her prank involves something with an expiration date, like tapioca pudding—which she knows I hate.
When I reach my office, there is no tapioca pudding.
There is, however, a wiry man of indeterminate age pacing in front of a stool. And Holly perched on the edge of my desk, dressed in her sexy librarian costume again. Another slim skirt and fitted button-up blouse. The skirt and her position on my desk make her legs look impossibly long. Much longer than they can realistically be given her short stature.
“You’re not pudding,” I grumble.
