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I got in my car and drove the thirty minutes it took to get to downtown Dallas—Jesus, traffic in Dallas was bad.
Finding a spot on the road a couple of blocks down from the building, I got out and looked at myself in the mirror.
I looked good for being up all night and eating so much I might explode.
Though my uterus was doing a fine job of making me hate life right now thanks to the cramps—did I say how much I hated my period?—and eating was sometimes the only thing in life that made me happy.
Tucking my hair behind my ear and wondering how noticeable the red hair would be, I started out toward Winston’s building, hitting pay dirt when I got to the alley beside the building and nearly got hit in the face by a door opening.
I caught it before it could hit me and held it open wide.
There was a woman pushing a rather large trash cart trying to maneuver it out of the building with very little success.
“Here, let me help,” I suggested as I held the door and lifted the cart to help her over the doorjamb.
“Oh, thank you,” the elderly woman said. “This thing is so cumbersome.”
I inclined my head in reply, and waited until she was behind the door and out of sight of the building before I went inside.
The door closed behind me, and a long, empty corridor greeted me.
I rubbed my hands together in excitement, then started walking.
CHAPTER 11
It’s called karma, and it’s pronounced ‘fuck you.’
-Text from Crimson to Winston
WINSTON
“Sir.”
I looked up to find my chief of security, Jareth, and blinked. “Yes?”
“I sent you a text message a few minutes ago,” he said, “but you never responded.”
I leaned back in my seat and clasped my hands into my lap. “What is it?”
“There’s an unauthorized intruder in the building,” he answered.
I leaned forward. “How did this unauthorized person get into my building?”
There was a reason I paid Jareth an exorbitant amount of money.
He was good at his job.
“I was away from my desk handling an aggressive employee being let go when she entered the building,” he answered. “She entered via the east emergency exit when a staff member from janitorial needed help getting out of the building with a trash receptacle.”
“Got it,” I said. “Let me see.”
I could easily pull it up on my own computer, I had direct access to everything in this building, but that would take time. And sometimes it was just easier to have him show me than have to flip through twenty different screens to get to what he saw.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to see who I did, but still I was.
“Do you know her?” Jareth asked.
I nodded. “I do.”
“Do you want me to escort her up to your office?” he asked.
I was already shaking my head. “No. Let her explore all she wants. Only interfere if she gets into something dangerous.”
She’d eventually make her way to me, and when she did, I’d be waiting.
“Would you like me to stop monitoring?” he asked.
Did I?
Actually, yes. I did.
“Turn the cameras off for the entire west wing. She won’t be able to get into any other parts of the building without security clearance. And open up all the locked doors between here and there. You can keep the offices locked, however,” I suggested.
Jareth nodded, then was gone.
I tried to go back to my boring report, but after five minutes of reading the same numbers twice, I gave up and switched over to the security feed.
I found her on the third floor looking into the janitor’s closet.
Grinning, I kicked my feet up onto my desk and watched her move.
I found the most hilarity when she reached the floor where our technicians worked out of.
She opened every single door, then closed it, pouting when she didn’t find anything fun and useful on it.
The final door on that floor was filled with the mannequins that we used at the training centers to teach basic first aid and CPR. Jareth was CPR certified and taught the classes once every two weeks. The two courses were required by my employees, and they had to pass both to continue working at my facility.
Not that I ever expected anything bad to happen, but I really wanted to make sure that my employees could take care of themselves in the event of an emergency. That was also why I paid a generous fifty percent of all their gym memberships and any extra martial arts classes that they wanted to take.
It cost me more than my accountant liked, but I was all for making sure that my employees could take care of themselves if needed.
She stopped in the doorway and stared.
Once a week, people snuck in and rearranged the mannequins so that they were in compromising positions. The one to find them first was usually Jareth, and he liked to throw a big stink about it to the point that people kept doing it every week.
