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I vaguely hear Sarah ask, “Is that true, Rhett?” before I get Viola in the hall.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask her. “You know what you did.”
She whirls hard and breaks her arms free. “I know no such thing, Bailey, you treacherous bitch. I asked him not to fire you. I told him it wasn’t your fault. Now get off me. I’m out of here, anyway.”
She stalks down the hall. I follow her to the elevator. “So you’re quitting?”
She stabs the button, then thinks better of it and heads farther down for the stairwell. “This place is a disaster waiting to happen.”
She takes off down the stairs. I wait at the door, pondering what she said. Did she stick up for me? If so, why the silence after?
I don’t believe her.
But I have to get back to Rhett. He’s bound to be reeling after all this.
The hallway fills with employees leaving the meeting, most of them skipping the elevator in favor of the stairs.
Gloria pushes through them to get to me, almost tripping on her long blue maxi dress. “Come with me, Bailey. We need to craft a carefully worded message to go out to the staff.”
I look behind her to see if I can spot Rhett, but there is no getting past the sea of employees, all chattering with alarm.
“I need to find Rhett,” I tell her. It’s imperative that he knows I’m with him, even if I did go off about exactly the same situation as his arrangement with his uncle only a few days ago. God, he’s going to think I resent him now.
I have to fix it.
“I already tried,” Gloria says. “Come with me.”
I don’t want to go with her, but she leads me past the HR cubicles to her office and closes the door. “We have to spin this quickly. The department heads are already calling a meeting.”
Now she has my attention. “Why?”
She sits down. “There’s too much that’s happened too fast, the marketing snafu, you getting fired, you showing up, you two seeming…together. The news that Dougherty isn’t what we thought comes at a bad time. They have concerns about the company.”
I drop into a chair in the corner. “I should talk to Rhett about this.”
“He’s not available.”
That again. “What do you mean, he’s not available? He was leading the meeting.”
“He left by the back door. The one that leads straight to his office.”
“Then I’m sure he’s at his desk. Let me talk to him.” I stand up.
“He’s not. I checked.”
“What do you mean? Did you text him? Call him?”
“Both. He’s not answering.”
This isn’t like Rhett at all. I sit back down. “Where did he go?”
Gloria pinches her lips like she’s trying to calm herself. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have you in here. So let’s do this. We need damage control.”
“Let me text him.”
“You can try, but we also need to craft this message.”
I can’t do that. Not yet. “Meet me in his office in three minutes.” I jump up and lunge for the door. I have to see this for myself.
