Chapter 4

The next morning I rode in with my father and came to the office.

The moment I stepped inside, the usual noise was gone. The whole floor sat quiet.

I went to my desk and sat down.

Darlene Fox, the new intern a few seats over, leaned her head toward me, handed me a cup of coffee, and said with a face full of gossip.

"Did you hear? Something huge blew up at the company!"

I set my bag down, took the coffee, and had a small sip.

"What happened?"

Darlene pointed toward the general manager's office.

I looked where she was pointing and saw every department head and manager in the company crammed into General Manager Joseph Rodriguez's office.

Joseph, who was always mild, looked grim right now, his palm coming down hard on the desk in front of him.

I couldn't hear a word he was saying in there, but one look at his face told me exactly how furious he was.

Darlene edged closer, careful about it.

"I heard them saying it's a problem with the contract between us and Quill Group. Sounds like we're on the hook for tens of millions."

"General Manager Rodriguez called all the department heads in first thing this morning and said this has to be investigated, no exceptions."

Nothing on my face changed.

From the moment that voice told me yesterday that they were still working their scheme, I'd already guessed it would end like this.

It wasn't that I didn't want to head off the loss.

It was that when I saw that contract yesterday, I already knew the damage was done. Even if I'd exposed them right then, it would have changed nothing.

Since I couldn't change the result, all I could do was find another way to recover from it.

I turned to look at Darlene. I actually liked this new intern.

She was a little lively and all over the place, but she took her work seriously.

"Stop chasing gossip. It's got nothing to do with us. You'd be better off figuring out how to get your position made permanent."

At my words Darlene's face fell at once, her little mouth puffing out like a hamster's.

"It's too hard. Those old-timers walk all over us!"

"We interns finally manage to get some results, and people like Eve Fox just swoop in and take the credit."

I smiled a little. It didn't surprise me.

These days grinding away at the bottom rungs of the company had taught me a fair amount about how things really worked here.

Just then the door to General Manager Rodriguez's office swung open.

Eve Fox walked out, with Joseph and Caspar Finch and the rest trailing behind her.

Eve came right up to me, her face all wounded, and pointed at me.

"Mr. Rodriguez, this whole thing is Lucretia James's fault. She's the one who put that contract together."

I looked at Eve and the rest of them.

"I did not put that contract together!"

I'd barely finished before Caspar stepped out and planted himself in front of me.

"Lucretia, you really are a disappointment. All you had to do was admit it, and the company would've left you some dignity."

"But since you'd rather die than own up, there's no reason for us to spare your feelings either. We saw this coming a long time ago, and we've already nailed down all the proof."

Caspar pulled a file from behind his back, pointed at the figures on it, and started laying it out for Joseph behind him.

"Mr. Rodriguez, this is the data we pulled off the company's backend server. Yesterday Lucretia James's account logged into the server, submitted that contract, and altered several key figures in it. This is the evidence she left behind of what she did."

Joseph pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and took the evidence report Caspar handed over.

He read it over carefully, then slid the data report across to me.

"Lucretia James, do you have anything to say for yourself now?"