Wounded Animals (Whistleblower Series Book 1) (3 page)

Management was friendly because they wanted something from me. Less so since I’d turned them down, but they still glued smiles on their faces and asked about my wife and unborn child, slapped me on the back, invited me out to try real Texas barbecue, or commiserated with me about the heat or cold or humidity.

I walked down to the third aisle of cubes and cut left, then headed toward the training room at the far end. No one here had standing or treadmill desks. I’d gotten used to seeing heads poking above cubicle walls in Colorado, but I guess the trend hadn’t made its way here yet.

The training room was empty. Four long tables with workstations set up. Each of the workstations had a piece of paper folded in front, with a name on each. Keisha, Martin, Darren, Paul. That was to be my boot camp training class this time.

I spent fifteen minutes catching up on my work email, and then Chief Operating Officer Wyatt Green poked his head in the room. “Candle, good to see you made it. We’re all running around like chickens with their damn heads cut off.”

“Thanks, I’m just getting set up here.”

He walked across the room, a broad-shouldered man with a trunk like a beer barrel. He kept his arms out at his sides, and they didn’t move or sway an inch as he walked. They seemed less like arms and more like snap-on attachments to his square body.

He thrust his hand at me, and I shook. His grip was monstrous and I always had to check myself for bruises after a Wyatt-shake. Twelve years of judo and Brazilian jujitsu training had prepared me for all sorts of injuries and counter-moves, but there was nothing in any of my classes for Management Over-Powering Handshake Defense.

“Alison told me you came down on short notice. Appreciate that,” he said.

“Sure, no problem.”

“When you’re done for the day, why don’t you swing by my office? Got a couple of things I’d like to run by you, you know, throw ‘em against the fridge and see if they stick. Shouldn’t take but a few minutes.”

“Will do, Wyatt.”

I knew exactly what he was going to say, and I knew exactly what I was going to say in return. But we still had to do the dance. He probably knew it too, but he was a determined son of a bitch.

After Wyatt left, the trainees started filing into the room one by one. First there was Martin, he looked barely out of college. Wispy mustache like Kareem’s, dark skin tone, dead black eyes, but a big grin and a kind of goofy charisma. “You must be Mr. Candle. They told us all about you yesterday.”

“I’m sure none of it was true,” I said.

He laughed the way you’re supposed to when someone higher up at the company makes a joke, but his excitement endeared me to him. Maybe the laugh was real, after all. I was so used to them not being real.

Martin took a seat and in came Keisha, with her tight braids and ample curves. She looked a little older than Martin, but still much younger than me.

“I hear you came down from Denver,” she said. “Cold up there, huh?” I could tell right away that she was going to get great customer service responses to surveys. She had that smooth-as-silk voice that customers loved to hear.

“It can be. But we still get plenty of sun, even in the winter.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said as she took her seat and booted up her computer.

Third through the door was Paul, a gaunt kid, about the same age as Martin. Paul wore a smirk on his face, and I didn’t like him immediately. Something about those kids who think the world owes them something. He was the kind of guy who could get laid in college without trying.

He jabbed a hand into the air and I shook with him. “Welcome to Dallas,” he said. “See you’ve met Keisha and Martin.”

“I sure have,” I said.

“You can probably tell by looking at me that I’m the smart one in the group. Just finished with my MBA in the spring, so I’m ready to hit the ground running.”

I resisted the urge to ask him why the hell he was at an entry-level tech support job with an MBA. “Well, I guess you’re in the right place then, Paul. There’s a lot of opportunity at IntelliCraft.”

I felt dirty talking up the company, but it seemed to make Paul’s face glow.

“Yes sir,” he said as he took a seat at a workstation.

I smiled at them, pretended I wasn’t bitter about what their employer was doing to the company. I couldn’t be mad at these kids, though; this wasn’t their fault.

But I still had to fake the smile anyway.

Finally, the straggler of the group. Darren. He had jet-black hair and bushy eyebrows. When I saw him, the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, but I couldn’t say why.

He walked right up to me, shoulders square. “You must be Mr. Candle.” His voice was like oozing tar, bass-heavy and slow.

“That’s right. I’ll be training you on the IntelliCraft Design software over the next few days.”

“Oh yes, for sure. I’m really looking forward to it. I’m eager to find out where I fit.” He smiled, but his brow remained cocked, and I got the sense he thought he knew something I didn’t. Kareem’s warning about a dangerous man rushed through my brain like a strobe light.

But that was crazy. What in the world could this kid do?

He held out his hand to shake, and for a split-second, something told me not to do it. But it’s not as if I could leave his hand there, hanging in space.

I gripped his palm. His hand felt cold.

CHAPTER FOUR

At the end of the day, I walked the long hallway to Wyatt’s office. Seemed like a million steps. I passed open offices decorated with whiteboards containing scribbles about the future of the company. Long-term strategic goals, bandwidth prioritization, cost-benefit analysis, new verticals ripe for exploration. Nothing about people.

I leaned in Wyatt’s doorway as he was wrapping up a waxed piece of paper, chewing, with a dab of mayo jutting from his lip.

“You tell him that if he doesn’t want to meet with me, this is the last time I’m gonna ask nicely. My time is valuable, you understand.”

I raised an eyebrow, and he waved me in as he pointed to a Bluetooth circling his ear.

He held out one finger to me. “Y’all have been good clients for a long time, but this is the kind of impasse that sinks relationships, know what I mean? Yep. Okay. I’ll have them draw up those changes and get it right over to you. Okay.”

Wyatt’s office had a little more flair than the average cube-dwellers here. Big baseball fan, as evidenced by the numerous framed Texas Rangers jerseys and signed balls in glass display cases. I knew nothing about baseball, but imagined he had a small fortune of memorabilia here.

One bit of odd decoration stuck out to me: a Persian rug, mounted on the wall like a tapestry. Seemed to clash with the rest of the pieces.

He ended the call, wiped the mayo from his lips, and gestured me into a seat. “Candle, it’s good to see you again. How’s Grace? Big as a house yet?”

You know how sometimes you’ll wrap the toaster oven tray in aluminum foil so it doesn’t get cheese and burnt bread crust all over it? I wished I had aluminum foil for my face to speak with Wyatt.

I thought of the curve of her belly when I’d last seen her. “She’s getting there. Won’t be too much longer now.”

“First babies’ll do a number on you. I didn’t know what was going on for the first three months, tell you what. Don’t know how I kept my mind straight, sleeping an hour or two a night like that. Second babies are much easier. You figure out the art of the power nap by that point. You’ll be sneaking out to your car at lunchtime, drooling on your dashboard like an invalid.”

I gave him a little chuckle, just as I was supposed to do. Felt tired, and a burger and fries from the hotel bar were calling my name. I raised my eyebrows, hoping he’d get to the point already.

“You’ve had a long day, and you’re probably itching to get out of here. I get it. I won’t keep you long. Just wanted to do a pulse check on you real quick, see if maybe you’ve reconsidered our offer.”

I still didn’t even understand why they wanted me so badly. “I appreciate the follow-up, Wyatt, but my answer is still no. Grace and I discussed it and we want to stay in Colorado.”

His toothy smile twitched and his eyes fell. He kept his lips curled, but I could see the venom behind those eyes. “That’s what I figured. At least take my shiny new business card. Got a new number there, in case you need to talk.”

He slipped it across the desk, and I read it over.
Wyatt Green, COO IntelliCraft Solutions
. I hadn’t even known they’d added the
solutions
bit before that.

He stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans. The cube-dwellers were required to wear slacks or something similar, but I supposed Wyatt could wear whatever he wanted. “Can’t blame me for trying, though, can you?”

I got to my feet and shook his hand. “Not at all. I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow, so I’m sure I’ll see you in the hallways.”

His grip punished my poor knuckles. “I’m sure you will. Good night now, Candle.”

***

The burger was juicy, but the french fries were limp and undercooked. Just my luck; when I really needed crisp french fries to lift my spirits, they hadn’t delivered.

I pushed the mound of ketchup around the plate with the fries, determined to drain some satisfaction from them anyway.

I liked that the bartender didn’t ask me about my day or my long face or anything of the kind. He just brought my food, refilled my water, and left me alone. Given that I was the only person at the bar, I’d expected intrusion, but he just waited at the other end until I tossed a look at him. He’d get a big tip for that.

After dinner, I rode the elevator to the fourth floor and had to slide my keycard into the door at least five times to get it to open. The Beachwood was a posh hotel, much nicer than the places they’d arranged for me when I started coming to Dallas for training. That was before they realized they needed to butter me up. Now that I’d already said no several times, I wondered if there might not be a geisha girl waiting for me on the other side of the door to give me a happy ending and ask me to reconsider my future employment.

Baby on the way, wife going to be out of work for weeks or months, was I crazy to turn down a job, even if it meant moving here? What if Grace decided she didn’t want to go back to work? How long could we get by on our savings and unemployment checks?

What if I couldn’t find another job for months?

The tension in my neck and jaw returned as I opened the door. There was no geisha girl waiting for me, instead only an icy cold room. Cleaning people, most likely, had cranked up the air conditioner and left it on when they finished.

I turned it off, slipped under the bed’s down comforter, and took out my phone. Composed a new text to Grace.

Wyatt made another run at me. Not happy my answer is still no.

The little dots danced across the screen, meaning she was composing her reply. I waited at least two minutes for the response.

Hey honey! Just got done with my swim class and now I’m going to settle in with a book.

That made me sit up in bed. If there was such a thing as
typical Grace
, that reply wasn’t it. I had no idea she was taking a swim class, and I’d never known her to be much of a reader. Plenty of reality television, maybe a magazine or two here and there, but a book?

I wrote back:

Swim class?

No reply came back this time, so I tapped on her contact record to call her. No answer. I stared at the phone, waiting for another text. A few moments later, she wrote back:

Oh, silly me, I meant spin class. Fat-fingered it.

And that was all. Fat fingered? Seemed like a strange phrase for my wife to use. Maybe she was finally getting that
pregnancy brain
thing I’d heard people mention.

I tried to call her again, and still she didn’t pick up. Not that it was unusual for her to be unreachable by phone, but I was quite curious to find out what book could have possibly caught her interest so much that she’d decide to actually read one.

When I tried to sleep that night, it seemed like a pointless exercise. Left side didn’t work. Right side didn’t work. On my back didn’t work. I think I must have caught a few minutes somewhere because I had a slim memory of a dream about spiders bursting out of cracks in the walls. I wasn’t crazy about spiders, so I didn’t rush back to sleep after a dream like that.

At around four, I decided to give up and review my training slides for the day. I helped myself to an orange juice and a muffin from the mini-fridge, and watched the sun rise over the highways and glass buildings of Las Colinas. Grace still hadn’t returned my call.

CHAPTER FIVE

Since the hotel was only a couple blocks from the office, I decided to walk there. I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing in summer when the temps rarely dipped below triple digits, but the air felt cool and the sun was shining and I felt like walking off a bit of the tension I’d accumulated in my body, not being able to sleep so well. Spider dreams. Is there anything worse?

I tried to call Grace, but she didn’t pick up. Again. Texted her to call me as soon as possible. I felt that tension creep into the back of my neck, but told myself I was overreacting, because it was normal to go a few days without talking to her when on these trips.

The walk to the office only took a couple of minutes, and I listened to some mellow Iron & Wine songs to ease into the morning. Something about those singer-songwriters made me nostalgic for events I’d never experienced.

Then I stopped short when I saw something I hadn’t expected to see: Darren, my bushy-eyebrowed, evil-eyed trainee, in a tie and slacks, digging in a dumpster. The dumpster was at the end of the office lot. He had one hand over the edge, fishing around, and in a few moments, he withdrew the hand, holding a small object. He touched it, and then held it up to his ear. I was at least a thousand feet away, but I was almost positive he was holding a phone.