Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  Sean might know what was going on if he'd met with Bree. Actually, this might even be what he'd wanted to see me about... but Jason might be waiting for me on level 36 already.

  I scrunched my face up. Fuck, what to do? It had only been like five or ten minutes that I'd been gone, I thought. If I made it 15 by going to see Sean, it was still plausible that I'd just been taking a long time doing my makeup or something in the toilets. And that's if Jason was even waiting for me from the second I left, which he probably wasn't.

  Okay, fuck it, I decided, I'll go and ask Sean why he wanted to see me. I'll just have to be quick.

  I took the World's Slowest Lift back up to level 35 to find Sean on the phone in his office with the door closed. His assistant smiled at me and offered me a seat to wait for him, but I shook my head and decided to wait in the hallway instead. I was too worked up to sit down, and I didn't want to just pace around in her office.

  I had been wringing my hands and worrying about the time, my job, Bree and that guy in the suit when I heard a familiar voice that was too gentle to be Sean's. “Min! What a nice surprise.”

  Henry. God, I just couldn't do this right now. I couldn't, but I tried anyway. “Hi...” I said, turning towards him.

  He was going to kiss my forehead I think, but when he saw me front on, he stopped leaning towards me and gave me the once-over.

  “Min, you look really unwell,” he said. “Really unwell. Please tell me you're down here submitting a sick-leave form.” I shook my head. He gave me one of his Looks of Concern, and then rubbed my arm. “Well, at least it's not long to go until it's all over,” he said, not even knowing how true that might be, “and then you can just lie back and relax for a couple of weeks.”

  I exhaled. Or longer than a couple of weeks if they fire me.

  When I didn't say anything, his frown deepened. “You look really unwell, though. Maybe I should cancel my visit to Seoul and just stay back here and take care of you.”

  “Judging by that expression on her face, Henry, I'm guessing she'd prefer you didn't do that.”

  I twisted to see Sean leaning out of his office. He had his hands casually in his pockets. “I'd prefer you wouldn't do that, either. Accounting keeps getting on my case about how many banked annual leave days you have.” He chuckled and took a few steps towards us. “Min, I'm glad you came so promptly. I need to speak to you about Bree. Please, come in.”

  I closed my eyes for a second as he said her name, and then glanced up at Henry. Henry looked from me to Sean with a really strained expression. It only lasted a second, and then he forced a smile for Sean. “Take care of Min,” he said faux-pleasantly. “As you can see, she's not feeling that well.”

  Sean smiled. “She's a capable adult, Henry. I'm sure she'll tell me herself if she needs anything,” he said and then gestured at me. “Come in.”

  I wanted to apologise and explain myself to Henry, but I couldn't. There wasn't anything I could say in front of Sean, and there really wasn't anything I could explain in general. Whatever he was thinking, he was probably right about it. I did give him an apologetic glance as I followed Sean into his office, though, feeling awful. The shock and surprise on his face... Fuck. Poor Henry. He didn't deserve any of this.

  Sean showed me into his office at a leisurely, relaxed pace and closed the door. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking.

  I couldn't help myself, even if he was the co-CEO. I was in such a rush, and on top of that I was desperate to know what happened with Bree. As soon as the latch clicked, I asked him, “Is she okay? Was she here before?”

  He looked surprised, and then before he answered, he walked slowly around his desk and sat down in his chair. He gestured for me to sit opposite him. “She was here before,” he confirmed. “Please, take a seat.”

  I didn't want to take a seat, I wanted him to confirm she was okay, tell me what happened and then let me go back upstairs and wait for Jason and Diane. I followed his direction anyway, because he was the co-CEO. One of my knees was jittering, and I had to consciously stop it.

  “I'm worried about your friend,” Sean said eventually, leaning back and watching me. “Do you know if everything's okay for her?”

  This conversation was already taking too long. “Everything isn't okay for her,” I said. “Did she say something to you? What did she say?”

  He nodded, and let another agonising silence stretch between us while he considered how he was going to reply. “She said quite a lot to me.”

  I was practically bursting, but I couldn't say what I wanted to: 'What did she say? Just tell me what she said!'. I just sat there and pushed down on my knee so it wouldn't jiggle.

  “She thought I was one of your teammates, actually. She was desperate to see you, she even asked me to go and get you. Naturally I told her that I knew you were in a very important meeting with your manager and that I wasn't able to interrupt.”

  Fuck, why was she desperate to see me? If she was that desperate, it shouldn't have waited; as if sitting by myself in a room while my boss stomped around level 36 in a mood constituted an 'important meeting'. “I wish you had interrupted Jason,” I said kind of bitterly in reply, and then immediately regretted it.

  I must have looked horrified with myself, because he laughed gently. “Oh, trust me, I know what he can be like, he's a good friend of mine,” he said. “Okay, if it happens again I promise I'll impose.”

  He leant back and watched me again, and I hoped this time, this time he'd tell me why Bree was downstairs, what had happened and what she'd wanted.

  He didn't. “I just wanted to let you know that if either or both of you need counselling, I can pull a few strings and bill her on the Employee Assistance Program as a family member,” he offered. “After all, we bill people's partners on it. Why not... very close friends...?”

  Any colour that had been left in my face drained from it. Was he implying what I thought he was?

  “That's why I wanted to speak to you in private,” he said simply. “If you tell EAP I sent you, you don't need to get approval from HR.”

  Fuck, I think he was. What on earth had Bree said to him? Or had she just simply been crazy and over the top and he was just guessing based on how desperate she'd been to see me?

  While I was trying to figure that out, he spotted where I was looking. Or, where he thought I was looking, because I was actually just gazing into oblivion while I worried about what he knew and who he might tell about what he knew.

  “Oh, do you like it?” he said, spinning his chair to look at the wall. On it there was an impressionist-style painting of a busy day on Bondi beach. He smiled appreciatively at it. “I received it as a gift for a Fundraiser I attended. It's not ordinarily my style, but it was a nice gesture,” he said, and then turned back to me. “Of course, it's not as good as your work. I've come across some of it online: very impressive. Anyway,” he said, slapping his hands lightly on the desk and standing up. “I can see you're obviously busy, so I won't detain you any longer. I just wanted you to know that my door's always open. Okay?”

  I stood automatically because he did, but I could hardly breathe. He'd seen some of my work online? Online on John's Facebook? Or online on... fuck, not Deviant Art? He didn't mean Deviant Art, did he? I almost hoped he meant Facebook, partially because I couldn't really believe that he'd have any sort of motive to sabotage a project that would be making his own company money, regardless of what Jason and Diane said. And partially because, fuck, I really needed to take that painting of me off Deviant Art right away. If he already thought there might be something going on with me and Bree and then he saw that...

  “Okay,” I repeated, and I was so distracted by what he'd inferred that I completely forgot to ask him all the questions I'd wanted to about Bree. I managed to get one in at the last minute before he ushered me out of his office. “She was okay, though, wasn't she?”

  He pressed his lips together. “She was upset.”

  The evoked images of when I'd left Br
ee on the train and the residual codeine in my system didn't even fucking touch how much they hurt. God, my chest. I felt like I was having a heart attack. “Thanks,” I told him a bit vaguely as I left.

  When I got out into the hallway, I stood in place for a second, reeling. I didn't know what any of that meant, or what the point of it had been—well, no, he'd said he'd wanted to let me know that he'd pulled strings to make counselling available to Bree—but why hadn't he just told me everything that had happened? Surely there was a reason, right? Or maybe Bree had told him something really private or really embarrassing and he didn't want to intrude...?

  I didn't understand. Nothing made sense. Nothing about any of this made any fucking sense and when Diane got in, I'd....

  ..Shit. Jason would be waiting for me!

  I rushed into Oslo, hoping desperately in the 25 or so minutes I'd been gone that Diane hadn't arrived. But when I opened the door to the office, I nearly crashed into Jason who was sitting in a chair right near the doorway and obviously waiting for me.

  He looked—and I wasn't exaggerating—furious. Absolutely like he was ready to string me up by my neck and beat the stuffing out of me. “I've just about had it with you, I told you to stay here so we could meet with Diane,” he said, and then encircled my wrist and physically dragged me out of Oslo. “Diane has been waiting for 15 minutes and we're both going to cop it. What the fuck was Sean Frost doing looking for you, anyway?”

  Maybe I've started smoking, I thought bitterly as we reached Diane's office and he roughly shoved me inside.

  I had expected Diane to look just as angry as Jason did, but she was in the middle of some paperwork and just looked up neutrally when we entered. “Please, take a seat,” she said in the most professional tone I'd ever heard. From that tone of voice, I had no idea if Jason had even told her anything.

  I sat down in a chair beside Jason and opposite her, feeling him glaring at the side of my head. At least he couldn't tower over me while he was sitting down.

  Diane took a few moments finishing what she'd been reading, and then set it aside, laced her hands together on the table and looked across at us. “How has the project been travelling, Min?” she asked, and it sounded unassuming. It was delivered like a question she'd have asked me any other day of the week.

  “Up until yesterday, very well,” I said. “We're on track with all the pitches, and the materials are ready. Sales is learning the content as we speak.”

  She either feigned interest or was interested. “These materials?” she asked, sliding a familiar brochure across to me. I picked it up, it was one of the sales brochures we'd done yesterday for Vladivostok, and... well, it wasn't some of my best work, but it looked passable enough. Professional, and that was the most important thing. I picked it up and flipped through it as she continued.

  “There's just something I wanted to clarify with you on the second page,” she told me. I looked up and her for a moment, and then flipped through to that page. Jason was fidgeting next to me, and it was distracting. “Just a small question,” she asked as she watched me, “is that, there, on the second line, is that how you spell 'relevance'?”

  My heart practically stopped. What? I looked down at the text, and sure enough, I'd missed that one of the team had spelt it 'relevence'. Fuck, I'd trusted Ian and Carlos with this. I mean, I knew I should have checked it myself, but did I really have to go over everything with a fine tooth comb like that? They were professionals, and they were making me look wholly unprofessional.

  I swallowed. “Just a typo,” I said. “I should have checked it. I'll get it reprinted immediately.”

  “Mmm,” she said, accepting that. “Tell me about John.”

  I glanced across at Jason. “He's excellent at analytics,” I said. “But he was sending unencrypted emails a couple of weeks ago—”

  “—which you reprimanded him for, of course?”

  “—of course, which is wh—”

  “—what makes it very interesting that he thought it would be appropriate for him to post those landscapes on his Facebook page,” Diane finished, still sounding very mild. Too mild. She looked far, far too calm to be heading the conversation in the direction she was. I felt weak again. “Whatever you said to him, it didn't seem to get the message across that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable. Perhaps, given that he's such a new employee, you should have double-checked that he really understood.”

  I didn't have anything to say to that. She was right.

  She took a measured breath, watching me carefully. “This is a concern for me, Min. A big concern. I'm a hundred percent certain my brother has already seen these.”

  I swallowed.

  She was watching me like a hawk. “And he was looking for you, and you were with him a second ago, weren't you?”

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it. Jason was constantly with Sean and Diane didn't seem to be going off at him for that. I'd spent ten minutes with him and now I was the bad guy? “It has nothing to do with the project,” I said as respectfully as I could.

  She and Jason shared a glance. Diane's lips tightened momentarily. “I want to believe you, Min,” she said. “I really do. But the timing doesn't look great for you, so I think we're in big trouble.”

  I looked across at Jason, and he glared back at me. “Timing?” I asked, almost afraid to.

  Diane took the piece of paper she'd been reading when Jason and I had entered and passed it across the desk to me. It was a printed copy of an email. I looked from Diane to Jason and then at the print-out, and read over it. Then, I read over it again and again, almost not believing what I was reading.

  It was an email from Vladivostok, and it was cancelling the pitch.

  My jaw dropped. “When did this...” I looked at the time on the email; 15 minutes ago. “But, why did they—?” God, all the team's hard work. All my hard work. Everything we'd busted our guts over... and one of the pitches had collapsed. I could hardly fucking believe it. I mean, these things happened from time to time, but... they were right, the timing just looked really suspicious.

  Fuck, the team were going to be devastated, and Sales was going to kill me.

  “I was hoping you could tell me more about the 'why', Min,” Diane said, and then directed her full attention to me, waiting for me to speak.

  I couldn't tell them anything. I had no idea what had happened, but it had to be something to do with Facebook and John and the timing must just have been a massively unfortunate coincidence. Just as I was trying to haphazardly put together some scenario in my head about what could possibly have led to this, there was a knock on the door and whoever was on the other side didn't wait to be told they could come in before they entered.

  It was Diane's assistant, and she looked worried.

  Diane looked annoyed momentarily. “We're busy, Cadence,” she said firmly.

  Cadence looked nervous. “I know, I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's an urgent phone call.”

  Diane sighed. “It had better be,” she warned the girl. “Fine, put it through.”

  The assistant's eyes darted between Diane and me. “It's actually not for you,” she told Diane uncertainly. “It's the police. They want to speak to Min.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “You can put the call through to my office, Cadence,” Diane instructed her personal assistant. The girl glanced nervously between us, nodded and then went back out to her desk. As soon as she was gone, Diane looked directly at me. “Why do the police want to speak to you, Min?”

  I shook my head; my jaw was still open. I had no idea.

  “Someone had better fucking be dead, I swear to god,” Jason muttered next to me.

  Bree, I thought, panicking. It couldn't be anyone else except her. And fuck I hoped Jason was wrong; it had only been... 20 minutes, maybe half an hour since she'd been here. Surely that wasn't enough time for something terrible to have happened to her? Something that would get the police involved?

  Diane looked like she might
say something to Jason, but then her phone rang. Instead of picking up the handset, however, she just hit the 'conference’ button.

  “Putting the call through now,” Cadence's voice said to us over the speaker, and then there was a beep.

  “Hello, Diane Frost speaking,” Diane said. “I believe you're after Min Lee?”

  “Yes, I am,” said a woman's voice. “This is Constable Garrett, can you put her on the phone?”

  “She's listening now,” Diane told her in a don't-argue-with-me voice.

  There was a pause. I was pretty sure even the police weren't going to mess with Diane Frost. I was right. “Min Lee?”

  My voice crackled at first; my throat was dry. “I'm here.”

  “Do you know a Briana Dejanovic?”

  Any colour that might have been left drained from my face. It was about her. “Yes,” I said, and even though Jason and Diane were listening, I couldn't help myself. I had awful mental images of things that could have happened to her. “Is she there with you? Is she okay?”

  “She's here with us. We'd actually like to speak with you in person about her,” Constable Garrett told me. “Are you able to come to the corner of Essex and Harrington immediately?” It didn't sound like a request.

  Jason and Diane glanced at each other and then back at me; they recognised the address. It was close to the hotel where Frost permanently leased some of the apartments to relocated employees: my building. What had happened there? And why did it involve Bree? My heart was racing. I looked at Diane for permission before I answered.

  Diane narrowed her eyes at me, and then leant a little towards the phone. “Is it really necessary?” she asked. I think I was holding my breath. “We're in the middle of a very important meeting. Can it wait an hour?”

  A whole hour? To find out if Bree was okay or not?

  “We'd actually appreciate it if she would be able to come down here as soon as possible.”

  “Is that right?” I couldn't believe how direct Diane was being with the police; I supposed when you were a multi-billionaire the average police officer was of little concern. “You'd appreciate it, Constable Garrett, or it's an order?”