by Jett Munroe
“And if they find them?” Colbie’s supervisor from the front asked, the concerned expressions everyone wore reflected in her voice.
“I won’t lie to you,” Johnson said. Months of worry and the weight of this news were carved into his gray-tinged face. “It will mean layoffs.”
The sound of rising voices filled the room. Colbie turned in her seat and grabbed Delaney’s hand. Leaning in she whispered, “I live paycheck to paycheck, Laney.” Panic filled her eyes. Her brow wrinkled. “I don’t have any savings. At all. I can’t be laid off. I just can’t.”
Delaney was as concerned as Colbie, though she did have a few thousand dollars in a rainy-day account. Hopefully the days at SNJ would stay dry for her and her friend. She squeezed Colbie’s hand. “Whatever happens, it’ll be okay,” she said with more conviction than she felt.
Her stomach rolled. She brought her mug to her lips, but suddenly the thought of coffee, even the smell, made her a little nauseated. Without taking a sip, she rested the cup on her knee.
“If there are layoffs, SNJ Tech—” Johnson’s lips thinned. “What I mean to say is TechAm will provide job-search assistance.”
“What, in the form of a list of temp agencies to call?” Colbie muttered. “Had that happen before. I mean, I love Mr. Johnson, but he won’t have any real power in the new company, will he? Not if he has to report to a CEO. So if the assistance amounts to a piece of paper, he won’t be able to do a thing.”
“Shush.” Delaney leaned forward and glanced around the room to see row after row of shell-shocked people.
“Well,” Johnson concluded, “I guess that’s it. Your managers will have more information for you. You’re dism—” His mouth tightened again. “You may go back to your departments.” He gave a short nod and quickly left the room.
“Is he for real?” Colbie burst out. “He just told us we might be losing our jobs and he expects us to just go back to work?”
“I guess so.” Delaney twisted in her chair to face her friend. She gripped Colbie’s hands and said, “Listen. The best thing you can do to show you shouldn’t be one of the ones they let go—even if there are layoffs because it isn’t for sure there will be—is get back to work.”
“Is that what you’re going to do?”
She nodded. “That’s the plan, as soon as I ask Trigg what’s going on and why he didn’t give me a heads-up.” She gave Colbie’s fingers another squeeze and let them go. “Try not to worry, honey. We’ll be okay.”
Three seconds later, she closed the door to her boss’s office behind her and said, “Okay, Trigg. What the hell? You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? And you didn’t tell me?” The only reason she was able to talk to him that way was because they had known each other long enough that she felt comfortable with him and also he’d never been one to practice a strict boss-subordinate relationship. Over the past ten years he’d encouraged her to speak her mind. In the first couple of years she’d not been able to do so very often, but now it was second nature. It helped that, while he was handsome, he was happily married and almost twenty years older than Delaney was.
He heaved a sigh and plopped into the leather chair behind his wide desk. Holding up his hands in surrender, he said, “I didn’t know until just before the rest of you, Laney. Other than the law firm dealing with this mess, only Johnson and the CFO knew what’s been going on for the last six months. They briefed the department managers right before the staff meeting so we’d have a little bit of time to deal with our own shock before we had to deal with our staff’s.”
She lifted her hair off her neck and held it up, trying to cool down. “What do you think this means for us? For our department, I mean.”
Trigg shook his head. “I don’t know, Laney. I don’t.”
She studied him. There was a look in his eyes that she’d seen before, and she knew what it meant. Her heart thudded behind her ribs. “But you have a gut feeling, don’t you?” She dropped into a chair and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
His lids fell over his ice-blue eyes as he ran his fingers through his gray-flecked hair. When he looked at her again, he seemed resigned. “What I think is that they’ll find our entire department is unnecessary, Laney. What I think is you should update your résumé.”
Delaney sucked in her breath and sat up straight. “I should—” Her mouth went dry. When she spoke again, her voice came out shaky. “What are you saying?”
He shook his head. “Nothing’s certain. But you asked me what my gut says, and my gut says all of us in this department are going to be out of jobs.”
The words went into her ears and bounced around in her brain, but she couldn’t get them to make sense. “What?” Maybe she’d misunderstood him. Maybe she didn’t really hear what she hoped she really didn’t hear.
Trigg came around his desk and perched on the corner in front of her chair. “Laney, start looking for another job,” he said, his face gentle. “Layoffs might be as far off as two or three months, or they could begin next week. So sooner, rather than later, okay?”
“What…” she cleared the clog from her throat, “…what about the Finance Department?”
His face went even softer. He knew that she and Colbie were friends and that Colbie worked in finance. “It’s pretty much a given they won’t need two finance departments. I’m sure her manager’s telling her the same thing right now that I’m telling you.”
“Does this other company… What’s it called again?”
“TechAm.”
“TechAm. TechAm,” she repeated, wanting to remember it for when she told Beck about it later. “Does TechAm have an analytics collation and transmission department?”
“Laney…” his voice gentled to the same softness of his face, “…what we do, while not done everywhere, isn’t exactly unheard of. Yes, they have a department that does what we do. There may be a few jobs saved, but they’ll probably be moved to the company headquarters, which is in Arlington, Virginia, closer to the Pentagon than we are,” he said before she could ask. He hesitated then leaned forward. “Look, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Neither one of us is going to get much done.”
“Are you going to go home early?”
“No. I can’t, Laney. I have to see to my employees, and I have a meeting with Sam and the other department heads at five to debrief how everyone’s taken the news.”
She got to her feet and smoothed her skirt. “I can help you with the employees.”
He smiled and stood. “No, you can’t. Go home. Dust off your résumé. I’ll see you tomorrow.” When she didn’t move, he repeated, “Go home.”
Delaney went out to her desk. She sent an email to Colbie letting her know she was leaving for the day and asking her to call when she was free; then she gathered her things and left. She couldn’t go straight home, though. She had a delivery to make. Maybe watching the shelter workers’ faces light up when she handed over the quilt would make the morning go a little better.
After all, there were worse things than losing your job. She’d lived it. She’d survived it. And now she was doing her bit to give back a little.
Twenty minutes later she pulled into the parking lot of the women’s shelter. As she rounded the car and pressed the trunk button on her key fob, hearing the lid pop open, she tried to put the predicament in which she might soon find herself out of her mind. When she entered the building she wanted to have a genuine smile on her face, not one that obviously covered worry and fear.
With one hand she pushed the trunk lid the rest of the way open and was already bending in to grab the plastic bag containing the quilt when she realized it wasn’t there. She straightened and stared into her nearly empty trunk. Aside from a cardboard box with a gallon jug of water, an old phone book, a set of jumper cables and a seldom-used umbrella, the trunk was empty.
Where was the quil
t?
She stood there, frowning at her trunk. “I know I put it in there this morning,” she muttered. Beck hadn’t muddled her mind that much with that last kiss.
Had she just thought about putting the quilt in her trunk and hadn’t quite managed to do so? No. She was sure she’d done it. She partially lowered the trunk lid and stared at the lock. She couldn’t see any scratches that would lead her to believe someone had broken into her trunk.
What. The. Hell?
She pulled her phone from the outside pocket of her purse and found Beck’s number in her Contacts list. As soon as he answered, she started in, too freaked out to remember to be shy with him. “Beck, did I put the quilt in my trunk this morning? I mean, I did, right? I know I did.”
“Laney—”
“I got to the shelter and it’s not there. The quilt, I mean. The shelter’s here, of course. It’s not like they’d pick it up and move it overnight.”
“Laney—”
“But nothing else is missing. Why would someone get into my trunk to steal a baby quilt? That doesn’t make any sense at all. So I must have forgotten to grab it…” she paused long enough to draw a breath, “…and just thought I did. I mean, you’re a really good kisser. You had me all discombobulated.”
“Babe—”
“I’ve never had anyone kiss me and get me like that before, Beck.” Delaney knew, if she could get her brain to catch up to her mouth, she wouldn’t be sharing this with him, but she couldn’t stop talking. “I was all ready to hand the quilt over, hoping it would make the shitty, shitty news I got this morning a little more bearable. But now I can’t and my already shitty morning just got even shittier.”
Beck didn’t say anything. She pulled her phone away from her ear to check if the call had dropped. It hadn’t. Putting the phone back to her ear, she said, “Beck?”
“Just waitin’ ’til you got it all out, baby. You done?” Humor trembled in his voice as if he was trying not to laugh.
“Yeah,” she mumbled. Once again she’d been amusing to him when she wasn’t really being amusing.
“First of all, shitty day?”
Of course that was the first thing he’d latched on to. Warmth spread through her at yet another demonstration of what a caring man he was. “I might lose my job. A lot of people at SNJ might lose their jobs.”
“Mismanagement?”
“What? No,” she stressed. “Mr. Johnson’s a good guy. Well, I suppose it could be down to mismanagement because, honestly, I don’t know how good a businessman he is. But it’s a merger. A takeover.”
“By?”
She blinked. “Buy what? I should buy something?”
“No, darlin’.” His low voice was soft. Gentle. Taking care not to further her upset. “By whom? Who’s taking over?”
“Taken,” she stressed. “It’s a done deal. By Monday suits from the corporate company, an outfit called TechAm, will be in to determine redundancies. People shouldn’t be considered redundant.” While worse things could, and had, happened to her, losing a job was still hard. “My boss thinks our department will be one of the first to go. TechAm already has people who do what we do. C-Colbie will probably lose her job too.”
“Hang in there, baby. We’ll figure somethin’ out.”
“I have some savings, Beck, but if I lose my job I won’t be able to stay in that house. I can’t afford the rent if I’m unemployed. At least I own my car, so I don’t have car payments,” she muttered, being partly facetious.
“That’s the spirit. Focus on the positives.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
His warm chuckle wrapped her in comfort. “Doesn’t make it any less true, babe.”
“I guess not.”
“Second, you should know, every time you cuss you make me wanna laugh. Third, your kiss has the same effect on me.”
She didn’t believe that for a second.
“Fourth, you did put the quilt in your trunk. You sure you didn’t grab it and take it in to work with you to show it off to your coworkers and leave it there?”
“No, I didn’t take it in to work to show it off. I don’t do stuff like that.” Because what if something she thought was beautiful was in fact awful? She didn’t want anyone making fun of her.
“Okay,” he soothed. “Take a breath. It’s gonna be all right.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Delaney belatedly realized she was standing in a parking lot, staring into her trunk. A parking lot that reflected radiant heat so that, even though it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, it had to be close to ninety-five degrees out. And the reason she belatedly realized this was sweat started trickling down the left side of her face.
She slammed the trunk closed and got back into her car. As she started up the car, getting the air-conditioning going full blast, she asked, “Why would someone break into the trunk to steal something, Beck?” She gazed at the dashboard. “They didn’t even take the sound system or anything.”
“I don’t know. Do you want to call the police?”
“Do you think I should? What would I tell them? Someone somehow got into my trunk and took a quilt I made for a baby? They’ll think I’m nuts.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s up to you.”
“What do you think I should do?” He was the security expert, after all.
He blew out a breath. “I think TPD has a lot on their plate without having to respond to a report of a stolen baby quilt.”
“That’s what I thought,” she mumbled. “I mean, they’re spread so thin they won’t even respond to an auto accident unless there’s an injury.”
“Right.” He said something to someone else, his voice muffled, so he must have put his hand over the phone. “Laney, look, I’ve gotta go. Why don’t you come down to our office? I’ll take a look at your car and see if I can find a point of ingress.”
“I didn’t see any scratches on the lock,” she told him.
“I might catch something you don’t know to look for.”
That was true enough.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You sound busy.”
“Never too busy for you.”
Oh God. That was so sweet.
“I’ll be done here in about fifteen minutes or so. That’s plenty of time for you to get here. We’ll do an early lunch.”
That perked her up. She hadn’t planned on seeing Beck until dinnertime, so to be able to spend some time with him in the middle of the day was stellar. “Okay. That sounds nice.”
She put him on speakerphone while he gave her directions and she plotted them into her GPS app. “Okay, I got it. I’ll see you in a few.”
“All right. Drive safe.”
“I will,” she said. “Bye.” She pulled the phone away from her ear and ended the call. Twisting in her seat, she nabbed her seat belt and fastened it then put the car in gear and headed downtown. And as she went, she fretted again over how someone was able to get into her trunk in the first place, and why they took the quilt. Even if it was only baby-sized, she’d put a lot of work—and love—into that thing. It steamed her that someone would steal it. And now she’d start a new one, not with joy, but with irritation mixed in with the happiness she usually felt.
Sometimes people sucked.
Chapter Seven
Beck stood in the back doorway and watched Delaney park her car beneath the ramada. She bent toward the passenger seat then brought her hand up, and he realized she was holding her phone to her ear. Her mouth moved. Clearly she was on a call. Not knowing how long she’d be, he leaned a shoulder against the jamb, crossed his arms, and waited, and tried his best to ignore the midmorning heat already in the nineties.
After a few minutes she shut off the engine, grabbed her purse, and got out of the car. The car beeped as she walked toward him an
d she slid her keys into a pocket in the seam of her skirt. She reached him, saying, “Okay, sweetie. I’ll talk to you later.” She dropped her phone into her open purse and smiled at Beck. “My sister’s planning on retiring and moving to Tucson.”
“That’s good news, I take it.”
“The best!” She went up on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth then dropped back onto her heels. “I told you Mom and I don’t get along, but Morgan and I…well, she’s my best friend.”
He stared down at her, beginning to get a sense of the Delaney he’d get if she could forget to be shy with him. She’d shine so bright he’d have scarring on his retinas. And that was the Delaney he wanted.
“When’s your sister going to get here?”
“She’s coming for a visit in about four weeks to look for a house. She has a photo shoot in Rome next month, and a fashion show in London a couple weeks after that. A few more things she’s under contract for; then she’ll be done and ready to move. Less than six months, probably.”
Her wide smile turned a beautiful face into something spectacular.
He slid an arm around her waist and drew her near. With his free hand he cupped her jaw then touched his lips to hers once, twice. Softly. One more time. When he lifted his head, her lashes fluttered and she stared up at him with a dazed look in her eyes. So dazed, in fact, she looked discombobulated, and he had to grin.
She leaned back in his arm and her gaze zeroed in on his mouth. “You’re a really good kisser,” she whispered, something she’d told him earlier on the phone.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He waited for her to get herself together. “You ready to go inside?”
She blinked. “Um…” A deep breath seemed to do the trick, for she said, “Don’t you want to look at my car?”