Crossing Hathaway (3 page)

The girl packed everything into a paper bag stuffed with napkins and then slipped it inside a plastic bag to save it from the rain. I handed her a soggy five and ten dollar bill and told her to pocket the change. She’d saved my ass and deserved every penny.

Wearing a satisfied smirk, I sprinted back to the office through the cold torrents. Water pooled in my shoes as it drained from the rest of me, but giddiness overrode annoyance. I couldn’t wait to see Hathaway’s face when I plunked his favorite down in front of him. I didn’t care if I wasn’t supposed to look, I was going to do it, anyway.

I didn’t pause when Brent stood from his desk and made a beeline for me. Holding up the Grindhouse bag for him to see, I opened the door into the small room outside Hathaway’s office. “I have your coffee, Mr. Hathaway.” Rain dripped off my ponytail and pitter-pattered onto the carpet. I tended to agree with Cam’s assessment of it. The way it squished, I imagined it was quite expensive.

A door squeaked open on the far side of the interrogation room. “Enter.”

I took a deep breath and headed toward the corner where the voice emanated from. The lighting didn’t improve much beyond the door. The room opened into a large theater layout sloped toward a white wall at the far end. A projector hung from the middle of the ceiling, an Internet browser open to a competitor’s webpage. Some sort of blue pills shone in the upper left corner and a bunch of numbers and scientific jargon dotted the space below it. Sunlight shone around dark blinds along the two side walls of windows. Stairs ascended to the right into complete blackness. A faint hint of cologne lingered in the stale air.

“Mr. Hathaway?” I shuffled closer to the computer on a desk below the projector, the only piece of equipment I could see in the dim light. Silence pressed on my ears—a soundproof room.

Oh, balls. Was that so nobody could hear his victims screaming?

“Set it on the desk.” His voice echoed from the top of the stairs, startling a peep out of me. God, he was a jerk! I shivered, my every instinct begging to search for him and whatever disfigurement he wanted to hide from the world, but I kept them trained on the wall for the time being. I put the bag on the desk, careful to keep the coffee cup upright.

His footsteps padded down the stairs. My feet carried me back a few steps before I realized what I was doing and stopped. If I gave the guy an inch, he’d never let me work for him. I stared at the giant webpage.

The bag crinkled, and Mr. Hathaway groaned. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I could make out dark wavy hair, a white dress shirt, and dark pants. “This isn’t what I asked for.” He slammed a hand down on the desk, the sound jolting through me like a thunderclap. “What use are you if you can’t follow a simple coffee order?”

A growl burned in my throat and I didn’t do a thing to cover it. “I couldn’t buy what they didn’t—”

“No excuses, Ms. Russell! Now get out of my office. I have work to do, and you’re dripping all over the carpet.”

I wanted to unleash on him so badly my jaw quivered, but the memory of Cameron’s voice warned me. Despite his terminal geekiness, he’d given me a chance to work in IT when nobody else had, and I didn’t want to get him in trouble. I spun around and sped back through the door, imagining how satisfying it would be to flip Hathaway the bird. “You’re welcome, asshole,” I muttered once I’d made it out of earshot. He hadn’t even bothered to pay me for his crappy coffee. Not that I’d entertain the idea of going back to ask. I wasn’t completely insane.

When I made it back to my cubicle after drying out what I could in the bathroom, I slouched forward, elbows propped on the desk. The air conditioner turned my wet shirt to ice. Why did I let him get to me so much? Cameron warned me the guy was a dick, but I still wanted to crawl into a hole and hug myself—a new sensation for me. Thank goodness it was Thursday.

The iPhone buzzed again. I moaned, fished around in the soggy fabric, and held it up to my face in an iron grip:
Be at my office first thing tomorrow, Cameron. We have work to do.

“It couldn’t have been that important, asshole, I was right fucking there, in your office!”

Employing every scrap of willpower in me, I set the phone on the desk instead of throwing it across the room and stomping on its remains. I picked up my office phone and dialed reception.

“Reception, this is Carol.”

“Hey, girl, have you heard from Cameron?”

“Yeah, he called in a little while ago. Looks as if they’re in for a long night. Rachel’s stuck at one centimeter. He booked some time off so he doesn’t think he’ll be back until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday next week.”

I palmed my forehead, letting my hand make a slow descent down my face. “Balls, balls, and more balls.”

Carol cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing. If he calls in again, can you let him know I want to talk to him? I don’t want to bother him on his cell.”

“Absolutely.”

I waited until Carol hung up and slammed the receiver down a few times before I dropped it into its cradle.

“You all right, dude?” Jeremy asked from behind me in a scared little boy voice.

I didn’t bother to turn around. “Just ducky, thanks.”

“Why are you all wet?”

“Leave it alone, Jer.” A sick sensation swept over me, invaded my stomach, and churned up my peanut butter sandwich. The only man who’d ever done that to me before had been my dad. No amount of willing my body and mind to get over it made the feeling go away.

“Sure … okay,” Jeremy said. “Payroll’s printer died again, and the new wiring we put in the VP’s office isn’t working. If you’ve got time, I could use the help.”

I nodded and sighed, ecstatic to have something useful to do. “Yeah, boy howdy, do I have the time.” I stood and pulled my coat over sopping clothes to quiet my shaking, though if I was honest with myself, it had more to do with fury than cold. “Nice to know someone in this company doesn’t think I’m a useless dolt.”

Without waiting for a response from the geek squad, I headed out the door toward the Payroll department.

The alarm went off way too freakin’ early Friday morning. The incessant honking of cars and the screeching brakes of busses filled my room with the usual cacophony of noise. My eyelids peeled up one at a time as I stretched the sleep from my bones, grunting with each extension of my arms and legs. The sunrise cast a warm, peach haze through the window of my apartment and painted the bedroom walls in the surreal shades of a dream. For a brief moment of bliss, it was just another day. One filled with regular stupid people and their self-imposed misery in the form of computer issues from forgotten passwords to complete meltdowns.

My respite ended when Mr. Hathaway’s damn iPhone buzzed on the nightstand.

Fuckballs.

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and checked the clock. 5:15 a.m. Oh, seriously? A.m. and I didn’t get along so well on the best of days. Add an asshole to the mix and it made for a grumpy start to my day. Groaning, I picked up the black devil and flipped it over to the message on the screen:
I’m waiting, Cameron. Stop at Grindhouse on your way and bring my usual.

“Was I talking to myself yesterday?” I shouted at the device, squeezing it and imagining Hathaway’s neck in its place. Moderately satisfying. “Cameron’s not coming in today, you twit.”

After a brief shower—a cold one at that since it took three years for the hot water to make it to my third-floor apartment—I donned a pair of black dress pants and a white dress shirt with a gold HP embroidered on the left breast. I had a whole closet full of Hathaway Pharmaceuticals shirts, part of a dress code I had no idea why IT had to follow.

Yeah, let’s put the people who crawl around under desks all day in expensive clothes.
Genius at work.

A half hour later under a cloud-filled sky, I climbed onto the TTC bus and flashed my pass before I plopped down onto the cold seat. The stench of greasy hair, pee, and dirty feet greeted me.
Lovely.
Did nobody wash before they went out in the morning? Sheesh. Toaster waffles curdled in my stomach and came back to visit a few times.

Beside me, a tiny, blue-haired woman hunched over a tattered paperback, her thick glasses so close to the page her nose almost touched the book. She grunted and rocked as she read, while I edged away and tried not to let the crazy get to me.

My pocket vibrated before the bus made it two blocks from my apartment building. “Shit! What now?”

The old woman turned her bug eyes on me, silent admonishment deepening the wrinkles on her leathery face.

I tried to keep my face blank, but my cheeks burned and probably shone a nice bright red. Traitorous little bastards.

The message said
: I expected you here by now
.

“Yeah, well, I’m not,” I told the phone. “You don’t start paying me until eight thirty, and it isn’t even seven. Deal with it.” I turned off the phone and returned it to my pocket with everyone on the bus staring at me. I guess I’d turned into the crazy. Knots formed in my stomach. The phone grew heavy. Scenarios trundled through my head, little trains of thought that ploughed through despite my efforts to block them out. What if he tried to call me? What if it was enough for him to fire me if I didn’t answer?
Arg! Stupid conscience.

Grimacing, I turned the phone back on before I crossed arms over my chest. It was going to be a long day.

An hour later, with Hathaway’s coffee and bag of chocolate biscotti in hand, I swung by the IT office, pushing the door open with my butt.

“Morning, my young
padawans
,” I sang.

Jeremy leaned back in his chair to gawk at me around his cubicle wall. He wore a toothy grin and a smear of ketchup on his bum chin. “Dude, you’re such a geek.”

I sighed, cocked my hip out, and jammed my hand down on it. “Let me see what T-shirt you have under your uniform.” My hand made a rolling motion for him to get on with it.

He looked down, giggled, and unbuttoned his blue HP dress shirt.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I rolled my eyes and laughed at his getup. “You give up the right to call someone a geek when you show up to work wearing a
Star Trek
officer’s shirt complete with fake communicator under your dress shirt.”

Paul’s barking chuckle rumbled from the direction of his cubicle. “Bazinga!”

We all roared at the
Big Bang Theory
reference. Sheldon was our hero.

“I have to get this coffee to Hathaway’s office before he goes medieval on my ass so you’re on your own for a bit. If you don’t see me by four thirty, you’d better come looking for my desiccated corpse.”

“Shit, dude.” Jeremy snorted, his shoulders jerking with laughter. “He made you bring him coffee? Are you gonna spit polish his shoes next?”

Paul erupted with amusement, and the two of them collapsed against one another, while I went out the door, cursing. Lousy little turds. They’d get theirs. Just see if they wouldn’t.

As I trooped along the hallway toward Hathaway’s office, tension settled into my neck and drifted south. My shoulders seemed heavy, dragging me down a little more with every step I took toward that hideous golden door. Something compressed my lungs. I concentrated on keeping the air moving through them so I wouldn’t pass out and wind up in a hospital somewhere. Yeah, didn’t want to have to explain my unease to anyone.

Brent clacked away at his keyboard, his light hair tucked neatly behind his ears. Silver star buttons dotted the front of his shiny pink shirt. A gold bracelet jangled on his wrist as he typed.

I raised the Grindhouse bag in a small wave, but his gaze remained on the paper clipped to the stand beside him.

I stopped, cocked an eyebrow. “I’m going in now.”

Brent flinched and smacked his hand against his pouty lips. “Mother Mary of God. You scared the jeepers out of me.” He huffed and patted his chest. For a moment, the amount of gold adorning his fingers made me think he wore brass knuckles. “A little warning next time.”

I swallowed a snicker and held my face still so my internal laughing fit wouldn’t show. “Sorry. Mr. Hathaway’s in a hurry this morning. I just wanted to tell you I’m going in now.”

Brent came around his desk and stood in front of me, squinting as he looked me up and down. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Evangeline Ross.”

He nodded as if he approved. “Frankly, I’m shocked he let you in at all.” He cupped a hand over his mouth and leaned closer. “He doesn’t usually allow … you know … women into his office.”

“Oh, really.” A steady stream of curses rolled through my thoughts. Thankfully they didn’t escape my lips. So Hathaway wasn’t just an egotistical prick. He was a sexist, misogynistic, egotistical prick.

“Seriously, you’re taking your life in your hands if you go in there today.” Brent shivered. “He’s on the warpath.”

My hackles bristled more out of fear that time than anger if I was being honest with myself. “Are you telling me he’s worse than he was yesterday? Is that even possible?” I didn’t think you could fit another ounce of “jerk” into that man.

Brent tossed his hands up in a dramatic fashion. “Girl, he didn’t scream at me once yesterday. Today, I can’t do anything right and the day has barely started. It’ll only get worse. Look, he wants these letters, like, yesterday so knock yourself out.” He went back to his desk and took a drink from a cup identical to the one in my hand.

Heart sinking, I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is that coffee from Grindhouse?”

He nodded, still sipping.

My muscles coiled down, ready to launch if Brent confirmed my suspicion. “And you got it this morning?”

“Yeah, it’s the weirdest thing. Mr. Hathaway texted me last night and told me not to bother with his this morning. Strange, right?”

My blood turned to lava, spilling through my veins in hot squirts. My voice jacked up a few decibels. “Are you telling me I waited in line for forty-five minutes to get this and he
knew
you were going, anyway?”

Brent’s shoulders raised in a dainty shrug. “It looks as if you’re on his shit list this week, honeycakes.” He offered a weak smile. “Sucks to be you.”