***
“Mrs. Rougio?”
My assistant poked her head in the door, a clipboard in her hand, pleasant as ever, except for the tired lines that had appeared around her eyes in the past few months.
“Wimberly, how many times have I asked you to call me Katherine or Kate, or anything but my last name?” I asked her with a small smile. My last name was such a mouthful to anyone who hadn’t grown up pronouncing its vaguely Italian sounding pronunciation.
“Sorry, Mrs. Katherine,” she corrected herself, pushing her glasses a little further up her young and eager face, “But Mr. Jones is asking for you.”
I looked at the clock, which was showing three minutes until five. “And this can’t wait?”
“He seemed pretty insistent,” she told me apologetically. “But I can tell him I didn’t manage to catch you before you left?”
“Don’t worry about it.” With a wave of my hand, I dismissed her for the weekend. “Why don’t you go and get some rest. Maybe have some fun. I won’t need you on call this weekend.”
Her eyes lit up. “Thanks, Katherine.”
“Anytime,” I replied, watching a genuinely happy smile replace the girl’s tired features. It was always nice when I could manage to do something for someone else. I pushed myself away from the desk and stood to my full height, stretching my arms from the long hours of sitting. My feet were aching from the heels that they were squished into, and it was all I could do to not kick them off in that instant.
I knocked softly on the door to Mr. Jones, the head of the board’s, office, which was just down the hall from mine, on the topmost floor of the building. The instant that I walked in, all thoughts of kicking off my shoes fled from my mind. I was suddenly very, very fearful for my job.
They didn’t gather all of the board members together just to promote someone or pass along good news.
“Katherine,” Mr. Jones said, waving his hand and motioning me forward into the room, where four other men were pressed around his desk, looking uncomfortable, and stifled. None of them would look me in the eye, which did not do anything good for my nerves.
“Is everything all right?” I made sure that my voice sounded as strong as it was able to under the circumstances. The business world preyed on any kind of weakness, and these men were circling like vultures.
“No, actually, which is why I called you in,” he said. He gave a long sigh, like he had been thinking long and hard about something. “I need your help with a problem that’s on our hands, Katherine.”
“Anything, sir,” I told him. The feeling of relief over not being called in to be fired was so overwhelming that I almost didn’t catch his next words.
“I’m glad to hear it. I need you to delete all records we have of Oliver Bertrand, and the pending patent paperwork we have concerning his product.”