The moment he walked into his office and found the meeting agendas still locked in his desk, he knew that Jessica’s attempt at a meeting coup failed. Within seconds of his butt hitting his desk chair, she was standing in front of him, seething. “Where are the agendas for today’s meeting, Leonard?’

“You mean tomorrow’s meeting?” Leonard asked.

Jessica sniffed. “It was moved to this afternoon because of a conflict in Mr. Lancaster’s schedule.”

“That you arranged?” Leonard deadpanned.

“It’s not my fault that you can’t keep up with a fast-paced office environment.” Jessica smirked at him and Leonard itched to do something really awful to her desk.

Leonard glanced around the empty lobby, where the most active object was a ficus leaf bobbing in a gust of air-conditioning. Even in the midst of his confrontation with Jessica, regret and resentment gnawed at his belly. It was Jessica’s fault his conversation with Charlotte had been cut short. Despite the otherworldly nature that, frankly, set him on edge, he found he liked the midwife quite a bit. He liked how efficient she was, how she cut to the heart of the matter at hand, how quickly the people he admired trusted her with the most important things in their lives. She had a competence about her that made people want to hand her those things. And if Jessica could just calm the hell down, he might have been able to build a better understanding with her.

“It is against League policy to password protect documents on a shared server. You don’t have the authorization to hide information from me,” Jessica said.

Leonard unlocked the drawer and piled the agendas onto his desk. Then he reached into the top drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper signed by Sonja. “Authorization from the director of operations, to use my discretion to protect information as long as I share it to her private server.”

Jessica snatched the paper out of his hand and tossed it in the garbage. He rolled his eyes and pulled out another copy, which was laminated. “I also have a digital version saved on my phone.”

“I’ll carry those into the meeting room, thank you,” she said, holding her gloved hand out expectantly as he locked the drawers again. It was sad that he had to lock them, but obviously it was the right choice.