I looked at the clock on the wall. A minute had passed since the detectives left the room. By now they could have slipped into the room behind the mirror. They could be watching me, gauging my reaction to all these new revelations. I folded my arms on the table and hid my face inside them before I let myself think about the other development that I’d failed to anticipate.

“Oh, David,” I whispered into the shield of my arms. “What have you done?”

Chapter 12

January 4, 2014

My third day on the job coincided with a company-wide sexual harassment training session, and Barrett had neatly shoehorned that into my orientation schedule. Attendance was mandatory for all non-executive employees, and the Manhattan-based staff was bused in for the event.

The program was held in the company auditorium in the interior of the twenty-eighth floor, a space labeled Theater on the office floor plan. Since it was an all-day affair, lunch would be catered in. I was looking forward to that part. Despite how carefully I’d budgeted for forty days of no income, I’d forgotten to factor in food. I was used to living on all the free snacks that went with my barmaid job, but there was no free lunch in the corporate world. Today, though, there would be free lunch, and I brought my briefcase with me. With a few furtive moves, I might be able to stash some extra food for later.

The theater looked like the auditorium in an exclusive prep school—small but with all the highest-end appointments. I took a seat near the back and watched as the busload of employees from Manhattan strolled in. These were what the Admin employees referred to as the Creatives—the designers and illustrators and patternmakers, of course, but also the publicists and copywriters and even the fit models. They were immediately recognizable by the yards of scarf they unwound from their necks as they did slow revolutions to take in the room. They were a United Nations of races and ethnicities, yet all wore the same uniform, narrow pants and wide glasses, and the same affectation—an air of supreme boredom.

“You’re the new litigator, right?” A woman slipped into the chair beside me. She was African American, perhaps forty, and her sensible shoes marked her as an Admin, not a Creative. “I’m Cheryl Fitts, labor and employment.”

“Shay Lambert.” I smiled and shook her hand. Here was my first new workplace friend. My first new friend, period. Unless I counted the bartender at Cubby’s, I hadn’t made a new friend in five years. Or kept the old ones. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “I’ve been hoping to meet the rest of the Law Department.”

“No point, though, right?” Cheryl said. “Since Barry told us to keep our mitts off you.”

“Did he?”

“I guess you’re his prize catch. No sharing allowed.”

“Huh.”

“Anyway, welcome,” she said as the lights dimmed throughout the auditorium.

A giant screen descended from the ceiling at the front of the room. Music sounded in a little fanfare flourish as an image of a white dove fluttered across the screen. A disembodied voice announced: “Please welcome our senior vice president and general counsel, J. Ingram Barrett, Jr., appearing with us live from Kuala Lumpur!”