Page 78 of Without Apology

This was the first I was hearing of a potential problem, or that our regular auditor, Lyle was feeling well enough to be working again. I had to bite my tongue and tamp down my temper. “I’ll speak to Tom and find out when he expects it to be resolved.”

“Excellent. Then we’ll get you onto your next assignment.”

“Cheers.” For the first time, I wasn’t filled with adrenaline about the promise of the next place to which I’d be traveling. Instead, I was wishing I had more time to spend here.

After hanging up, I strode back into the conference room, my anger squarely directed at Tom.

“When the fuck were you planning to tell me about the accounting anomaly?”

“Last night, but I couldn’t get a hold of you. Emma told me you were busy.”

I fixed my glare on him and spoke quietly. There was something much more intimidating about a man who kept his control than one who shouted. “I don’t care how busy you think I may have been. You send a bloody text or an email. At the very least, you could have brought it up this morning when I walked in the door. For the love of Christ, you’ve had all day to tell me about it.”

I might have been with Peyton last night, but this was critical information, and he’d purposefully withheld it. Almost as though he enjoyed watching me get taken off guard by hearing it first from Phillip.

Tom swallowed visibly, his face reddening, clearly embarrassed that Emma was a witness here. Something he often forgot was that I was the one who made his uncle millions while he was only along for the ride.

“It’s only a possible issue.”

“Fine. Fill me in on the possible issue.”

The problem turned out to be he wasn’t sure if there was a problem or not. Which had me ringing Lyle. Luckily, he was indeed feeling better and was now going over Russ’s audit work.

“There are a lot of manual spreadsheets.” Lyle shared his thoughts with all of us via a conference call.

I tried not to sigh at the obvious. “This we know. Their antiquated financial system can’t handle things such as deferred revenue.”

“It’s the employee compensation schedules that are the toughest to put together. It’ll take a while to comb through them.”

“Did those come from Jeff?” I asked Emma.

She checked the schedule. “Yes, they all did, but Peyton signs off on the figures before her team inputs them into the system.”

“If you have questions, Lyle, then you can talk to Jeff, the director of payroll, first thing on Monday.

Over the phone, Lyle asked, “Should I fly out tomorrow or keep working from here?”

“Just keep working from there. I don’t want you to waste the time traveling. Hopefully, we’ll get clarification from Jeff on Monday if something still appears off.” It was probably nothing. At least I hoped so. The last thing we needed was a snag.

“I’ll lay out the spreadsheets in question for Simon tonight,” Tom said. “That way he can see the potential problem we’re looking at.”

Any other night I would’ve already demanded the spreadsheets. Bollocks. I glanced out the window to see it was starting to get dark. Another glance, this one down at my watch, made me wince. It was almost six.

“Unless, of course, you have plans and will be busy again tonight?”

Tom’s passive-aggressive tone grated on me instantly. “My plan is to figure out how the hell you missed this the first time around.”

He bristled. “I may not have missed anything. We’re just double-checking numbers.”

“Fine. I’m going to loo. When I return, I want to know everything.”

I stalked out intent on one thing. I had to text Peyton and tell her I wouldn’t be able to make it. I could only hope she’d understand.

***

It was after eight o’clock by the time I walked out to the car park with Emma. Thankfully, Tom was still getting chauffeured around and had a car out front, so he didn’t ask for a ride from one of us.

“You hear back from her?” Emma knew I’d had plans with Peyton and had completely blown it.

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