Page 10 of The Checklist
“Great. See you in an hour.” She took the box from his outstretched hand.
“I’m in the basement with the other interns if you need anything. Have a good morning,” Brandt said, defaulting to the standard polite greeting that all Seattleites used with strangers. Dylan chuckled to herself as she started placing files in the box. You could be terrified of someone in this town, and it was still mandatory to wish them a good day.
She wasn’t sure how long it took to clean out Marta’s desk. All Dylan could say for certain was that Marta was a pack rat and that she was behind schedule. At some point Brandt had shown up to take away the box and bring her a few more, along with a cup of coffee in a ridiculously shaped brontosaurus mug, mumbling something about the office being a “green campus.”
Taking a sip from the dinosaur, Dylan pulled out her laptop and began spreading out her Technocore paperwork. Looking at her schedule, she started identifying places where she could shorten meetings to make up for lost time, until a subtle tapping on the narrow glass window of her door pulled her attention away from the screen. Waving at Steve, Dylan tried to hide the mug behind her computer and appear professional. The last thing she needed was for Jared to get a call about her brontosaurus obsession in addition to her penchant for skirting security protocol.
“I see you’re settling in nicely.” Steve gestured to her computer, and Dylan got the sense that he was referencing the mug behind it.
“Yes. Thank you for sending Brandt; he’s been really helpful.” She nudged her mug more toward the center of her screen.
“Is Brandt the intern they sent you? Good,” Steve said without waiting for confirmation. Pushing his hands through his salt-and-pepper hair, he continued, “So I’m here because it doesn’t look like you’re going to get the chance to speak with Tim today.” He exhaled in a way that conveyed more than exasperation. “I’ve asked that he make it a top priority for this week.”
Dylan blinked at Steve for a minute, regrouping. “I don’t need more than twenty minutes. Is there any way that I could schedule a call with him?” She thought back to Jared’s incomplete notes in his initial project brief and cringed. She really needed about three hours.
“I’m sorry. Tim made it clear that his day is packed. But I have you on the docket for first thing Thursday.” This time Steve didn’t wait for her to ask another question. Turning toward the door, he said, “Please let me know if you need anything else to get settled in. Enjoy your coffee. You can always get more upstairs.”
“Thanks.” Dylan’s tone was as lukewarm as her beverage. Glancing at her coffee, she tried to silence her anxiety alarm. There was no way that she could waste a week waiting for Tim. Even if she couldn’t meet with him for a full three hours, she absolutely needed him to send out a company-wide memo letting people know she was here in a friendly capacity. Given Brandt’s initial reaction, if she tried to interview employees without it, they might run screaming at the sight of her.
The question was how to get to him. Dylan was almost positive she couldn’t just walk through Tim’s door without some kind of security card. Frowning down at her coffee, she felt her mind reaching for the thread of an idea. Pushing her hair back, she toyed with the handle of her mug for a moment before it came to her. Brandt had mentioned that the coffee cart was close to Tim’s office. If she waited by the coffee cart long enough, surely he’d have to come out.
After snatching up the dinosaur and cramming a few papers into her bag, Dylan hooked the three free fingers not dedicated to the mug around the door handle and pulled it shut. Her head began to spinas she looked for the elevator hidden in the sea of cubicles. Finally, she marched to the first occupied desk she found, read the nameplate, and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Deep. Could you direct me to the elevator?”
The woman’s pixie cut shot up, a look of horror stuck to her face. The nail file she had been using moments before hung limp in her hand. “You scared me! Just because I’m in a cube doesn’t mean you shouldn’t knock.” Deep’s expression went from shocked to offended in the span of five seconds.
“I’m sorry. You’re right—I like people to knock on my padded walls as well,” Dylan said with more spunk than she meant to. Deep stared, her bright-pink lips parted in surprise. Arching an eyebrow, she tilted her head back and started laughing, shaking her bangs off her forehead. When she finally opened her dark eyes, Dylan got the sense that she was being appraised. After a moment Deep smiled.
“I like you. You’re secretly saucy under that beige corporate attire. Follow me.”
So much for people fearing her. Apparently, Deep found her so unintimidating that she was willing to insult what Dylan considered one of her more flattering professional outfits. Walking behind Deep, she noticed a small bar code tattoo on the base of her neck and smiled at another local custom. In Seattle you could be tattooed, pierced, and pixied and still have a desk job.
“Are you the replacement for Marta or the person they’re bringing in to fire me?” Deep asked casually.
“The latter. Except I don’t have plans to fire anyone. Just make the company run better.”
“Sure. I’d totally buy that if I hadn’t seenOffice Space. You are a productivity consultant, correct? Should I call you Bob?” Deep laughed. Dylan didn’t think she could be more surprised.Office Spacejokes were part of the productivity consultant territory, but it was unusual for people to make them in front of her.
“You could call me Bob, but Dylan would be better.”
Deep looked at her and sputtered. “Bob Dylan. Ha! Good one.”
“Actually, Dylan is my first name.” Deep’s face froze midgiggle. She figured Deep could take a little heckling, so she waited until they reached the elevators before adding, “I was named for him, though, so it isn’t a bad guess.”
Deep smirked. “You are secretly sassy. Where’re you trying to go? Or should I ask who you’re trying to fire?”
“I need to get to the coffee cart,” Dylan said, wiggling her empty mug.
“Don’t we all?” Deep sighed, leaning in with her badge and punching a floor. Dylan smiled as the doors closed. Secretly sassy was something she had been accused of exactly never in her life. Anal retentive, yes. Sassy, no.
As the doors opened, she saw exactly what Brandt had meant when he’d said the coffee cart was as close to Tim’s office as it could be. A quick scan of the floor yielded only a coffee cart, a few tables, a restroom, and a massive door labeledTIMGUNDERSON, FOUNDER. That was it. Dylan looked over at the barista, who was rapt, tuned in to a romance novel complete with a shirtless pirate on the cover. She thought she’d be embarrassed to be reading that in front of one of America’s wealthiest CEOs, but then again, she couldn’t really be embarrassed by her literary choices in front of a man who drove an aggressively red Roadster.
Dylan took a step toward the cart, shifted her dinosaur mug onto the counter, and asked for another coffee, please. Sooner or later, Tim would come out to use the restroom, and she’d be ready for him.
Three cups of coffee and two hours later, Dylan was starting to wonder if Tim was a camel. She had begun her waiting process by reviewing Jared’s spotty notes and addressing her timeline problems, but by herthird cup, Dylan began to feel the unfortunate combination of caffeine jitters and short attention span kicking in. After fifteen minutes of her tapping on the coffee table and staring into space, the barista had given her the pirate romance, which Dylan had begun to read against her better judgment. She’d concluded that as long as she left the book open on the table, no one would even know it was a pirate romance. Besides, she would only read it until Tim appeared, at which point she would politely return it to the barista.
All this had been about fifty pages and one daring rescue ago. Dylan had reached the part where the captive duchess began bandaging the wounded, misunderstood pirate captain when the sound of Tim’s door smashing into the wall behind it made her jump. She looked up in time to see the vestiges of his hoodie heading into the bathroom. Shaking off the caffeine jitters, Dylan stuffed everything back into her bag and hustled over to wait outside the bathroom door.
She had enough time to straighten her skirt before the door opened with a similar force and she came nose to nose with Tim Gunderson.
