Page 8 of The Checklist
Exchanging her soaked slacks for her favorite pair of menswear-inspired pajama bottoms, Dylan picked up her phone and toyed with the idea of checking her email. It was part of her and Nicolas’s nighttime ritual: email, dinner, more email, then bed. It felt strange checking email in her childhood room without him there, and Dylan decided she’d live dangerously and skip the ritual.
She texted Nicolas a quick update, since it wasn’t a scheduled call night, then pitched the phone on the paper-strewed desk before staring at the massive patch of fluorescent light coming through her bedroom window. She stepped over Milo and closed the curtains. Sinking back into the chair, now only slightly bathed in glaring white light, Dylan wondered exactly how much a fancy sensory room cost and made a mental note to ask Mike if she saw him again.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dylan finished applying an extra coat of antifrizz serum and gave her favorite tan pencil dress a once-over, proud she’d managed to successfully keep Milo from shedding all over it. Pulling up the exposed gold zipper, she stepped into a matching pair of patent leather pumps and then shrugged on a heavy trench. Dylan decided today was going to be a good day. Sure, she was starting at Technocore, but it was only misting, and that boded well for her hair if nothing else.
Cruising toward downtown, she went over her list of things she wanted to accomplish today. Her contact at Technocore should have arranged a vital sit-down with Gunderson and interviews with four senior managers from various departments to keep her on schedule. Dylan hoped the interviews would support the action plan and timeline she had developed on the plane. The faster she could get Gunderson to commit to her ideas, the easier the transition would be. If she could score a few early wins to gain the founder’s confidence, she would buy herself more time to solve the big problems before the finicky tech genius—or his board of directors—fired her.
Putting the car in park, she threw a small prayer to the workplace gods and then walked up to the sleepy-looking security guard. She glanced down at her watch and smiled. After years of missing doctors’ appointments and chasing planes with her parents, Dylan thoroughlyenjoyed being early. When she cleared her throat, the young security guard looked up from the book review section of theSeattle Times.
“Hello. I’m here for Marta Woods. I’m Dylan Delacroix, with Kaplan and Associates.” She was never sure what information had been given to security about her, so she said everything to be safe. The guard looked up at her blankly. “I’m early.”
“Let me, uh ... let me check and see if she ... uh, Marta ...,” the guard stammered, furiously typing on the screen in front of him. “Uh ... I don’t see you on the manifest.” He looked at her apologetically.
“You know, it may be under my boss’s name. Jared Gilroy.” Dylan drew a deep breath and smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way. It wasn’t the guard’s fault Jared was incompetent. She should have double-checked this before she arrived.
“Nope.” The guard shook his head but didn’t offer any suggestions.
Dylan felt a twinge of irritation kick in. She would add customer-service training for security personnel to the list of processes to be reviewed. “You could call Marta. She’d con—”
“Marta quit last Friday,” the baby-faced guard sputtered.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So ...”
Dylan racked her brain, trying to come up with the name of another contact in the office. She pulled out her phone and began scanning through emails. “I’m sure there’s someone in the office who can vouch for me. I was hired to help sort through some of Technocore’s recent”—Dylan tried to phrase the next part carefully. People got squirrelly when they found out consultants were being brought in to evaluate them—“staffing trouble.”
“The thing is, I can’t let you up there without clearance.”
“Perhaps Mr.Gunderson knows I’m coming? Why don’t you give him a call?”
“I’m sorry; I can’t disturb him. We get a lot of phonies trying to reach him. Press, stalkers, you know.”
“I just told you. I’m a consultant,” Dylan said, giving up the fruitless email search. “Do I look like a stalker?”
The kid shrugged, indifference written all over his fawn-colored, freckled face. “Stalkers come in all kinds. I’m sorry, but if you don’t have someone to vouch for you, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“Look, there has to be someone you can call.” Dylan’s voice went up a few notes with her mounting desperation. Jared’s email last night had made it clear he wasn’t to be disturbed. She didn’t want to call Kaplan and explain that she had been kicked off the Technocore campus for seeming like a stalker. It wouldn’t go over great with the partners.
The guard’s indifferent expression stared back at her as heat began to radiate from under her collar and up her neck. Glancing down at his golden nameplate, she tried again. “Charlie, I’m making an effort. Will you please work with me?”
“Ma’am, really—”
“Good morning, Charlie.” A rumpled man in a sweater breezed past the security desk.
Dylan noticed the badge clipped to his belt loop. Taking a few quick steps sideways, she knew what she needed to do. It was better to risk the guard calling the police than be the inept subject of Kaplan office gossip. Gritting her teeth, she dashed past the security guard toward the elevator. Sliding into the elevator with the startled man, she felt a small sense of pride as she watched the shocked guard jolt out of his chair.
“Hello,” she said to her elevator companion. “I was trying to reach Marta Woods, who has, apparently, left the company. Would you know who I should contact in her place?”
The man gaped at her for a minute as the doors began to close. Dylan tried to smile, as if being chased by a security guard were normal. Pressing a hand to a wrinkle on her coat, she jumped from the entrance, squeaking, as Charlie’s right arm shot between the slidingdoors, his hand wiggling. The man jolted, knocking his glasses sideways and stifling a screech.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to step out of the elevator, please,” Charlie said, straightening his jacket with his free hand as the doors retracted. Dylan debated swatting him and trying to make a run for the stairs. They were probably unlocked in case of an emergency. Sidestepping Charlie’s arm, Dylan bumped into the man, who seemed to recover from the shock of witnessing a campus break-in.
“Hang on, Charlie. You’re here for Marta? Are you with Kaplan?” Dylan watched as Charlie’s face went slack with surprise, his hand dropping like deadweight.
“Yes. I’m scheduled to start today,” Dylan said, flattening the sleeve of her coat, where Charlie’s fist had been moments before.
