Page 18 of A Ticking Time Boss

The phone on my desk blinks and I press it down. “Yes?”

“Colt Whittaker is here for you, sir. Should I send him in?”

I close my eyes. That’s another person I need to fire, and I hate it every single time. But I’ll be damned if I’ll make the decision and then send in someone else to make the kill for me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that integrity matters.

My father taught me that, by having absolutely none at all himself.

“Send him in,” I say.

FIVE

I leave my tiny apartment and the leaky sink—Old Man Pierce hadn’t called a plumber after all. He’d called one of his old friends from the post office, who had come and installed a temporary fix.

So temporary, in fact, that it only lasted two days.

He’s gotten mail again, although by the looks of it, it’s just coupons. I shove them under his door and race toward the subway.

My phone has been as good as dead this week. Not a text from Carter since the scene in his office, and I haven’t reached out either. That avenue is closed.

I can’t believe the man I joked with is the same person who’d sent three members of the junior trainee programme out the door yesterday. The decision had baffled everyone, including Booker, who told the entire newsroom not to overreact. But she’d worn a tight look about the mouth that made me think she’s as nervous as the rest of us.

Is this the beginning of the end for the Globe?

Declan has been frazzled all week, like he suspects he might be next. But he’s been there for a year, and while he still has junior in his job title, there are reporters who are more junior than him.

Like me, for example.

There’s a painful victory in it all. Carter had really been the slick, suit-wearing, profit-seeking businessman I’d thought he was at first glance. Now that I’ve seen him in his element, he reminds me too much of the man who’d ripped off my father many years ago. That conman had worn polished suits and charming smiles too, his native tongue double-talk. And he’d left my dad with empty college and retirement funds and broken pride.

By the time I make it into the office, Booker is already handing out story beats. But she’s doing it earlier than usual.

“What’s going on?” I whisper to Declan beside me.

“I don’t know,” he whispers back. “But all the higher-ups are on edge today.”

I meet his worried gaze with one of my own. Is this our last day at the Globe?

The shoe drops a quarter past eleven, when the announcement comes through an email blast.

There’s an all-hands meeting in fifteen minutes.

The news goes through the office like a shot. People turn to one another in speculation, while others turn a ghostly white at their desks. I hate it. I hate what it means, what it looks like, and most of all I hate how the Goliath in this situation is someone I know.

Though I don’t really know him at all, do I?

There’s only one spot large enough to house the Globe’s entire staff, and it’s the newsroom with the accompanying soundstage. It’s where interviews are conducted in a studio setting before they go on our website.

It’s empty now.

Wesley arrives first. As the editor-in-chief, he’s Carter’s right-hand man. “Look at him smiling,” Declan mutters at my side. It’s the type of comment I’ve heard several times about Wesley. People don’t seem to trust him.

Carter follows him into the room and the small talk quiets down.

He looks like usual. Polished suit, no tie, hair pushed back. But there’s no smile lurking in the corner of his mouth this time.

He stops in front of the anxious group. “Hello, everyone. I appreciate you taking time out of your day for this meeting.”

Not like we had a choice, I think.

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