Page 72 of Calculated Chaos

“The bar?”

“Yeah. I have something important to talk to you about.”

“No hints?”

“No hints. I’ll be waiting.”

She ends the call before Holl can say another word. “Well, that was weird,” he says.

“Kind of, yeah. Do you think she’s in trouble?”

“No clue. Guess we’re gonna find out.”

Nearly forty minutes later, we pull into the parking lot of the bar, a posh place in an up and

coming revitalized section of downtown. There are quite a few cars in the lot considering it’s only mid-afternoon, so it must be a popular place.

We enter, looking around, and then Hollister waves when he sees Sara lingering by a set of stairs. She smiles when she sees us.

“Hi,” she says, throwing her arms around Hollister when we reach her. Then she offers me a hug. “I got us some space upstairs. Come on.”

She grabs Hollister’s hand, practically dragging him up. We enter an open space, and then Hollister stumbles over his feet. Sara is grinning like the Cheshire Cat. I have no idea what’s going on.

“What is this?” Hollister says as about eight people turn to face him.

“This,” Sara says, gesturing to the tables full of folks, “is what happens when the only good thing about your job ends.”

“What?” Hollister asks, stepping closer. “Why are you all here?”

“We’re unemployed,” one of the guys says. “Voluntarily. We walked out today.”

“Holl?” I ask.

“Sorry, Axel,” Sara says. “This is most of Hollister’s former team. They walked out as a group this morning after the staff meeting.”

“I don’t understand,” Hollister says. “Why would you do that?”

“Have a seat,” Sara says, pushing us both towards two open chairs. “Wait until you hear this story.”

A guy waves at Hollister. “Hey.”

“Hi, Tim.”

“So after you left,” Tim begins, “unsurprisingly, all the shit hit the fan.” Several people nod and make noises of agreement. “Your dad was ten times worse than usual, stomping around the office and trying to figure out what was going on. If anyone reminded him of how meticulously you kept your files, he would yell and tell us we can’t talk about traitors.”

Hollister scrunches his nose. “God.”

“I think it took two days of that before I started thinking about a new job,” Tim continues, and several others agree. “But then it got way worse.”

“How?” Hollister asks.

“Tanner,” several people say at the same time.

“He was promoted,” Tim says. “And he had a huge head about it. Not only that, but he was determined to prove he was somehow better than you, and when he realized you had everything as perfect as it could get, it frustrated him and he was being a huge dick to everyone.”

“Dang,” Hollister mutters.

“Which only made your dad more frustrated,” another woman says. “So it was basically hell for two weeks. We weren’t allowed to say your name, and when we talked about any process you had us doing, Tanner would immediately change it.”

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