Page 18 of Silver Fox
I thought he wanted more too.
“Earth to Skye.” Kenneth plants his corduroy-coated ass on my desk, glaring down at me with a look of disapproval.
I swallow. “Good morning, sir. Apologies, I was… trying to work out a time zone in my head,” I invent quickly. “Is it time for our meeting?”
He grunts, his gray moustache twitching. “Follow me,” Kenneth frowns. “And bring your laptop.”
My heels click on the floor as Kenneth leads me down to the warehouses, where they’re quickly overwhelmed with the sounds of forklifts humming and pallet jacks squeaking along the warehouse floor. We don’t stop, though, and soon we enter the offices proper.
Silver Mobility’s main reception area is a world away from Kenneth’s logistics department. It’s honestly the prettiest reception area I’ve ever seen. At its center is a large, calming water feature, and it reminds me of a giant chocolate fountain. The movement of the water is smooth and seamless, and it’s almost hypnotizing to look at.
We walk across the granite floor, parallel to the long planters lining the walls, out of which tropical plants burst, their enormous leaves sagging under their own weight.
I’m silent as Kenneth walks to the elevators, and we ascend all the way up to the top floor. I frown, wondering what the hell we’re doing up here. With the exception of two closed doors and an enormous window, it’s completely deserted.
After snatching a quick view of the vista from the window, I’m ushered into one of the two rooms, which turns out to be a large meeting room. It’s nothing like the soulless meeting room in the logistics department. A large glass table takes up most of the space, with an enormous screen at its head. There’s a screensaver of the Silver Mobility logo on it at present, casually drifting from corner to corner. Helen, the HR manager, occupies a seat, nodding at Kenneth and I as we walk in. There’s a pile of papers in front of her, but I have no idea what they pertain to.
“Give me your laptop and take a seat,” Kenneth advises me, pointing to a chair.
But when I do, I can’t help but notice that Kenneth and Helen are both seated opposite me, leaving a vacant seat in between them.
And suddenly I feel like I’m under a spotlight.
“Is there a problem, sir?” I ask, watching Kenneth link my laptop to the large screen at the end of the table. The Silver Mobility screensaver vanishes, and suddenly my desktop is there for all to see—including the background picture of Bryaxis. Normally, it makes me smile every time I see it. Axi is upside down in the Christmas tree, his wide eyes reflecting the multicolored lights around him.
But now I’m starting to feel sick.
“We’d like to ask you some questions, Miss Davis,” Helen says, lowering her eyelashes to read the papers in front of her. Her mascara is so thickly coated on that her lashes are clumping together, sharply contrasting with her white blonde hair.
“But what is this about?” I gulp. “I haven’t been given any reason for the hearing.”
Kenneth glances at his phone, murmuring something to Helen, and I just about catch her response. “We can start without him.” She turns to me, her pale blonde bob swishing around her ears. “We’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“Remind me how long you’ve worked at Silver Mobility, Skye.”
I can’t help but narrow my eyes. She was at my goddamn interview. She knows exactly how long I’ve worked here. “Around two months now.”
“And what does your job involve?” Helen asks.
“I’m a personal assistant to Kenneth. I do a little bit of everything. I schedule Kenneth’s meetings, I coordinate his calendar, and I also deal with the invoices.”
Helen’s eyes light up at that last one. “Tell me about the invoices.”
There’s a pause before I answer. Where are they going with this? “What about them?”
“Walk me through your process of dealing with an invoice.”
“I transfer information from physical invoices onto the system. I’m also responsible for adding and maintaining vendor information and ensuring everything is correct when paying out and receiving invoices.”
Kenneth and Helen share a look, and I can’t decipher it.
“You add vendor information?” Helen repeats.
I nod, stuttering when I realize there’s a camera set up behind her, its red light flashing intermittently. “I add both the vendors and the invoices to the system, after which I send them over for Kenneth to approve.”
Helen hums, giving a little nod to Kenneth. The list of vendors is projected onto the screen, and I recognize all of them. Some of them are newer, whereas others have invoices going back more than a decade. Kenneth clicks on one of the newer vendors, and I recognize the name. They were one of the first vendors I added after starting at Silver Mobility, but they’ve had regular invoices sent in since. “I can see you added this vendor.”
