The Checklist by Addie Woolridge (color ebook reader TXT) 📗

a consultant on a sinking ship. If you don’t want to get to know us, fine. Just be a big girl and say so.”

Dylan felt her mouth go numb. She wanted to say something, but whatever it was didn’t come out, and Deep didn’t wait for it. She strolled out the door without glancing over her shoulder.

“Deep acts tough, but she isn’t. Her feelings are just hurt. She was really excited about her game-night idea. Don’t worry. She’ll get past it.” Brandt shrugged, moving toward the door. “I know you didn’t mean to forget. I’m glad you’re okay.”

He slid through the door and quietly shut it behind him, as if he had known that Dylan wouldn’t have a response for him either.

It felt like someone had placed an overweight suitcase on her chest, forcing Dylan to lean against the edge of her desk and take deep breaths. For a moment, she stood there looking at her closed door, trying to process everything. Of course she hadn’t skipped lunch intentionally. She would never choose to treat a friend that way. The whole thing seemed like an overreaction. A small voice in the back of her head said something about how waiting two days to apologize was rude, but Dylan ignored the voice when her phone chimed, indicating that she had received yet another email. She would have to find a way to make it up to the pair of them later. Possibly much later, given the dumpster fire outside her door.

Coming around her desk, Dylan was surprised to see the promised staff email from Tim in her inbox. Willing herself to unclench her fist, she perused the Big Updates subject line. A small corner of her heart hoped his big-updates email would include an apology for the jackets. Or if not an apology, she thought, maybe a promise to fix them, along with everything else in the company.

Dear Technocorers,

It’s been a rough couple of months. Hopefully, the goody bags on your desk go a little way to smooth things over. I want to address some of your concerns from the retreat.

Leadership Doesn’t Listen: That is simply not true. In fact, I’m listening all the time. Sometimes leadership makes decisions you don’t understand, because your suggestions just aren’t plausible given what I know about the company.

You Feel Expendable: I value everyone here. However, if we can transition the president of the United States in three months, we can survive without any one team member. That includes upper management, like me.

Dylan retched. This was a list of ten, and there was no way the points that followed could possibly get worse than what she was reading. She’d practically drafted the email for him. All he had to do was read it over and send out things like We have formed a committee on employee satisfaction and upper-management listening sessions. Glancing out of the skinny window by her office door, Dylan made eye contact with Helen, a data specialist from the second floor with a countenance like Uncle Sam’s. She had interviewed her during the fact-finding process and remembered her as generally kind. But not today. From what she saw on the other side of that glass, Dylan truly understood the expression death stare.

Turning back to the email, she began scanning for the cause of the killer gaze. Somewhere toward point eight, she found it:

By now, many of you have met our office consultant, Dylan Delacroix, who has encouraged me to share my vision and expand my leadership style . . .

“What the hell!” Dylan yelped at the screen. Jumping up, she darted over to the tiny roll-down shade, gesturing vaguely to her dress and mouthing, “Change clothes” at Helen before pulling on the balled metal cable.

The shade banged against the window ledge, and she pushed her hands into her hair, pulling hard enough that it looked like she was playing the face-lift game with herself. As the skin on her forehead stretched, she reminded herself to breathe. When that failed, she doubled over, hands on her knees, to count the little circles on the carpet. Anything to take her mind off the sound of blood pounding in her ears and the clutching spasm at her midsection. Suppressing the urge to vomit, Dylan slowly righted herself. Leaning on the door, she closed her eyes.

“You are okay. This doesn’t have to end your career. You just have to get through—” Her eyes snapped open as the phone rang, cutting off her personal pep talk. Compressing a horror-film-worthy scream into a minor squeak, Dylan peered at the caller ID.

Still not Tim. She sank into her chair, her hand hesitating over the receiver, watching the red light flash its danger warning. If she didn’t answer soon, Jared would go nuclear and start alternating between calling her cell and desk line until he reached her.

It was the third ring. She was either going to answer it or let the emotional blitzkrieg begin. Steeling herself, she picked up the phone. “This is Dylan.”

“Dylan. What the hell is going on over there?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Don’t play with me, damn it.”

“Jared, I’m not playing with you. It was one piece of bad press.”

A copycat of Darth Vader breathed into the line. “One piece? Fuck the press. What do you call the documents you sent me?”

“A perfectly good starting place. There was no way—”

“I knew you couldn’t handle this job. You don’t have what it takes to make it to the next level at Kaplan,” Jared cut in, his tone forcing visions of him foaming at the mouth into her head. Dylan felt the oxygen being sucked out of her lungs, replaced by something much more painful. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“I think you’re wrong. My work hasn’t hurt share prices at all. Moreover, if you were here, you’d see that people are feeling—”

“Share prices? Is that your measure of success? God, you are an idiot.”

“Given our focus on quarterly earnings, I believe that yes, in fact, share prices are the primary