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

Dylan’s cheeks burned as she crossed the street in her dripping heels, munching on the last of her egg roll. When she shoved open the front door, she found her dad following along with an old Darrin’s Dance Grooves video. At one time her father’s impromptu dance marathons might have seemed normal to her. She would just have to pretend she didn’t know better now.

Filling her lungs to drown out the tape, she called, “Mom, what’s this about sending Milo to the Robinsons?”

Her dad was so in the zone he didn’t notice her shouting over the tape. Bernice popped her head around the corner of the kitchen and grinned. “Genius, isn’t it? I usually flag down their son and make him deliver the message, but he was on vacation, and I really couldn’t wait, so I sent Milo. Damn dog nearly went to the wrong house.” Her mother appeared genuinely dismayed at the dog’s inability to deliver angry letters to the neighbors. “So was I right? Did they agree to remove the lights?”

“Not in so many words, but I think their son is going to work on it.”

“Ha. What did I tell you? And you were over here all, Mom, that won’t work because I am an adult. I’m above everything,” Bernice said in a terrible, nasal approximation of Dylan, complete with a robot voice and stiff movements that managed to be as inaccurate as they were patronizing.

“Good impression, Mom. You are a great actress.”

“What? You sound just like that,” Bernice said, waving off her complaint, then adding, “Since you’re here, we may as well push for another victory. I don’t want to stretch our luck, but maybe next week you can talk to them about the hideous speedboat they park in their driveway every summer.” Bernice turned back toward the kitchen. Her change in location made absolutely no difference to her speaking volume. “Talk about an eyesore. And they have the nerve to think the Tiger is tacky.”

“Right,” Dylan said, shaking her head and wandering up the stairs. When she opened her bedroom door, she found that Milo had pulled the blanket off her bed and was lounging on the floor with it. “Gross,” she mumbled, trying to pull her now-dirty comforter out from under his hulking frame. Begrudgingly, Milo rolled over, giving it up. Dylan stood in the middle of her room, debating what to do with it. On the one hand, she wanted her comforter. On the other, it smelled like Milo, whose bathing schedule was more than a little suspect. She decided to risk it and wash the thing in the morning with the rest of the sheets Milo had rolled in.

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 thoroughly enjoyed being early. When she cleared her throat, the young security guard looked up from the book review section of the Seattle 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