I glanced over at Hope's workstation. Computer off. Desk spotless. She was long gone.
She'd dropped the key and the note, snapped a photo, and figured that was enough to fake a handover.
I didn't make a scene. I slipped the key into my coat pocket.
When you nail someone, you weld the evidence shut. One shot. One kill.
I walked to the window and looked down.
On the curb outside the building's front entrance, Hope stood in oversized sunglasses and a flowy resort dress, one hand on a pink rolling suitcase, the other tapping at her phone as she waited for her rideshare.
I headed downstairs immediately.
Hope had her back to the lobby doors, all her attention fixed on a car still stuck at the intersection.
I pretended to be on a call and walked right past her.
The instant I brushed by the suitcase, my fingertip hooked the zipper of the hidden compartment along its bottom edge.
One faint tug. I shoved the spare key, the one with the metal warehouse-access tag stamped with the company name, deep into the compartment and yanked the zipper shut.
I turned and melted into the crowd.
The rideshare pulled up. Hope cheerfully had the driver load her suitcase into the trunk and sped off without a backward glance.
I watched the car disappear down the block and let the corner of my mouth curl.
This one's on you now, Hope. No getting out of it.
The next morning I didn't set an alarm. Slept until my body decided it was done.
I sat on the couch in my apartment, coffee in hand, eyes fixed on the phone lying on the coffee table.
At 8:05, the phone started buzzing nonstop.
Hope's name flashed on the screen. Call after call after call.
One. Two. Three.
I watched, stone-faced. Didn't need to guess what she was scheming.
She was sprawled across a king-size hotel bed in Miami right now, hammering my number over and over.
She wanted to badger me into caving. Wear me down until I dragged myself to the office, unlocked the doors, and covered her shift.
Even if I didn't pick up. Even if I flat-out refused. She wouldn't care.
She was betting on the next domino: the moment nobody showed up and Mr. Greyson discovered the warehouse unmanned, he'd call me, guilt-trip me about "the bigger picture," and force me to clean up her mess.
I stared at the screen and smiled. Cold.
"Guilt-trip me? Please."
I switched the phone to airplane mode and shoved it under my pillow.
Meanwhile, on a beach thousands of miles away in Miami, Hope listened to the automated voice telling her the number she'd dialed had been powered off. Not a flicker of panic. She laughed out loud.
"You want to go up against me? That's the best you've got, Hailey? Playing dead and turning off your phone?"
She tossed her phone onto the beach lounger.
"Fine. Go ahead, dig your heels in, don't show up. I'd love to see how you explain yourself when the boss checks in and finds nobody there."
She slid her sunglasses on and strolled toward the ocean, already rehearsing the scene where she'd watch me get torn apart.
Ten o'clock that morning, a four-inch fire-suppression main on the second floor of the office building, corroded beyond its limit, blew apart.
A muffled boom. A high-pressure column of water punched through the ceiling and roared down through the pipe shafts toward the first floor.
Directly below the second floor sat our company's primary inventory warehouse, packed wall to wall with high-value goods.
Outside the warehouse's heavy steel security shutter, water was rising fast.
Inside were the precision electronic instrument control boards Mr. Greyson had mortgaged his wife's property to afford before the long weekend. Over twenty thousand units. Worth north of eighty thousand dollars.
Ten minutes submerged. That was all it would take. Every last one of them, destroyed.
The entire shipment was scheduled to go out to a major client in Silicon Valley the first business day after the holiday.
By the time a security guard heard the noise and made it to the first floor, murky brown water was already sloshing over his ankles, bubbling up through the gap beneath the warehouse door.
He called the building manager immediately.
The building manager pulled up the security footage, then dialed Mr. Greyson.
