“Ah, Miss Bartlett. How is that family of yours doing? Any developments in that…emergency of theirs?”

My boss peered at me over his glasses. He was trying to make me feel guilty for not divulging any more information than privacy laws said I had to. Was this just his normal brand of passive-aggression, or was he starting to get suspicious?

“Almost cleared up,” I said as brightly as I could. “Oh look, is that the time, I have to go update the company’s social media presence or everyone will think we’re dead, see you later!”

I fled as quickly as I could, hoping that the words ‘social media’ would have confused him enough to keep from following me.

The best way to keep my boss from asking questions had always been to start talking about something he knew nothing about; better to let the flighty young lady do her thing, he seemed to think, than to reveal he knew nothing about it.

I was back at work, and with Hunter prepping production on a new test batch of the Dixie brew, there was nothing for me to do back at the manor house. Well, I could have stood around admiring Hunter’s profile and simultaneously being bored silly by all the beer jargon he spouted like an overexcited fanboy, but somehow that seemed less productive than heading back to D.C. and catching up with all the work that had piled up for me in my absence (I didn’t think that Hunter’s red alert levels of hotness would qualify as an emergency my boss would be on board with).

Well, trying to catch up, anyway. Enough stuff had piled up in my absence that I was starting to think they’d made my cubicle into a trash can and forgotten to tell me.

No one had done any work on that tampon line while I was gone and the other woman in the office was out sick—too afraid of cooties, I guess—and the client was irate, threatening to take their business elsewhere. I tossed off some copy for it, no big deal—I could’ve done another tampon line in my sleep—and sent Sandra an e-mail outlining what they wanted in terms of art. That barely dented the pile of work, though—it seemed that while I was gone, I’d been designated everyone’s official paperwork monkey, and those forms weren’t going to file themselves.

Lost in the daydreamy reveries of self-filing paperwork and coworkers who actually did their own damn jobs, I was so busy that it wasn’t until my stomach rumbled and I looked up at the clock that I realized I’d managed to skip lunch. I looked at the pile of paper on my desk and decided that I couldn’t risk the time it would take to hop over to the Chinese joint across the street that did the really good chow mein—if I stepped away from this desk for more than five minutes, the paperwork would probably start reproducing.

Cafeteria vending machine it would have to be. Maybe if I was lucky they would still have the Garden Salsa flavor of Sun Chips, and the Snickers would have been replaced recently enough that their peanuts wouldn’t have turned to brittle dust with age.

Yeah, I know, dream big.

I had almost trotted down to the cafeteria when I heard the not-so-dulcet tones of bragging Douchebros, their voices extra loud, like they wanted to make sure that no one suffered the tragedy of not hearing their extremely important conversation.

Worse, their voices were heading directly towards me.

I so didn’t have the energy to deal with their bullshit right now. Their ‘lighthearted’ teasing about my failure to secure the Knox deal, their leering comments about my outfit and my body, their sexist speculations about the way I had earned this job. All of that took way more energy than I had at this moment. It probably took more energy than a power plant produced in a year.

So I hid instead.

I looked around, rapidly locating a blind spot behind some tarp where the maintenance guys still hadn’t finished installing the new water fountain. I’d been annoyed about this for months—how hard is it to put the new one in after you’ve taken the old one out?—but now I sent a silent thank you to them for dragging their feet, and ducked behind the blue plastic.

Oh God, please let this tarp be too opaque for me to cast a shadow. If they catch me hiding out here from them, they’ll never let me hear the end of it.

As they drew closer, I began to be able to make out some words and sentences. Something seemed off about the conversation, though—there were long stretches of silence, something the Douchebros would normally never tolerate. Were they on the phone?

“Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome, Chuck,” Chad was saying as he and his entourage drew level with me. “So you got this takeover offer when?”

My blood ran cold. A takeover offer. That they were discussing with Chuck.

They had to be talking about Knox Liquors.

What would this do to Hunter?

“What’s the problem, bro?” another Douchebro put in. “Sounds like easy money, so why’s he dragging his feet?”

The distant sound of Chuck’s voice grew muffled as Chad covered the speaker with his hand. “Because of Hunter fucking Knox, bro, duh. There’s a lot of legal jazz that means we’d need Hunter’s agreement and voting shares to sell. There’s no way that tool’s going to go for it.”

Relief washed through me, and a spark of hope. So it wasn’t a done deal. There still might be a way to stop this.

“No, no, dude, I totally hear what you’re saying…” Chad’s voice and the footsteps of his coterie began to fade, and then die away.

My mind was already racing ahead of them.

I was furious, yes, and worried, and still guilty—but most of all, I was thinking.

This might not just be a travesty, it might be….an opportunity.

It was time for some espionage.

* * *

I cast a surreptitious eye over the rest of the office. Empty. Good. The Douchebros had long since headed home along with everyone else. No one had batted an eye at me working late, since every time I had managed to make it in lately I’d been staying until the wee small hours; I had to, just to keep even vaguely on top of things.

I left my computer running and took the route with no security cameras to Chad’s desk.

Of course he got an actual office room, instead of a cubicle, even though he hadn’t been with the company much longer than me and, numbers-wise, had a much worse track record. Still, however much I resented that, it did give me a tiny bit of privacy once I picked the lock.

During the day, this was Douchebro Central, and in the dim half-light of evening, you could still see the signs of their presence, the chip bags and the energy drink cans they’d left littered across the floor or snagged in the miniature basketball hoop over the door. Because why pick up after yourself when Housekeeping will be in later to do it for you?

I cut off my mental censure before I could really get going; if I let myself, I’d just stand here judging them all night. I went straight to Chad’s computer and breathed a sigh of relief. The asshole never shut it down or even logged it off, but I’d still spent the last few hours worrying that he’d suddenly become environmentally conscious or something.

I pulled up his work e-mail; we used Outlook, so that didn’t require a password either. Quickly scrolling through the recent exchanges—and doing my best not to roll my eyes at his terrible attempt at flirting with Andi from accounting, which was either going to end in a harassment lawsuit or Andi’s fist in his face (Andi did roller derby and she was hardcore)—I located a long e-mail string from Chuck, and began to speed read.

I hadn’t misheard that phone call; there was nothing Chuck could do without Hunter’s approval for the buyout. He had attached the relevant clause in the board articles, as well as quoted it in the body of the e-mail: because of the family name, Hunter had to agree to a sell-off.

“Yes!” I whispered fiercely, and gave the air a small victory punch.

And then I heard a noise outside the office.

Shit. Shit shit shit. Who else would be here at this time of night? Housekeeping, yes, but they started vacuuming on the other side of the building, I should have had—I checked my watch—a good fifteen minutes yet. And Security stayed down at their desk eating take-out unless they had a good reason to go elsewhere and I had avoided their cameras, I knew I had—

Well, it didn’t matter. Someone was out there, and probably getting closer every second I dithered over what to do.

I closed Outlook and stood. I would have liked to print the e-mails for proof, but Hunter was just going to have to trust me. I cast a quick eye over the room to make sure that everything was still in place as quickly as I could, and ducked out of the office, scurrying down the hall until I was far enough that I felt safe slowing down to a casual walk.

…a casual walk right around the corner, and then almost directly into my boss.

We both jerked back, startled.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted.

“I—I could ask you the same, missy,” my boss stammered before pulling himself together and managing a more affirmative: “What on earth is keeping you here at this time of night?”

“Just working late,” I said innocently. My palms sweated as I lied; I forced myself not to wipe them on my dress and give myself away. “Catching up, you know. There’s still a lot of stuff I need to get done.”

“Your desk is over there,” he pointed out, suspicion beginning to creep into his eyes.

“My legs were cramping up; I needed to stretch them,” I said. “Besides, sometimes you need a little mental break, you know? To keep from going stir-crazy.”

“Hmmph,” he said. “Well, I hope you’re not expecting to get paid for these ‘mental breaks.’”

Asshole. “Of course not, sir.”

“Good.” He fussed with his tie, straightening it. “Where are you at with the hygiene products, then?”

“Almost finished!” I assured him. “Just waiting to hear back from Sandra. And I’m halfway through those forms you left for me. When I’m done, if there are any projects that need taking on—”

“Everything’s already been assigned several months out,” he interrupted. “And we can’t give you anything until your schedule’s more regular, you understand? Of course, after the way things went last time, we think it’s best to take it slow, give you a nice soft ball out of the park.”

Could he be any more patronizing?

“I appreciate the consideration,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I’m sure that this family emergency will have cleared up in a month, and if you look at the numbers—”

“Advertising isn’t solely a numbers game, my dear,” he said condescendingly. “It’s an art. You need to have a feel for the client, an instinct for their point of view. A sort of Hemingway-esque ability to immediately grasp the situation. And, well, with so many CEOs being men, women just often aren’t able to bridge that gap. Not a reflection on you at all, my dear, just the truth.”

“But if you look at the actual results that that approach is getting, if you look at the way sales and share prices are tanking on the Dou—on Chad’s projects, for example—” I started to protest.

“My dear, please,” my boss said, a frown crossing his brow. He disliked it intensely whenever anyone didn’t help keep up the façade of his feminist credo, and here I’d gone on challenging him for a whole fifteen seconds. It would not stand. “Do you really think you’re helping your case by crying on my shoulder here? Now, be a good girl and go back to your office and do your work without complaining, and if it’s good enough, I’ll think about letting you try again in a year.”

And then, just like that, all my anger crystallized into a clear vision of the future. And I knew exactly what I had to do. I nodded to myself, a grin spreading over my face.

“Actually, sir, you know what I think would work better?”

“My dear, I assure you—”

“I quit.”

My words hit him like a gunshot, and I spun on my heel and strode away, savoring the memory of the stunned look on his face, still hearing his inarticulate spluttering.

I wished him all the best of luck in finding someone else who would put up with his bullshit.

Not.

The cool night air hit me like a blessing as I breezed out of the office doors. It had never felt so refreshing before, like a cool glass of water I could drink with my skin. I had never felt so alive before, so free.

Things had never been so clear.

They would never respect me. I knew that now. I had known for a long time, but I had hidden from it, unwilling to start all over again, constantly convincing myself that I could change things if I just worked a little bit harder, if I just took a little bit more shit, just for a little bit longer. But that game was over. I allowed myself a moment of grief for the opportunity I had hoped this job would be, but it didn’t hurt as much as I had thought it would. It felt more like something that had happened long ago, to an Ally that might as well have been another person.

This Ally had nothing but the future opening up before her, and it was time to start following my own advice and stop clinging to the past.

I pulled out my phone and dialed Hunter’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

“Ally, what’s up? How’s work?”

“Work’s just starting,” I said, a smile blooming on my face. “I’m on my way with some information I think you’ll find very interesting, and a whole new plan…”