It had been days since Daphne had heard from Demetrio Hernandez, but maybe that was for the best. Met hadn’t been what he pretended to be. That much had been obvious from the multiple and sordid reports of his drunken carousing at Cody’s Bar and Grill.

The article was out. In fact, it was sitting open on the desk in front of her. Daphne had been amusing herself for the last hour or more by staring at the full color photograph of Met Hernandez. It was almost as if Carson had been trying to make one of those old magazine pin-ups from a teeny bopper magazine from the eighties. In fact, Daphne figured it was totally possible to rip out the full page photos of Met Hernandez and pin them up on a wall.

Of course, that was providing you could stand his lying and two-faced bullshit in your life. She was done with that. She was done with men who claimed they didn’t have a drinking problem, but did. She was done with guys who were secretly malignant narcissists and claimed to be wonderful lovers. And she was most certainly done with men who masqueraded as one thing while secretly knowing that they were another. And that pretty much made her done with men.

“Daphne?”

There was a knock at her office door. Daphne stood up to go and answer. She wasn’t all too surprised when Mr. Abernathy walked into her office and offered her a big, broad smile. She waved him to a seat on the couch opposite her desk before taking her place in her chair once again.

“I just wanted to stop by in person to tell you once again how proud I am of this work that you did,” Abernathy gushed. The man was all smiles. His bristly gray hair was neatly combed, and he looked as though he had just come from the barbershop. “I don’t think we could have asked for things to go better. I know that the article in the Tattler was the beginning of the week, but this beautiful layout in two different prime publications was the end of the week, and they almost worked better together. Your disaster management skills are unmatched, young lady. They truly are.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“That’s actually what I want to talk to you about a little more.” Abernathy shifted in his seat and crossed his legs. Then he uncrossed his legs and tried to readjust his suit pants. He looked very nervous. Why? Was he about to fire her? This was bad. Or at least she had a bad feeling about it.

“What’s going on?” Daphne prompted. “You’re acting like you do when you have to fire someone.”

“Well, that’s sort of the problem,” Abernathy blurted out. “We’ve had an official complaint from the better business bureau and the department of labor filed by Justin Sorenson.”

“I see.” She didn’t see. Not at all. But at this point, what could she do? “And what were these complaints regarding?”

“Sexual harassment.” Now Abernathy looked apologetic. “Justin is alleging that you were harassing him and that he got fired because he refused to sleep with you.”

Daphne didn’t say anything because she just didn’t have the words. She was trying to process what Abernathy had just said because her brain kept telling her that she wasn’t hearing the man correctly.

“I’m sorry,” Daphne said with barely concealed frustration. “Did you say that he filed a complaint against me because I tried to get him to sleep with me and he wouldn’t?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Abernathy cleared his throat. He was now rubbing his palms on the tops of his thighs as though he intended to wear a hole in his slacks. “As I said, we don’t quite know what to do.”

“What does he want you to do?” Daphne could see her career spinning slowly around and around the toilet bowl. Soon enough, it would go down the drain so quietly that it would be like she’d never even had a promising career to begin with.

“He wants us to hire him back.”

“And fire me?”

“On, no.” Abernathy was very adamant about this. “He wants a return to the status quo.”

“I see.” She nodded and then gestured to Abernathy. “Then, I guess you need to hire him back.”

“What?”

“I’ll quit.”

“No!” Abernathy was waving his hands in front of his face. “You can’t quit!”

“But I would have to,” she said dully. “Don’t you see? He wants a return to the time when he could harass me on a regular basis without putting himself out. It was much easier to harass me here in the building. And now that he’ll have the knowledge that he can’t be prosecuted or even reprimanded for anything he does, that man will be absolutely unhinged. If I were you, I would be warning the other people in this building that there is a predator on the loose.”

“Don’t say that!” Abernathy protested. He was wringing his hands together now, and Daphne was suddenly struck by the fact that the public relations expert had no idea how to handle this PR problem.

“What you need to do is to hire him back and set some kind of trap for him,” Daphne suggested. “Put him in a situation where you know he’s going to snap, and then just wait around to document the crap out of it when it happens.”

“Do you really think so?”

“You just said disaster management was my thing, right?” She was so disgusted by this that she felt sick to her stomach. “So, trust me when I say that I really think so.”

“That’s okay.” Daphne realized all of a sudden that it really was. She was fine with this. “I’ll find another job. As long as you’re willing to give me a good recommendation, of course.”

“Of course.” He looked sick to his stomach. “This isn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” she retorted. “Why would this be any different?”

How could this grown man sit here and tell her that he was treating her unfairly and yet not do anything about it? Daphne stood up from her chair and turned her back on Mr. Abernathy. She stared around at the familiar features of her office. It hadn’t been very long ago that she had been offered the chance to work as a senior account representative. Perhaps three years had passed. It might seem like a long time, but considering she had expected to be working in this office for this company until she retired at sixty-five or some other incomprehensible age, this was a shock.

“I should have stayed in the junior rep department,” she murmured to nobody in particular. “I bet he wouldn’t have been interested in me if I had stayed in the pool with everyone else.”

The junior account reps all shared a huge room on the opposite end of this floor. Their desks were set up to look like what Daphne often thought of as an office dormitory. All lined up in a row with phones and file cabinets, laptops, paper, pens, and basically everything you needed to do your job in a communal sort of pile.

Daphne turned to face Mr. Abernathy once again. “Who’s getting my office?”

Of course, this was actually a question about whom he was promoting into her job position. The odd thing was that he looked guilty. He turned his head and could not meet her gaze as he cleared his throat. What was the big secret? Had Justin had the balls to make demands? And why was he having such an easy time manipulating the whole company?

“Carolina Aguilar will take over your position and your office.” Abernathy’s announcement was delivered in a flat, almost monotone voice. He didn’t sound particularly thrilled.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Daphne had a mental image of Carolina Aguilar. It was from the other night at the Italian restaurant. The woman had been particularly unsupportive in her own rude way. Or maybe she’d just been rude and it felt unsupportive because of the situation. Regardless, there had been something very off about the woman, and now she was getting promoted right on top of Daphne? This was wrong. It was all wrong!

“Mr. Abernathy, I’m confused.” Of course Daphne was confused, but she was also taking a shot in the dark here, so she felt the urge to cross her fingers in hopes that she wasn’t way off base. “Does Carolina have seniority?”

“Well, no.” He folded his hands tightly in his lap.

Daphne could have sworn the man wanted to leap up and start pacing or something, but he forced himself to sit still. Why? Did he believe it made him seem firmer in his opinions? How silly. She raised her eyebrows expectantly. This man was supposed to be her boss. Right now, she was treating him like some lowly probationary employee, and she didn’t care one bit.

“Carolina is very skilled.”

“Uh huh.” Daphne folded her arms over her chest. “And let me guess. She’s promised you that she can control Justin. She has something on him. Or does she have something on you? There’s a lot of pushing people around going on right now, and I’m really surprised that you’re tolerating it.”

He stood up and straightened the lapels of his impeccable suit. “What do you mean? I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but you’re completely off base. There’s nothing untoward going on here.”

“Oh, really?” Daphne said flatly. “You just told me that I’m essentially getting let go. Not that you’re actually going to fire me but that you’re rehiring Justin Sorenson even though you were the one insistent on firing him less than a week ago. Now you’ve changed your mind and squeezed me out intentionally in the hopes that I would just resign and go elsewhere. Not only that, but you already have someone lined up to take my job! And that was after you came to my office to compliment me on the work that I did on the Hernandez account!” Daphne pointed at Abernathy and did not even bother to try and hide her anger. “So, I’ll ask you again, Thomas Abernathy. What do they have on you?”

“I cheated on my wife.”

He sank back into the chair and put his hands over his face. If Daphne hadn’t known better, she would have thought the man was about to start sobbing his eyes out. No. Wait. Yes, he was absolutely starting to cry. What. The. Hell? When had the entire world gone crazy?

“How long can you put this off?” Daphne licked her lips. She didn’t want to change jobs. She didn’t want to move out of her office or try to find a new place to work and start at the bottom of the ladder again. It wasn’t fair. None of it was. So, she aimed to figure all of this out. “Is there some kind of deadline or legal bullshit on Justin’s request or complaint?”

“No. In theory, I have thirty days to respond.” Abernathy sniffled and reached for a tissue in his front jacket pocket. “But I don’t want to let things go that long. I’m afraid Justin will get impatient and show the photographs to my wife.”

“Yeah, he’s good with a camera,” Daphne agreed bitterly. “He’s probably angry that I turned his attempt to make Met Hernandez look like a drunken moron into a chance for the guy to come out smelling like roses.”

“So, Justin was the one who took the damaging photographs of Met Hernandez and sent them to the Tattler?” Abernathy sounded mystified.

How could this man be in the business of public relations and seem so naive when it came to all of the dirt? Not only that, but he had his own dirt! He made his fortune protecting other people’s dirt and then had the audacity to go make his own? Hello?

“Did you not think you were going to get caught cheating?” Daphne could not help it. She could not understand why this man had been unfaithful to his wife. “You’ve been married for decades! Why would you do anything to screw that up? I’ve met Blanche. She’s a really nice lady. Did you get bored or something?”

“No.” Abernathy was now really squirming right there in the chair before her desk. What had he done? It had to be horrible because he was acting like there was a guillotine hanging over his head. “I—uh—I met a young lady here at the office.”

It all clicked, and Daphne was absolutely unable to contain her groan of disgust and despair. “For heaven’s sake! You slept with Carolina!”

“She’s a very talented young lady,” Abernathy squeaked. “You would have to spend some time with her, but I think you’d really like her.”

“I wouldn’t like her at all sitting in my desk. And I would like her even less if I were any other employee in this company and I found out that she was screwing her way up the ladder to the top.” Daphne shook her head. What was wrong with this man? “I expected better of you. I really did.”

The idea of quitting her job to go elsewhere so Mr. Abernathy could stick his mistress in her job and not get caught doing it was preposterous. She could not abide the thought of just giving up. That meant she had to find out what Justin was really up to. He had to be doing something illegal. Met’s brother had hired that private investigator to see what he could dig up on Justin. Surely that wouldn’t be hard. The guy had always been bragging about his connections in law enforcement that allowed him to get away with pretty much anything he wanted.

Daphne drummed her fingers on her desktop. The rhythmic noise helped her focus. She needed help. She was so frustrated and confused right now that she was spinning mental circles in her head. There had to be a way to tie all of this up and make Justin Sorenson pay for his misdoings. He had threatened her, threatened Met, threatened Abernathy, and he was constantly prying into people’s private business.

“Justin is an opportunist,” Daphne murmured to nobody in particular. “Where would he see an opportunity to make those pictures pay? Where would he find someone willing to trade him favors in exchange for his harassment of a Hernandez?”

There was only one person that fit that description, and his name was Captain Paul Weatherby. There had to be a connection. And when Daphne found it, the whole thing would come tumbling down like a house of cards.

“Don’t do anything just yet,” Daphne told Abernathy. “So help me God, if you put Carolina in my office, I will string you up by your toes. I’m not resigning.”

“You’re not?” He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to be happy or sad about that. “But what about Carolina’s promotion? I promised her something.”

“Then you shouldn’t have let your dick do the talking, sir.” Daphne pointed at her boss. “And you’ve got some explaining to do. It’s time to come clean with your wife. Even if she leaves your ass, it will at least be out of the shadows and unable to be used as a weapon against you. Get a clue, sir. This is what we do, remember?”

He sighed and lifted himself out of the chair. “Why do women have to be so pushy?”

“Because we spend all of our time cleaning up after men,” Daphne retorted. Or at least today that’s what it most certainly felt like.