With my hair still a mess and a smile on my face, I ran into the newsroom and straight to my cubicle. Across the way, Scott spun around in his chair, his hands crossed over his chest.

He called me over excitedly.

“I just got off the phone with Jessica. She’s committed to spending a hundred grand for an advertising campaign, and she wants you to shoot the photographs.”

“Hold on a second,” I said. “I’m an editorial photographer. I don’t want to do work for advertisers. Let Billy do it.”

Scott laughed loudly, covering his mouth with his hand.

“That’s rich. This isn’t academia anymore, Haley. The publisher wants us to do this to bring revenue in, so you’re going to do it or else.”

“Or else what?”

He pointed a finger and yelled, “You’re fired.”

I sighed as I processed all the information.

“Why do you have a problem with it, anyway?” he asked as if he cared.

“It’s not complicated. I’m an editorial photographer. I don’t want my photos on advertisements.”

He shook his head.

“That’s why you’re always going to be smalltime. Commercial art is where the money is at.”

“Not everything is about money. It doesn’t make sense that she would pay a hundred-thousand dollars for me to shoot photos for her. What type of photos are they?”

“Does it matter for that kind of money?”

“There you go talking about money again.”

“You want to stop getting a paycheck?”

“No, but I want to do work I enjoy.”

“Well, if you don’t have any good reasons not to work with her, you’re going to do it. Understood?”

I nodded my head, contemplating if I should tell him about my history with Toby.

“Yeah, I’ll do it,” I said. I wasn’t about to lose my job because of her.

“Good. Get to work,” Scott said, turning back to his computer.

“Sure,” I replied, walking out of his office and back to my desk.

I sat down, tapping the spacebar on the keyboard to wake up my computer.

I noticed my zip drive wasn’t attached.

That’s weird. I could have sworn I left it in the computer.

“Hey, Scott.” I spun around in my chair. “Did you borrow one of my flash drives?”

“Nope,” he called over his shoulder.

As he typed away on his keyboard, my heart sank. The flash drive contained all the sexy photos of Toby. If they got into the wrong hands, he would kill me.

Where the hell was it? Did I take it out? Maybe Billy took it out for me?

I stood up and walked to the stairwell to head outside and see if he was taking a smoke break. When I opened the door downstairs and walked out, I saw him standing with his vaporizer.

“Hey, girl. You smoking now?”

“Please tell me you took it,” I said in a serious tone.

“Took what?” he asked then took a puff.

“My flash drive.”

I stepped toward him, my heart racing.

“No. I should have, but I didn’t. Is it missing?”

My sense of dread deepened as I nodded.

“That’s not good,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

“Crap, crap, crap,” I said as if repeating the word would make it less apt to my situation. “Those pictures of Toby were on there! What if someone leaks them?”

“Shit! Haley, you have to tell him,” Billy said.

“I can’t tell him. He’ll hate me.”

“He’s going to hate you more if those photos come out without him being ready for it. The team will hire a public relations firm to help him handle the damage control. It’ll be okay, but you need to tell him.”

“I will.”

Sometime.

“I’m going back inside,” he said, stepping toward the door.

He stopped while holding it open.

“You coming?”

“In a minute,” I said. “I’ve got to think this through.”

“You’ve got to call him and tell him. Now.”

I waved him away, pacing back and forth in a tight circuit.

What the hell am I going to do?

After a few minutes of panicked thinking, I went back inside. My thoughts were going a million miles a minute as I made it upstairs.

I walked over to Scott’s desk and stopped.

“Hey, can you ask Jessica if she took my flash drive?”

He minimized his browser window quickly then glanced up at me.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that, okay?”

“My flash drive, Scott. It’s important.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Someone took my flash drive!”

“Are you sure you didn’t misplace it? I mean…”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I didn’t lose it. That woman took it.”

“Why would she do that to you, someone she doesn’t know?”

“I’m not sure, but she’s the only one who would’ve taken it. I need to get it back. There’s some important photos on it.”

“Work photos?” He swiveled his chair around to face me. “You had them backed up, right?”

“No, they weren’t work photos.”

He breathed a sigh of relief.

“Then what’s the problem? Go buy yourself a new flash drive.”

“I need the photos that were on it.”

Why doesn’t he understand me?

“You’re making no sense right now, and I’ve got work to do.”

As he turned around, I went back to my desk and finished my shift. The next hour went by so slowly. Everyone else would be going out for Friday night, but I wanted to go home and hide.

Toby called twice on my way home, but I ignored him both times, unable to break the bad news to him. My mistake might cause him his career. He would never forgive me.