I loved Beck Griffin.

In a few short minutes, he’d made me feel better about things than I had in years.

When I’d been in Chicago, I’d felt that things were coming to a head with us and we might not make it, but we’d stayed strong and now we were moving forward, thanks to him.

Monday morning when Beck and I arrived at Fleishman together, I’d felt eyes on me. Looking across the cubicles, I saw Frank Dodd, aka Black Glasses Dude, staring hatefully at me.

“Look at him,” I whispered to Beck who’s head immediately shot up as he scanned the place and saw what I was talking about.

“Stay here,” he said and made his way through the cubicles toward Frank’s.

Of course, I didn’t listen and tagged along behind wondering what Beck was going to do.

“You got a problem, Francis?” Beck asked when he reached Frank who was now standing.

“It—it’s Frank.”

“I don’t care what it is,” Beck spit out. “You need to return Ms. Chapman’s keys immediately.” He held his hand out as if the guy would just suddenly produce them and willingly give them up.

Instead I saw Frank’s mouth open in shock before he clamped it shut and I knew he’d taken them because that was the look of a guilty man.

“I—I don’t have her k-keys.”

“Tell you what. You stay as far away from her as possible. You don’t speak to her, you don’t look at her. Understood?”

Frank nodded.

Then Beck leaned in closer to him and said dangerously, “I so much as catch you even thinking of looking at her, you’ll regret it for the rest of your goddamned life.” He turned and didn’t act surprised to see me, probably already knowing I hadn’t obeyed him if the way his eyes went up to the ceiling, his hands landed on his hips and the annoyed breath he blew out were any indication.  “Come on,” he growled shaking his head and escorted me to the boardroom.

“Thank you, baby,” I said and tiptoed up to give him a quick peck on the lips.

“Get to work,” he ordered gruffly then winked before turning to go back to his office.

I got to work and mostly stared at the 0947 wondering what it meant. Then an idea struck me. I pulled up Google on my phone and typed in “Stephen King” in the search bar and then my mouth went slack when the results page showed, amongst the many links to relevant websites, a picture of the author was also displayed with his birthdate underneath it. September—the ninth month or 09—of the year 1947.

“Caught ya,” I whispered, then taking my phone with me, and avoiding getting anywhere near Frank’s desk, I headed to Beck’s office but saw he wasn’t in it. Turning to his secretary, I asked, “Dana?” When she looked up, I said, “I’m sorry I’m just introducing myself to you now, and thank you so much for the sandwich last week, which was delicious by the way, but do you know where Beck is?”

She chuckled at my non-sequitur and I wanted to smack myself for coming off as a goof. “He just went up to the tenth floor. She looked at the time on her computer. His meeting doesn’t start for another ten minutes, so you can probably catch him if you head up there now.”

“Thank you,” I said then turned to go to the lobby, but spun back around toward her. “And it was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise,” she laughed which made me smile.

I pushed the “Up” button and waited for the car to get there, excited that I’d finally found who’d been stealing the money. I mean, I still had to prove it, but having a name to work with made things so much easier.

I felt a presence beside me at my right and turned to see Rance standing there, arms holding a big stack of papers and he was smiling at me. “Hey, sexy lady. What’s up?” he asked.

I took a step to the left because he was totally in my dance space. “Hey, Rance,” I replied apathetically.

When the doors opened, we stepped on together then as I reached to push the “10,” he did the same after shifting the papers in his arms.

“M’lady,” he said stupidly, motioning with his head toward the button for me to push it, which I did while rolling my eyes.

Again, I took a step away because he was standing so close, you know, since a six and a half feet wide space was too narrow for the both of us. Jeez. I stood looking up at the numbers as they blinked at each floor, and just after the nine flashed, Rance abruptly shifted the stack of papers to one arm and shot his free hand out and pulled the “Stop” button.

“What are you doing?” I asked sharply.

He turned to me and got right in my face. “You need to stop the bullshit now!”

“What are you talking about?” What the hell? Not knowing what else to do, I pushed the papers from his arms which scattered everywhere and as he knelt to pick them up, I pushed the “Stop” button back in so we’d go. I also clearheadedly—shocker—quickly called Beck turning the volume down on my phone so that he could hear us but Rance wouldn’t know he was on the line.

Rance jumped back up and pushed the button in again. “You fucking touch that again and I’ll hurt you!”

“You touch me and Beck will fucking kill you!”

How I suddenly got so bold was beyond me, but I think going through all I had, had given me some major chutzpah. Whatever it was, I was going with it.

Rance barked out a laugh. “That pussy won’t do anything to me. Now, listen, bitch. You stop your investigation right now or I promise, I will hurt you. Or maybe your dad’s sub shop will suddenly go up in flames.” At my startled look, he nodded. “Oh, yeah, I’ve done my homework.”

“You’re the one who’s stolen the money?” I asked, actually completely astonished at that discovery because he didn’t seem to be all that sharp.

“I can’t say it was all me because my girlfriend Tammy, who used to work here, came up with the idea after she transferred to another branch, but she said these payroll people are dumbasses who don’t pay attention to shit. And she was right.” He laughed and I prayed that Beck had answered my call and was hearing all of this.

And, damn. No wonder I’d had such a hard time pinpointing the problem. They were hitting Fleishman from two different branches.

Playing along, I asked, “And you two have created bogus bank accounts for half of the ghost employees? And mailboxes for the others?”

“Yeah. Damn, you got close, didn’t you? But do you know how easy it is to get a fake ID so we could do that shit? I’m telling you, this has all been a piece of fucking cake, it’s almost sad.” He snorted, extremely pleased with himself.

“It really is pretty sad. Believe me, you’ve had me running around like crazy trying to figure it all out.” I chuckled. Then I looked at him. “Did you steal my keys and make copies?” He nodded. “And broke into my apartment?”

“Ain’t breaking in if you have the keys,” he declared indignantly. “But, yeah, I was trying to see what you knew. Tammy told me to do it.”

“Well, thanks for not tearing my place up.”

“I’m not a criminal, you know.” He looked insulted. “But it was a good thing you weren’t there ‘cause I had my gun and things might’ve gotten a little messy.”

Oh, my God.  

“Yeah, I was lucky,” I acknowledged, trying to stay calm in light of the fact that this guy probably would’ve killed me had I been home when he’d broken in. “But something I’m curious about is what does 0947 mean?”

“Caught that, did ya? That was to make it easier for us to locate the accounts we created.” He nodded confidently. “Well, you see, Tammy and I had our first date in September, you know, the ninth month. The four is because she said I gave her four orgasms that night.”

Ew.

“And we both have seven tattoos.”

“The zero?” I asked.

“That was just to throw you off,” he answered with a shrug and a smug look that I wanted to smack right off his face.

“That you did,” I confirmed.

He looked proud. “Tammy’s fuckin’ smart. We have enough money now to fly to the Maldives and live there for the rest of our lives, because they have no extradition laws with the US.”

I nodded. “She does sound smart. That’s a pretty clever scheme you two developed.”

“So you’ll drop your investigation and won’t tell, right? Because I will burn your dad’s restaurant down. I’ve done it before.”

Yikes. Okay, Academy Award time. “Look, I get paid regardless of whether I find anything or not. It’s nothing to me if I drop it except less work.” I laughed then narrowed my eyes at him. “But to keep me quiet, I want fifty grand.”

He looked at me, unfazed, like he was weighing his options, as if he’d expected me to take this route because he was used to dealing with people who wanted something in exchange for their silence. God. After a few moments, he finally said, “Deal,” and held his hand out for me to shake.

“We can set a drop off time later,” I instructed.

“We’re flying out day after tomorrow, so it’ll have to be soon.”

 “LaGuardia or JFK?”

“JFK is like three thousand cheaper. Our flight leaves at seven Wednesday morning.”

“That’s awesome. I’d love to visit the Maldives sometime.”

“They’ve got this beach where these plankton, you know like the guy on Sponge Bob, glows. It’s like all blue. They call it bioevanescence, like that band with that chick. But, yeah, I can’t wait to see those little fuckers all lit up.” He grinned.

God. Tammy had to have been the mastermind because this guy was just dumb.

“I’ll come visit sometime and you can show me,” I said with a chuckle.

“That’d be cool,” he said, chuckling right back.

“Okay, Rance, can we go now? If I’m done with this job, I can get home and do some yoga.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You for real promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said. “Let’s go.”

He smiled at me then pushed the button and we continued up to the tenth floor where, when the doors opened, Beck, Joel, Mr. Hartford the COO, Mr. Fleishman the CEO and two security guards were waiting. Oh, thank God my phone call had worked. I stepped off and rushed into Beck’s arms who immediately pushed me behind him as the security men moved forward and grabbed Rance by his arms.

“Hey! What’re you doing?” Rance yelled as his papers fell to the floor around him again.

“We’re detaining you, young man,” Mr. Fleishman announced, “until the police arrive. Your girlfriend has already been picked up. We’ve got everything you said recorded and will be handing it over to our attorneys.”

Joel held his phone up to back up what Mr. Fleishman said.

“What? This isn’t fair!” Rance screamed as one of the guards handcuffed him then they both escorted him back onto the elevator, probably taking him to their office in the lobby to wait for the police. “I get a phone call!” Rance yelled. “I get a pho—”

The elevator doors closed and they were gone. It was only then that Beck turned and held me in his arms.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Yes. That was so weird!”

“That was very brave of you, young lady,” Mr. Fleishman said. Joel and Mr. Hartford nodded in agreement. “But I hope you were just playing along with what you said.” He winked at me and we all laughed.

“Most definitely,” I confirmed. Looking up at Beck, I said, “Can we go home?”

The gentlemen chuckled and Mr. Fleishman ordered, “Take her home, son.”

“I will, sir,” Beck answered, taking my hand and started to lead me to the elevator.

“Uh. Do you mind if we take the stairs?” I requested and the men laughed again as they headed back to Mr. Fleishman’s office.

Beck saw that I was serious, and replied, “Of course.” He held my hand as we walked toward the stair door, and he asked again, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I think so. If you’re wondering if I’m gonna cry, I probably will at some point because that was stressful. But for now, I think I’m good.”

“Good.” He squeezed my hand then held the door open for me.

Inside the stairwell, before we started down the stairs, I looked up at him. “It all started on the stairs.”

He grinned. “It did, didn’t it?” Taking my hand as we started down, he said, “We’re bound to have our ups and downs.” I groaned at his attempt at a joke. “But I’ve never really trusted stairs. They always seem to be up to something.”

“Oh, my gosh. Stick to your day job,” I teased but couldn’t help laughing.

“Baby,” he said. “You know I’m hys-stair-ical.” I stopped walking down, turning and making like I was going back up. “Where’re you going?”

“I’m gonna take the elevator.”

“Ha ha. C’mon.”

Just before we hit the landing at the seventh floor, he mumbled, “I’ve gotta apologize to Serial Killer Frank before we go.”

“Shit. I forgot about him. He’s probably plotting our deaths as we speak,” I said.

We walked into the lobby out of the stairwell and headed for Frank’s cubicle. As we approached, I saw the fear flash in his eyes and I felt bad for him. Maybe he really was a nice guy.

“Hey, Frank,” Beck began. “I need to apologize to you about what I said earlier.”

“I—it’s okay,” he said, squinting up at Beck.

Oh, God. The poor guy had a stutter and I think his eyes were bad too, so he hadn’t been giving me dirty looks, he’d just been trying to see me. Shit.

“Do you like brownies, Frank?” I asked feeling horrible about how I’d treated him.

“Sh—sure. M-my w-wife makes r-really good ones.”

“Well, hers are probably better than mine, but it’s the least I can do. I’m sorry about the way I treated you.”

He nodded and Beck shook his hand apologizing again.

I retrieved my things from the boardroom and after pulling on my coat, walked with Beck to his office to get his coat.

“We’re terrible people,” I blurted.

“Nah. What we did was perfectly normal with what all had been going on.” We left his office and headed to the lobby. “You okay to ride down?”

I nodded, still upset about how I’d behaved.

As we waited for the doors to open, Beck glanced back at Frank. “Besides, his real name’s probably Keyser Söze and he’s a fucking crime lord.”

I giggled as we got on the elevator. Taking his face in my hands, I said, “Thank you once again for making a shitty day not so shitty.”

Then I kissed him long and hard and deep and wet.