Chapter Sixteen—Sky
The next morning, I felt amazing; I’d slept better than I had in months—maybe years—maybe even ever since I’d hit puberty. It surprised me, considering how the thought of sleeping in the same bed as Linc would have terrified me before. Then I realized with a start that Linc wasn’t in the bed with me and felt something in me sink at that knowledge.
But I had to go to work, so I got up, telling myself that I would talk to my soon-to-be husband—and that was a strange way to think about him, still—when I got home. When I went into the kitchen, I saw a note on the table.
Needed to pick up a few things at the store. Will see you when you get home. There’s a key next to the door you can use to lock up. —Linc.
I wasn’t sure what he could possibly need to pick up at the store so early in the morning—he had to have left before my alarm even went off—but I figured it wasn’t my business or he would have told me about it. Linc had at least brewed some coffee, and it was still hot in the pot.
I helped myself and decided to take a quick shower before I got ready for work. I wanted to stick as close as possible to my normal routine, even if I was in a new place; and oddly, I felt better—even with my misgivings about Linc’s disappearance—about living with him, about our sham marriage, than I had since I’d suggested it the first time.
I was even whistling to myself as I did my hair and touched up my makeup before walking out of the apartment. I nearly forgot to lock the door—and then remembered the note, and stepped back in long enough to find the key. I noticed with amusement that the lock on Linc’s door worked without the key needing to be wiggled, and reminded myself to point that out to him when I got back.
Cassie was the first person I talked to when I got to the office, and I noticed, almost immediately, the worried look on her face. She asked if I was okay, acting like I was going to break with the slightest vibration. I wasn’t that bad off. I didn’t think I was, anyway.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Is it busy today?”
“For me, very. I don’t know what’s going on in there. Good luck.”
That didn’t sound very promising. I wondered what I needed luck for. I tried to ask her what she meant by that, but she was already moving on her way. I let it go. Cassie was most likely dying to ask me some things too, but at the same time she didn’t want to get into my business. I knew that it must be hard for her; she always tended to treat me like an innocent little sister, and even though my wedding was supposed to be the next day, and even though she’d agreed to be my witness and maid of honor both, she had never quite given up on asking me if I was “really sure” that it was what I wanted to do. I suspected she was under the impression—considering what Linc had done to Stephen only a day or two before—that I’d somehow been threatened into it.
I made my way to my office. Everything seemed to be in order. I must have read a little too much into what she said. Everything was fine. I could see that now, and I started to relax. All that stuff with Stephen would eventually go away, and people would stop all the whispering rumors. I just had to wait it out.
“Knock, knock.”
I looked up to see Stephen standing in the doorway. “Good morning, sir. How can I help you?” My smile was genuine. I really did want to put any hard feelings behind us. It wasn’t like I’d known that Linc would do that. I’d had no idea that he was that way. He’d just burst in and attacked; no one could have predicted that, least of all me. If it meant that Stephen wouldn’t be harassing me anymore, I for one was willing to let bygones be bygones.
“I was hoping to talk to you about what happened the other day.” I groaned inwardly and did my best to keep the smile pasted on my face. It was literally the last thing that I wanted to talk about, but I didn’t really have a choice. He was still my boss, after all, and if it ever came out, he could get me in trouble for lying to the police.
As soon as I can meet with HR about you, we’ll see how long you’re calling the shots, I thought, but I also realized that Linc might have actually done my case more harm than good with human resources, no matter what his intentions might have been.
“What about it, boss?” I could only hope that Stephen would respond to a bit of ego-stroking; he seemed to be that type.
“I want that man found. He’s a real maniac to go around sucker punching people like that.”
“I’m sure the police are working hard to find him,” I said, not really sure what else I could say. Maybe if you hadn’t been trying to grope me, you wouldn’t have gotten sucker-punched. I doubted he wanted to hear that.
“Well, I know that you know who it was. You were talking to him, but then you lied to the police. I just want to know who it is. I can’t sleep knowing that guys like him are out there.”
I had to work hard to resist the urge to roll my eyes at his melodramatic words. I had to wonder why guys who had clearly done so much to hurt women—I had no doubts whatsoever that Stephen Jennings would only have become more and more aggressive if Linc hadn’t made him think twice—always seemed to take it the worst when the shoe was on the other foot. “Sir, I assure you that I told the cops everything that I could. I’m sure they will find him soon enough.”
“Good,” Jennings said. “Well, then you won’t mind that I used your office line to call your apartment. A man who called himself your fiancé answered, and he sounded a hell of a lot like the guy who hit me. He’ll be here soon enough and I’ll prove it. I gave you a chance to come clean, but now you’ll go down with him.”
“What?” It felt as if my heart had fallen out of my chest and hit the ground beneath my feet, my stomach not far behind it.
“The police are here, waiting for lover boy to come in,” he told me. “And as soon as they’ve got him safely in custody, I’m sure they’ll be wanting to talk to you as well.” I glared at Stephen; I no longer even cared about maintaining the pretense that everything would be fine between us.
“Get out of my office,” I told him.
“I’m your superior,” Stephen said, smirking—and then wincing when his smirk made his injured nose hurt.
“You also made multiple unwanted sexual advances towards me, as my boss,” I said. “Or did you forget the reason you got punched in the first place?”
“It doesn’t matter what I was doing,” Stephen said with a shrug. “You and he are going down.”
“We will see about that,” I told him. I was bluffing—I knew there wasn’t much chance that the police would stop to listen to me complain about a boss sexually harassing me. “But you should know that I have a meeting already scheduled with HR.”
Stephen’s eyes widened and my heart wasn’t on the floor anymore, it was pounding in my chest, sending my blood roaring through my ears. I needed to do something. “Get out of my office, now.” Stephen probably had no better idea of my authority to do that than I did, but the prospect of me speaking to HR was enough to get him out of my office; he darted from the door and towards his office so quickly I almost could have laughed if I didn’t feel the panic bubbling up inside of me.
I had to do something. If Linc never shows up, they’re not likely to just... follow me home or something, are they? What had Linc been doing in my apartment, anyway? I shook the thought aside and fumbled in my purse for my cell phone. If I could warn him before he reached the office, before he came inside, maybe we could at least put off the worst of what was happening. Stephen didn’t know his name, just that he was my fiancé—and that was yet another round of rumors I was sure was going to thrill me to no end to live through.
I dialed Linc’s number, fidgeting with the need to do something. I wanted to run away; I wanted to punch Stephen myself. I wanted to get out of my office and maybe run down the street until I found Linc and could tell him that there was a trap lying in wait for him. The call rolled over into voicemail.
“Shit.” I waited for the message to play through and tried to think of how to let Linc know what was going on, without having to waste too much time explaining. My mind was all over the place.
“Linc,” I said, when I heard the beep. “Don’t come to my office. Please. There’s cops waiting for you here, and they’re going to try and grab both of us—I’m pretty sure of it.”
I ended the call and dialed again mindlessly, hoping against hope that I would get him the second time and could tell him directly instead of having to rely on a message he might not even hear. It rolled over to voicemail again and I didn’t bother to record another one.
I called him three more times, feeling more and more panicky, and I looked out through my office door in between each call, knowing I couldn’t really do anything—after all, according to Stephen, I’d already implicated myself—but hoping I could maybe catch Linc in the office before the police descended on him. I sent him a text begging him to check his messages.
When I didn’t think I could do anything more, at least not to prevent Linc getting snatched up by the cops, I sat down at my desk at tried to think of something I could do against Stephen. “HR,” I murmured to myself. I wasn’t supposed to be meeting with them until after the wedding, but if Linc was in jail it didn’t seem all that likely the wedding was going to happen the next day anyway.
I picked up my office phone and remembered that Stephen had said that he’d used it. It was probably stupid of me, but I paused to wipe it down with a sanitizer wipe and then wipe it dry with a tissue before putting it to my ear.
“Hi, yes, is this the HR department?” My voice came out surprisingly steady.
“Yes, who’s this calling please?” I took a deep breath.
“My name is Sky Davis, and I need to speak to someone about filing a claim.”
“Worker’s Comp, FMLA, or sexual harassment?” I rolled my eyes.
“Sexual harassment,” I said. “I need to make a report to someone.” I have to admit I wanted to do it more out of spite than to actually save some other woman from Stephen’s advances, even though I was pretty sure he would soon be moving on to his next target. But anger was more powerful than empathy for the time being.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Davis, but the senior HR supervisor isn’t in today,” the woman on the other end of the line said. “At least, the one in charge of those claims.”
“When will she be back in?” I gritted my teeth. Surely Clandale didn’t take sexual harassment so lightly that the person in charge could be out of the office for days at a time; surely I could make a report the next day, or at least by the end of the week, instead of waiting until my appointment.
“She’s on a vacation, and won’t be in until next Monday,” the secretary told me.
At least Monday was earlier than my scheduled appointment, but it wouldn’t do a damned thing to help me or Linc. I was pretty sure that if I got arrested as an accessory to the crime my future husband had committed, my case with HR would be weak indeed.
“Can you please leave a message for her that I need to speak to her at her absolute earliest convenience? I have a really important sexual harassment claim I need to register, and I want to give Clandale the opportunity to handle it before I’m forced to go to the legal authorities,” I told her quickly. I didn’t know how much recourse I might have, but I figured it would at least light a fire under some asses to hint that I was willing to take a legal route to resolve the situation at hand.
“Absolutely,” the woman said, sounding startled. “Of course, Ms. Davis. I will make sure she gets the message on her personal phone.”
I finished the call and tried to think of something—anything—else that I could do, but all I could think of was trying to call Linc. And I knew that wasn’t going to accomplish anything.
I just had to wait.