After Hours

I told myself I was just curious. Regional managers probably got badge log access as standard — maybe I'd just never noticed the button before. That's what I told myself while I stayed forty minutes past everyone else clocking out, pulling six months of entry and exit times for two names.

G. Voss. W. Coulter.

The pattern was almost elegant in its consistency. Nine, ten, sometimes eleven at night, both badges swiping into the east wing within minutes of each other, then out again together two or three hours later. Always the same conference room. Always long after the cleaning crew had gone home.

I wasn't naive. People have affairs. It wasn't my business who Gerald Voss slept with.

Except it was, the moment it became the reason a good man lost his job for saying something.

The office had gone fully dark around me, just my desk lamp and the blue glow of the screen, when I heard footsteps in the hallway and nearly slammed the laptop shut like a teenager caught doing something worse than accounting.

It was just Delia from the night cleaning crew, pushing her cart. "You're here late," she said, not unkindly.

"Catching up."

She glanced at my screen — I don't think she could actually see what was on it — and something in her face flickered, careful. "Man who had this office before you used to stay late too. Right before he left."

"Did you know him?"

"Knew him enough to say hello." She kept moving, then paused at the door. "Be careful what you go looking for around here. Some doors don't close as easy as they open."

I packed up soon after, spooked more than I wanted to admit, and didn't check my personal phone again until I was in the parking garage, keys already in the ignition.

One new message. Unknown number.

Ask Harlan Reeve what happens to people who don't stay quiet.

I hadn't given anyone that phone number. I hadn't told a single person in this building that I even knew Harlan's name.