The Corner Office
The Next One Out

Three Names

August 25, 2026 · Part 8 of 10 · 2 min

I couldn't shake the look on Whitney's face, so that night I went back into the badge logs — not for Gerald and Whitney this time, but for every director-level exit in the past four years.

There were three.

A marketing director named Corinne Beck, who "resigned for personal reasons" fourteen months ago — two weeks after an ethics complaint logged under her name. A regional trainer named Odessa Kline, let go "due to budget cuts" nine days after a formal HR meeting requesting an investigation into "leadership conduct." And, eighteen months before that, a senior analyst named Farida Solis, quietly moved to a different division after raising what her file only called "concerns about management behavior," and never heard from again.

Three names, three complaints, three quiet exits, every one of them dated within two weeks of raising a concern about Gerald Voss.

Harlan wasn't an isolated incident. He was the fourth.

I sat with that for a long time, the office empty and dark around me, before I let myself think about Whitney's face by the elevator. I thought about the badge logs — always the same conference room, always after hours, but never, I realized now, going back further than fourteen months. Right around the time Corinne Beck disappeared from the company directory.

What if Whitney hadn't chosen any of this? What if she'd been exactly what Corinne tried to report, and then watched what happened to Corinne for trying?

I was still staring at the screen, chest tight, when a knock hit my door so sharp I nearly came out of my chair.

Yolanda Pruitt stood in the doorway in her coat, purse already on her shoulder like she'd been about to leave the building and changed her mind. No clipboard tonight. No cardigan smile.

"I saw your printer history," she said quietly, and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. "We need to talk. Now."

Continue the story Part 9: The Copy →

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