“Is there something going on that I should know about?” she asked. “Animal rights activists angry you guys test cookies on zebras or something like that?”
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. I was tempted to tell her about Zeke, and how Czech organized crime apparently wanted to blackmail us into paying them off, but kept my mouth shut. “Of course not. Must be random or maybe a mistake. I bet the cameras outside caught whoever did it.”
“Of course,” she said, nodding. “Let’s call the police. They can—”
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head, and she gave me an odd look.
“Why?” she asked, pursing her lips.
My mind worked into overdrive. “We can’t start this expansion out with bad press,” I said. “Imagine what that’ll do.”
She slowly relaxed and tapped her chin again. “You’re right,” she said, and I felt a deep, deep relief. “We’ll have to come up with some reason why this happened though. If I’m going to be the CMO, I need you to tell me everything. Can you do that?”
“Of course,” I said, nodding quickly. “I’ll clean this up. You’ve done enough for one day.”
“Please, I’ll help,” she said. “Although you’re paying me for this.” She laughed, and we found some brooms in the closet. It took a while, but we cleaned up all the glass, and called down to maintenance to report an accidentally broken window. I didn’t mention the brick, and they didn’t ask how it happened, only placed plastic over the hole and taped all around it.
“We’ll fix it when we can,” the maintenance guy said, and disappeared downstairs. Lisa left not long after him with a wave.
“Fun first day,” she said on her way out.
I sat down at the conference table and twirled side to side with the brick in my hand. I didn’t hear Bret come in, but when I looked up, he stood near the entrance, leaning against the wall. He smiled a bit, and looked gorgeous in a pair of faded denim jeans and a work shirt rolled to the elbows.
“Hey,” he said. “Just got back from the factory. What’s with the brick?”
“Window,” I said, and pointed back over my shoulder.
He looked up and blinked. “Oh, shit,” he said, then stared at the brick. “I’m guessing that’s what did it.”
“Lisa was here when it happened,” I said, and buried my face in my hands. “God, we can’t hire anyone, can we? They’re going to find out about Zeke. Everyone’s going to know.”
“Shit,” he said softly and sat down next to me. I barely managed to keep myself from crying, and as I sat there, miserable and low, I got the sense that I was going to feel like this a lot in the coming days, weeks, and months. He put his hand on my shoulder and there was some part of me that wanted to throw myself against his chest and hug him tight like I did in the old days—but I held back, caught in the moment, stuck in my own grief.
“Seriously, Bret, how can we bring in new staff?” I asked. “I mean, is it unethical?”
“I don’t think it’s unethical,” he said, eyes narrowing, his hand going tighter on my shoulder. “But I do think we need to be careful.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“We should hire security.” He stood up then and paced across the floor. I heard glass crunch under his foot and I grimaced. He stooped and picked some of it out of the rug, and muttered about getting a serious vacuum cleaner in there as soon as he could.
“I don’t want security standing around the office,” I said, leaning back in the chair. I pictured a bunch of big guys with bald heads and earpieces and suits trying to blend into the background but making everyone so uncomfortable. “If a place needs security, that means it’s not safe to begin with.”
“What did Lisa say when it happened?” he asked, poking at the tape that held the plastic down.
“She seemed weirdly unfazed,” I said. “I told her it must’ve been a mistake, even though I know it wasn’t.”
“Did she buy that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But we’ll need to tell her the truth.” I drummed my fingers on the desk. “If we’re going to have security, we’ll have to at least tell upper management what’s going on.”
“You’re right,” he said, “even though that’ll be painful. Think Lisa will still work here once she finds out?”
“Maybe,” I said, shaking my head, “but that almost doesn’t matter. If she works here, she’s nuts, right? Why would anyone want to work here, and why would we hire anyone that would want to?”
He laughed softly and came back over to me. I hated that stupid laugh, like how I was feeling was absurd and dumb—even though I knew I was spiraling out of control. I was overanalyzing, obsessing about little details that didn’t really matter, and I still couldn’t help myself.