by Marisa Logan
THE END
Bonus Book 5 -- Tessa's Spring
A Contemporary Suspense Romance
J.L. STARR
Copyright © 2016 by J.L. Starr
All rights reserved, worldwide.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Book Description
Tessa Cunningham has always been a health-conscious person, growing her own fresh vegetables at home and spending her days working at a company with a reputation for growing healthy, organic food. But when she comes across some reports that raise questions, she starts to wonder whether her employer is operating entirely on the up and up.
With the help of her neighbor, a hipster health nut named Samson, she starts her own investigation into her employer's practices. But before they know it, Tessa and Samson have gotten in way over their heads.
This is an 18,000 word standalone, contemporary suspense romance novella with no cliffhanger.
This book is followed by Tessa's Summer, second in the series and now available on Amazon.com.
Chapter 1
“It's not illegal,” Tessa's boss told her. “Everything we're doing is well within the boundaries of the law.”
“That doesn't make it right,” Tessa said. “I mean, these reports—”
“Those reports are company secrets,” Mr. Morgan said. “I trust we have an understanding in that regard? I can't have anyone leaking our internal information.”
Tessa held the file folder in her hands, struggling with what was inside. She wasn't sure what to do, though her gut was telling her that there was something very wrong going on at Dunham Enterprises. The nationwide food chain had a reputation for providing clean, wholly organic products, though the more time she spent on the inside, the more Tessa was starting to question what she knew about her employer.
“Are we going to have a problem here?” Mr. Morgan asked. He studied her like he was readying the chopping block.
“No problem, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “It's just that I don't want to get myself into any trouble. If I'm liable...”
“Don't worry.” He smirked and patted her on the arm. “You won't be held liable for anything. Besides, like I said, everything we're doing is perfectly legal. All the major corporations operate this way.”
“They do?”
“Of course. It's the cost of doing business. Perfectly standard.”
“Oh.” Tessa looked down at the file folder, wondering if she'd simply misunderstood it. “All right. Sorry for taking up so much of your time.”
“No problem at all.” Mr. Morgan turned to leave, then paused and looked back at her. “I'm glad you brought this to my attention first, Tessa. You're a smart girl. I've always thought you do an excellent job here. You probably know that if internal information were ever leaked to the press, it could cause a scandal. That's the sort of thing that costs people their jobs. I'm sure you don't want that.”
“No,” Tessa said. “I definitely don't.”
“Good.”
Mr. Morgan left, and Tessa returned to her cubicle. She sat in her chair, her shoulders slumped, and tossed the folder onto her desk.
A head topped with short, spiky read hair popped up over the wall of her cubicle. “What was that all about?” Mindy asked. She glanced down at Tessa, then looked over the wall at Mr. Morgan as he headed out the office door.
“Nothing,” Tessa said, keeping her head down. “I don't want to talk about it.”
Mindy leaned her arms on the wall and peered down at her. “You okay, Tess? You've been pent up all day.”
Tessa tapped her fingers on the folder in front of her. She opened her mouth to say something, then remembered what Mr. Morgan had said about not letting certain things be spread. “It's nothing. I'm just having a rough day. I can't wait to get finished here, go home, pop open a bottle of wine, and get my hands dirty.”
Mindy snorted and shook her head. “Okay then, if you say so.” She disappeared back into her own cubicle, leaving Tessa alone with her work.
She booted up her computer and navigated through the company's archaic online file system until she found the folders she needed. This was supposed to be the easy part of her work. Tessa's department at Dunham was responsible for organizing inventory reports, results from health inspections, and internal safety test reports, all gathered from the hundreds of manufacturing branches the company had around the country.
There was an endless stream of files and reports coming into the office. So many files, in fact, that there was a three year backlog on getting them entered into the system. There were stacks upon stacks of boxes lined up along the wall on one side of the office, containing all of the files that needed to be organized, typed up, investigated, and eventually disposed of.
Tessa started entering the information from the report into the online database. It was a tedious process, mostly consisting of typing in the handwritten notes made by plant managers and inspectors. The company handled a lot of things digitally, but with a corporation this size, there was simply no way to avoid good old fashioned paperwork for some of the most mundane, grueling tasks.
As she entered the information from the report, Tessa tried not to think about the meaning behind it. She didn't know much about how pesticides and Genetically Modified Organisms worked, but Dunham Enterprises always advertised its products as being completely natural and organic.
The report showed that a number of GMOs were used in the ingredients of a large number of Dunham's products, and that there were traces of some potentially harmful pesticides. The man who'd written the report, one of Dunham's own internal Quality Assurance Inspectors, had made a note in his report suggesting further investigation.
Tessa finished entering the information into the computer, hit “SUBMIT,” then placed the folder in her outbox with the rest of the files she'd gone through that day. It was getting close to 5:00, so she grabbed her stack of folders and headed for the shredding room.
There were several large, industrial-size cross-cut paper shredders standing throughout the room, each one with a waste bin packed with little confetti-sized bits of paper. The janitor, Corey, was already there dumping the contents of the bins into large plastic bags and loading them into a trash cart to be hauled off for recycling.
“Hey there, Tessa,” he said, nodding to her. “I haven't dumped number three yet, you can use that one.”
“Thanks,” Tessa said. She set the stack of folders on the side of the machine and started pulling out any staples she found so they wouldn't jam up the shredder. Bits of paper snowed down into the waste bin in a steady stream as she fed the files in one after another.
She saved the file on the GMOs for last. She tapped her fingers against it, considering something stupid and possibly dangerous. She didn't want to get anyone in trouble, and she really didn't want to lose her job. She could cost a lot of people their jobs if this information got leaked.
But on the other hand, she thought about all the people who could potentially get sick if they didn't realize what they were eating. She didn't believe that all GMOs were automatically dangerous, but if there was even the possibility, she could end up responsible for a lot of suffering.
Tessa chewed on her lip until the other files finished shredding and the snowfall into the waste bin stopped. Then she tucked the last remaining folder under her jacket and turned to leave.
“Tessa?” Corey said.
She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder.
“You have yourself a good night,” he said, nodding to her.
“Thanks. You too.”
She hurried from the room, stopping at her desk to get her purse. She folded the file in half and shoved it into her purse, the
n headed out the door, feeling eyes on her back the entire time.
Chapter 2
When she got home, Tessa pulled out the stolen file folder and stared at it. She wasn't sure why she'd taken it. She had no idea what to do with it. It had just seemed like the thing to do.
Thinking about the consequences set her on edge. She licked her lips and looked around her apartment, then shoved the folder in her desk drawer and tried to forget about it. She wiped her hands on her shirt, pacing around the room. Without any ideas about what she was supposed to do, or if she should even do anything at all, she decided she needed some stress relief. Something to keep her hands and her mind busy.
She changed out of her work clothes and into jeans and an old, worn shirt. She grabbed her gardening caddy off the counter and headed out the back door, to the broad community gardening plot that sat between the apartment buildings.
The plot was huge, stretching out behind her apartment building all the way up to the next building across the way. It had been divided into several dozen patches, each “owned” by a different tenant. Tessa wasn't sure how the community gardening plot had gotten started; she'd inherited her small plot when she'd moved in, taking over the space that had belonged to the previous tenant. Tending her garden had become her hobby and her stress relief. Plus it was nice to have fresh-grown produce throughout the warmer parts of the year. Most of the tenants traded fruits and vegetables with each other, so while Tessa mostly grew tomatoes and watermelons, she always had plenty of fresh berries, carrots, and other goods given to her by her neighbors.
She greeted a few of her neighbors on her way to her part of the patch. It was a nice, sunny day outside, so there were several people out tending their gardens. She said hello to an older woman who grew flowers in her plot, and a young gay couple who had a little coy pond in the corner of their plot. Everyone grew something different, and the only rule was that everything had to be all-natural. There were no chemical fertilizers, no artificial products. Just a patchwork field covered in little plots of nature.
Tessa pulled on her gloves and got to work digging up the soil and mixing in organic fertilizer she bought from a local supplier. It was early in the season yet, and her plot was mostly an empty patch of dirt for now. She needed to fertilize the soil after the long, dry winter, and loosen the dirt to give the roots plenty of room to grow and thrive. She planted several tall trellises in the ground around the patch, to give the tomato plants somewhere to grow. They would help keep the tomatoes off the ground, keeping them cleaner and easier to inspect and harvest.
She was working up a pretty good sweat when the ringing of a bicycle bell announced the arrival of her neighbor, Samson. He pedaled his bike around the back of the apartment building and stopped not far from her. He pulled a wooden case of herb seedlings from the basket hanging from the handlebars, then brought it over to his plot, right next to Tessa's. His garden was a busy, crowded patch, with vegetables growing in the dirt, and benches lining the area, each covered in collections of little clay plots for his herbs.
“Good afternoon, Tessa,” he said, flashing her a smile. He had long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, and he had a style that could only be described as “hipster hippie.” He wore skinny jeans and a loose flannel shirt over a tight tie-dyed t-shirt. Sometimes Tessa thought he belonged back in the sixties, but the iPod in his pocket marked him as a millennial through and through.
“Hey, Samson.” She waved at him, scattering specks of dirt from her gloves.
“How's life treating you?” He set the box of herb seedlings on one of his benches and started sorting through them. He dumped some of the old, dry dirt from the clay pots on the bench and refilled them with fresh soil to help the new herbs thrive.
“I'm not even sure how to answer that question anymore.” She lowered her head, trying to focus on her work. She hacked through a patch of dirt with a little hand rake, wishing she could slice through her worries the way she did these troublesome roots.
“That sounds ominous,” he said. “Anything you care to talk about?”
Tessa thought about the file folder sitting in her desk drawer. She knew she couldn't talk about that to anyone. Not unless she was ready to be a whistle blower. And she couldn't do something like that when she wasn't even sure if Dunham was doing anything wrong. Like Mr. Morgan had said, there was nothing illegal about using GMOs. She couldn't even be sure if they were dangerous.
“Ever have a moral dilemma?” she asked.
“Once,” he said, nodding sagely.
“What about?”
“Well, it was back when I was much more religious.”
“You?” Tessa looked him up and down, from his ponytail to his leather sandals. “Religious?”
He laughed while he settled one of his seedlings into a pot. “Believe it or not, Tessa, I was raised to be Very Catholic.”
“'Very' Catholic?” Tessa mulled that over. “As opposed to only 'Slightly' Catholic?”
“Indeed.” He winked at her. “The difference is, someone who is only Slightly Catholic only goes to church on holidays, and they celebrate Christmas and Easter more for the presents and candy than for the religious aspects. But my parents wanted me to be Very Catholic, which meant church every Sunday, and always wearing our Sunday best.”
“I'm trying to picture you in a suit and tie,” Tessa said, smirking. “Nah. Ain't happening.”
He chuckled. “Oh, I'll show you some old family photographs sometime. I even had a sensible haircut.” He brushed a stray strand of hair back over his shoulder.
“So what happened?”
“Well,” he said, pausing in his work and looking off into the distance, “I got into a debate with one of my Very Catholic friends about something that I couldn't resolve. It came down to a question of morals, and where morals come from.”
“Where they come from?” Tessa frowned as she thought that over, while she continued digging through roots in the dirt. “I don't understand.”
“Well, here's the way to look at it. Say I gave you a gun.”
“You hate guns.”
“I know.” He laughed. “But hypothetically, say I gave you a gun, walked you into a room, and asked you to shoot a total stranger. Would you do it?”
“Of course not.” She frowned at him, not having any idea where this was going.
“Few people would. And that's the key. We could ask anyone here,” he gestured with his little shovel to the other gardeners in their plots, “and they'd all say the same thing. They wouldn't shoot the person. No one would, not even Topher.”
Tessa glanced across the field at Topher. He was busy digging up dirt with a hoe, talking rather animatedly to himself as he did so. He had to be the most energetic and animated person Tessa knew. Sometimes he gave her the willies.
“Because none of us are psychopaths,” Tessa said. Not even Topher.
“But then, how do you know you have free will?”
Tessa paused in her work with her rake still dug into the dirt. “I...wow. Okay. Well, I guess I know I have free will because I could decide to shoot the person, even though I never would.”
“So then what's stopping you?”
Tessa struggled with that for a long moment, but she had no answer.
“My friend,” Samson said, “claimed the only thing stopping you is God.”
“Hmm.” Tessa stood up and stretched out her back. “I mean, I guess in a way that makes sense. But I don't think I'm Very Religious enough to quite buy that.”
“Neither was I.” Samson shrugged, then resumed setting his new seedlings into the clay pots. “It seemed to clash so much with my idea of what God was, what free will is meant to be. I couldn't accept the idea that God was like a giant hand, holding me back from doing something bad. And I started thinking about the difference between right and wrong, and how I knew what was right and what wasn't.”
He paused with his little shovel stuck in the dirt, a distant look in his eyes. “I realized t
hat the only way I knew how to tell what was right was to look at the bible for answers. And then I realized that so many people over the course of time have looked at those words, and found completely different answers. And many more who claim to follow God don't even follow His word.”
He shrugged and went back to his work. “That's when I lost my faith in religion. Not in God, but in organized religion. In the institution of it. And I started looking within myself to find my morals. Analyzing situations to search for the right and wrong within my own heart.”
“So what you're telling me is,” Tessa said, sighing, “I've got to settle my moral dilemma on my own?”
“Well, I can offer my viewpoint, if you want to talk about it. But you,” he pointed the shovel at her, “have to determine your own moral compass. One person's right can easily be another person's wrong.”
Tessa pulled off her gloves and grabbed her water bottle. She thought over Samson's words while she took a drink. What was her personal right or wrong? On the one hand, she thought it would be wrong to hide potentially dangerous secrets from the public, if it meant people could get sick. On the other hand, she also knew it would be wrong to risk damaging the company and risking a lot of people's jobs, based on nothing more than a hunch. If word got out that Dunham was using GMOs, it could crush the company's sales, and lead to thousands of layoffs. She didn't want that on her conscience. But she also didn't want the burden of knowing she let people get sick.
“No offense, Samson,” she said, “but I think you just made this more complicated for me.”
“This is what I do,” he said, smirking.
Tessa sighed and pulled her gloves back on. She knelt back down and got back to work, determined not to think about anything complicated for the rest of the day.
Chapter 3
Over the weekend, Tessa did some online research. Most of what she learned wasn't too disheartening. A lot of the studies she read indicated that GMOs weren't necessarily harmful to people. A lot of the benefits even sounded good on the surface: they were easier to grow, resistant to rot and decay, and could provide better vitamins. It almost sounded to Tessa like they were healthier and more beneficial, and for a time she thought that maybe all of the hype around them was nothing more than politics.
