Wounded Animals (Whistleblower Series Book 1)

by Jim Heskett

  I went about my business, trying to persuade myself that I wasn’t part of some grand plan. Not that I had any success believing it.

  At seven on the dot, she strode through the door. She caught my eye and waved a hand toward a conference room, so I grabbed a notebook and pen and followed her.

  She was wearing heels today, which meant somebody important was coming. We were usually business casual, which meant a lot of things to a lot of people. But heels, now that was serious shit.

  She didn’t utter a word to me as she entered the Aspen conference room and took a seat at the table. I wondered why she chose this place… it was designed for large groups, with a bulky table that seated twenty. I debated if I should sit across from her or in the chair next to her. She made the decision for me when she pointed to one on her left.

  As soon as I sat, she said, “did you get the training scheduled for the Keller account?”

  “Their account manager wants to handle it himself, so he’s going to go on-site and we’ll do a post-mortem when he’s back.”

  “Good. One more thing off our plate.”

  She opened a notebook full of text and traced a pen down a list of items. Surely she hadn’t needed to appear at the office to talk about the Keller account. They were barely worth the effort we put out for them.

  “I need you to go back down to Dallas,” she said.

  Pressure built behind my eyeballs and I had trouble swallowing. “I, uh, I thought they were all staffed up?”

  “Four out of the last boot camp failed their final exam and the company has decided not to continue with their employment. They have already started a new boot camp class of alternates, as of today. They’ll be in HR meetings, but you’ll need to be there in the morning to begin the Design On-Demand product training. I’ve already reserved a room for you at the Beachwood and purchased your travel, to expedite the approval. Sorry for the late notice, but it was the earliest I could arrange, so I appreciate you being flexible here. I forwarded the confirmation to your Outlook this morning.”

  I had a fleeting memory of last night, practicing what I was going to say when Kareem proposed this scenario to me. Something about Grace not being able to get along without me? That I had a judo tournament this weekend I couldn’t miss? While I was sitting there wracking my brain, I could see Alison losing her patience.

  Bed rest, that was it.

  She tapped her pencil against the notebook. “Did you have some questions or something?”

  “It’s just that, the thing is, it’s about Grace.”

  “That reminds me, I saw her at the gym yesterday. Hard to believe she’s six months pregnant. Looks fantastic, if you ask me. Seeing her on the bike, sweating it out like that… made me wish I’d taken better care of myself when I was pregnant.”

  Okay, so the bed rest excuse was out. Time to try something else.

  “Don’t you think maybe someone local would be better suited?”

  Her faced hardened. “What are you saying to me, Candle? I’ve already bought your plane tickets.”

  I tried to engineer of another line of defense, but each idea dried up on my lips.

  She gripped the pencil, which bowed under the pressure of her fingers. “Nobody likes this situation. But you, Candle, I don’t understand you at all. You had an opportunity. You had a way to get above all of this, and yet you won’t take it.”

  I had nothing to say to that, so I sat back and nodded.

  “They’re in the Irving office, not the downtown office. Your rental car is at Enterprise. All of this is in the email I forwarded you.”

  “I assume I’ll be working through the weekend on this one?”

  “They have an aggressive boot camp schedule for this group, so yes.”

  With that, she stood up and swept past me, leaving me alone in the oversized conference room. I stared at a motivational poster boasting about OPPORTUNITY. Flung my pencil at it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  November in Denver and November in Dallas were two entirely different beasts. In Denver, you could expect snow once a week, but light jacket weather most days. Dallas, on the other hand, was wet and cold and miserable and there seemed no place to escape the misery.

  I got a stiff reminder of the weather as soon as I exited the D-F-Dubya terminal and entered the open garage to wait for the rental car shuttle. A mist of cold humidity pressing against my face and neck. Clammy like early morning fog.

  Vague memories of living here when I was young drifted in and out, going down to Austin and Lake Travis in the summer, out west to Big Bend for vacations. There were, at times, things to like about Texas.

  And it’s hard to say if I would have despised Dallas as much as I did if I’d come here for different reasons. Maybe if I weren’t there to train the replacements for my co-workers—many of whom were friends—in Colorado because the company intended to shut all the satellite offices down and rehire everyone in Texas.

  Or maybe I wouldn’t have despised the company so much if I could understand their reasoning. But their moves made zero sense to me. How many decades of knowledge were they going to let walk out the door, for seemingly no reason? I could get worked into cold sweats just thinking about it.

  As I waited for the shuttle, the earbuds pumped calming music into my brain. I liked a little Josh Ritter or John Fullbright to ease into Texas slowly, and then something a little more upbeat to sweat to in the hotel exercise room, after the workday. Travel always functioned better with a soundtrack.

  My phone buzzed, and I unlocked it to view a text from my aunt:

  We need to talk about your father

  I locked the phone again and stared at my reflection in the black glass screen for a few seconds.

  Aunt Judy wanted to talk about Dad, but I had no desire to hear about that man. Whatever was going on with him, I didn’t want to know about it or have anything to do with it.

  The anniversary of Mom’s death was coming up next month. I always knew when it was coming, but that didn’t stop me from feeling surprised at how sad I felt on the actual date. And why was I thinking of this now?

  Since I already had my phone out, I sent Grace a text to let her know I had arrived, just one word: here. We didn’t usually talk on the phone until nighttime. She knew I’d be busy at work, and I knew she hated to talk on the phone. Must have been the only woman I’d ever known who couldn’t stand chit chat. Straight to the point. I liked that about her.

  A man came to wait in line for the shuttle next to me, gabbing on the phone pressed against his ear. Couldn’t help but overhear the whole conversation, and I turned down the music to get a better listen. His wife had apparently forgotten that the kids’ soccer-practice-pickup schedule had changed for the playoffs, and now he was going to have to miss his poker game because of her mistake. How did parents manage to have any time for themselves?

  The shuttle arrived and I boarded while Kareem’s warning flashed in my head. A bad man among the trainees. A catastrophic thing would happen if I met him.

  Why hadn’t I made him be specific with me?

  Or maybe the whole idea was crazy. As if some IntelliCraft trainee was going to be the destroyer of worlds.

  ***

  I pulled open the glass front door of the office building in Las Colinas, a wealthy neighborhood in the town of Irving. Technically Irving, but everyone called it Dallas. The sprawling metropolitan city encompassed dozens of towns.

  Even though I’d been here a half dozen times over the last six months, my entrance didn’t warrant even a head nod from most of the cube dwellers. I was an outsider.

  Unlike the office in Denver, their cubes were tall. Hardly any of them were decorated, no cute figurines atop the rims or funny posters thumbtacked to the sides. Pictures of family, little kids’ drawings, but hardly any personality. So professional. So stuffy.

  Management was friendly because they wanted something from me. Less so since I’d turned them down, but they still glued smiles on their faces
and asked about my wife and unborn child, slapped me on the back, invited me out to try real Texas barbecue, or commiserated with me about the heat or cold or humidity.

  I walked down to the third aisle of cubes and cut left, then headed toward the training room at the far end. No one here had standing or treadmill desks. I’d gotten used to seeing heads poking above cubicle walls in Colorado, but I guess the trend hadn’t made its way here yet.

  The training room was empty. Four long tables with workstations set up. Each of the workstations had a piece of paper folded in front, with a name on each. Keisha, Martin, Darren, Paul. That was to be my boot camp training class this time.

  I spent fifteen minutes catching up on my work email, and then Chief Operating Officer Wyatt Green poked his head in the room. “Candle, good to see you made it. We’re all running around like chickens with their damn heads cut off.”

  “Thanks, I’m just getting set up here.”

  He walked across the room, a broad-shouldered man with a trunk like a beer barrel. He kept his arms out at his sides, and they didn’t move or sway an inch as he walked. They seemed less like arms and more like snap-on attachments to his square body.

  He thrust his hand at me, and I shook. His grip was monstrous and I always had to check myself for bruises after a Wyatt-shake. Twelve years of judo and Brazilian jujitsu training had prepared me for all sorts of injuries and counter-moves, but there was nothing in any of my classes for Management Over-Powering Handshake Defense.

  “Alison told me you came down on short notice. Appreciate that,” he said.

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “When you’re done for the day, why don’t you swing by my office? Got a couple of things I’d like to run by you, you know, throw ‘em against the fridge and see if they stick. Shouldn’t take but a few minutes.”

  “Will do, Wyatt.”

  I knew exactly what he was going to say, and I knew exactly what I was going to say in return. But we still had to do the dance. He probably knew it too, but he was a determined son of a bitch.

  After Wyatt left, the trainees started filing into the room one by one. First there was Martin, he looked barely out of college. Wispy mustache like Kareem’s, dark skin tone, dead black eyes, but a big grin and a kind of goofy charisma. “You must be Mr. Candle. They told us all about you yesterday.”

  “I’m sure none of it was true,” I said.

  He laughed the way you’re supposed to when someone higher up at the company makes a joke, but his excitement endeared me to him. Maybe the laugh was real, after all. I was so used to them not being real.

  Martin took a seat and in came Keisha, with her tight braids and ample curves. She looked a little older than Martin, but still much younger than me.

  “I hear you came down from Denver,” she said. “Cold up there, huh?” I could tell right away that she was going to get great customer service responses to surveys. She had that smooth-as-silk voice that customers loved to hear.

  “It can be. But we still get plenty of sun, even in the winter.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” she said as she took her seat and booted up her computer.

  Third through the door was Paul, a gaunt kid, about the same age as Martin. Paul wore a smirk on his face, and I didn’t like him immediately. Something about those kids who think the world owes them something. He was the kind of guy who could get laid in college without trying.

  He jabbed a hand into the air and I shook with him. “Welcome to Dallas,” he said. “See you’ve met Keisha and Martin.”

  “I sure have,” I said.

  “You can probably tell by looking at me that I’m the smart one in the group. Just finished with my MBA in the spring, so I’m ready to hit the ground running.”

  I resisted the urge to ask him why the hell he was at an entry-level tech support job with an MBA. “Well, I guess you’re in the right place then, Paul. There’s a lot of opportunity at IntelliCraft.”

  I felt dirty talking up the company, but it seemed to make Paul’s face glow.

  “Yes sir,” he said as he took a seat at a workstation.

  I smiled at them, pretended I wasn’t bitter about what their employer was doing to the company. I couldn’t be mad at these kids, though; this wasn’t their fault.

  But I still had to fake the smile anyway.

  Finally, the straggler of the group. Darren. He had jet-black hair and bushy eyebrows. When I saw him, the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, but I couldn’t say why.

  He walked right up to me, shoulders square. “You must be Mr. Candle.” His voice was like oozing tar, bass-heavy and slow.

  “That’s right. I’ll be training you on the IntelliCraft Design software over the next few days.”

  “Oh yes, for sure. I’m really looking forward to it. I’m eager to find out where I fit.” He smiled, but his brow remained cocked, and I got the sense he thought he knew something I didn’t. Kareem’s warning about a dangerous man rushed through my brain like a strobe light.

  But that was crazy. What in the world could this kid do?

  He held out his hand to shake, and for a split-second, something told me not to do it. But it’s not as if I could leave his hand there, hanging in space.

  I gripped his palm. His hand felt cold.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At the end of the day, I walked the long hallway to Wyatt’s office. Seemed like a million steps. I passed open offices decorated with whiteboards containing scribbles about the future of the company. Long-term strategic goals, bandwidth prioritization, cost-benefit analysis, new verticals ripe for exploration. Nothing about people.

  I leaned in Wyatt’s doorway as he was wrapping up a waxed piece of paper, chewing, with a dab of mayo jutting from his lip.

  “You tell him that if he doesn’t want to meet with me, this is the last time I’m gonna ask nicely. My time is valuable, you understand.”

  I raised an eyebrow, and he waved me in as he pointed to a Bluetooth circling his ear.

  He held out one finger to me. “Y’all have been good clients for a long time, but this is the kind of impasse that sinks relationships, know what I mean? Yep. Okay. I’ll have them draw up those changes and get it right over to you. Okay.”

  Wyatt’s office had a little more flair than the average cube-dwellers here. Big baseball fan, as evidenced by the numerous framed Texas Rangers jerseys and signed balls in glass display cases. I knew nothing about baseball, but imagined he had a small fortune of memorabilia here.

  One bit of odd decoration stuck out to me: a Persian rug, mounted on the wall like a tapestry. Seemed to clash with the rest of the pieces.

  He ended the call, wiped the mayo from his lips, and gestured me into a seat. “Candle, it’s good to see you again. How’s Grace? Big as a house yet?”

  You know how sometimes you’ll wrap the toaster oven tray in aluminum foil so it doesn’t get cheese and burnt bread crust all over it? I wished I had aluminum foil for my face to speak with Wyatt.

  I thought of the curve of her belly when I’d last seen her. “She’s getting there. Won’t be too much longer now.”

  “First babies’ll do a number on you. I didn’t know what was going on for the first three months, tell you what. Don’t know how I kept my mind straight, sleeping an hour or two a night like that. Second babies are much easier. You figure out the art of the power nap by that point. You’ll be sneaking out to your car at lunchtime, drooling on your dashboard like an invalid.”

  I gave him a little chuckle, just as I was supposed to do. Felt tired, and a burger and fries from the hotel bar were calling my name. I raised my eyebrows, hoping he’d get to the point already.

  “You’ve had a long day, and you’re probably itching to get out of here. I get it. I won’t keep you long. Just wanted to do a pulse check on you real quick, see if maybe you’ve reconsidered our offer.”

  I still didn’t even understand why they wanted me so badly. “I appreciate the follow-up, Wyatt, but my
answer is still no. Grace and I discussed it and we want to stay in Colorado.”

  His toothy smile twitched and his eyes fell. He kept his lips curled, but I could see the venom behind those eyes. “That’s what I figured. At least take my shiny new business card. Got a new number there, in case you need to talk.”

  He slipped it across the desk, and I read it over. Wyatt Green, COO IntelliCraft Solutions. I hadn’t even known they’d added the solutions bit before that.

  He stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans. The cube-dwellers were required to wear slacks or something similar, but I supposed Wyatt could wear whatever he wanted. “Can’t blame me for trying, though, can you?”

  I got to my feet and shook his hand. “Not at all. I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow, so I’m sure I’ll see you in the hallways.”

  His grip punished my poor knuckles. “I’m sure you will. Good night now, Candle.”

  ***

  The burger was juicy, but the french fries were limp and undercooked. Just my luck; when I really needed crisp french fries to lift my spirits, they hadn’t delivered.

  I pushed the mound of ketchup around the plate with the fries, determined to drain some satisfaction from them anyway.

  I liked that the bartender didn’t ask me about my day or my long face or anything of the kind. He just brought my food, refilled my water, and left me alone. Given that I was the only person at the bar, I’d expected intrusion, but he just waited at the other end until I tossed a look at him. He’d get a big tip for that.

  After dinner, I rode the elevator to the fourth floor and had to slide my keycard into the door at least five times to get it to open. The Beachwood was a posh hotel, much nicer than the places they’d arranged for me when I started coming to Dallas for training. That was before they realized they needed to butter me up. Now that I’d already said no several times, I wondered if there might not be a geisha girl waiting for me on the other side of the door to give me a happy ending and ask me to reconsider my future employment.