“Oh,
stop
it, Art,” Elizabeth snapped. He bristled and she at once regretted the outburst.
Speaking in a calmer tone, she added, “Art, women of today, women like me with high-powered careers don’t worry about things like the scorn of a man. I’m sorry, but that’s just laughable, especially when the man in question is Gary Dobbins.”
I’d rather eat dirt than be involved with that little prick.
Of course, this thought remained unspoken. She needed to keep her emotions out of this. Despite other good qualities, Art was a chauvinist. No point in giving him fodder to confirm his belief all women were hysterical.
To her relieved surprise, Art said, “Well, my gut instinct is to believe you, though the whole distasteful thing has me very puzzled. Especially because he says he has proof. Evidence.”
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of evidence?”
“I didn’t press. Frankly he had me so disturbed last night, I just wanted him out of my house.” He pushed the intercom on his phone.
In a moment a bright voice responded, “Yes, Art?”
“’Morning, Mary Beth. Listen, is Gary Dobbins in? Find out, will you? And send him down to my office, pronto.”
Elizabeth half-rose from her chair. Art waved her back down. “Let’s get this out in the open, shall we? No more he said, she said. Let’s deal with whatever the hell is going on face to face.”
Elizabeth nodded, though adrenaline was spurting through her blood at the thought of facing that bastard head-on again. A moment later the door opened, and Gary, impeccably dressed as always in a finely-tailored suit, entered the room.
“Good morning, Art.” His voice was warm. Upon seeing Elizabeth, it became decidedly colder. He nodded stiffly in her direction. “Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth didn’t return his greeting. She stared at Art, clenching the arms of her chair to keep from jumping up and strangling Gary with her bare hands.
“Sit down, Gary. Elizabeth and I have been talking this morning and it seems, uh, there’s some discrepancy in your stories. She denies most of what you’ve said.”
“Aw, baby.” He put his hand on Elizabeth’s arm. She jerked it away as if burned. “This isn’t the way to handle things. Really. Come on, we can take care of this after hours.” He turned to Art, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. “She’s still hysterical. I’m sorry we’re—”
“Stop it!” Elizabeth’s voice rose nearly to a scream. She felt like she was in the middle of some horrible nightmare.
Baby?
Had the prick just called her
baby?
She was aware of Art watching her steadily with his cold, pale eyes. Why had she never noticed how cold they were?
Her voice was controlled steel when she spoke again. “Gary. Whatever crap you’re pulling, you won’t get away with it. Art says you have proof that you’re telling the truth in whatever your latest slander is. So out with it. What’s your
proof
?”
Gary smiled benignly at her, though she noticed beads of perspiration on his upper lip, the only hint of nervousness he betrayed. He reached to pat her again but her glare must have deterred him because he dropped his hand back into his lap.
“I don’t have the proof. You do.” He turned to Art with an ingratiating smile. “Oh, and Art, you do too. I take it you haven’t checked your email yet. This regrettable situation is just getting worse, it seems.” Again he turned back to Elizabeth, the smile plastered on his face not reaching his cold, dead eyes. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. But you willfully violated the company’s Internet policy. I honestly don’t know how you expected to get away with it.”
Elizabeth felt her blood freeze, certain whatever he was referring to had been of his making.
Between clenched teeth, she spit, “What’re you talking about?”
Ignoring her, he turned back to Art. “It’s come to my attention Elizabeth has been surfing the Internet for porn. Not only that, she had the bad judgment to download some of the filth to her computer.” His face twisted into a sneer. “If our security worked like it should have, she’ll have been shut out of her account and the details would have been emailed to you, per company protocol.” Gary shook his head in mock disappointment.
“And you know this how?” Elizabeth snapped.
Gary didn’t answer, his face still on Art, who was typing on his computer. “My god. He’s right. The report is right here.” Art stared with bulging eyes. “You’ve violated company guidelines and your access to the network was revoked, based on last night’s scan. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything because I didn’t do it. This whole thing was concocted by this—
this man.” She bit off the word she’d been about to say and took a deep breath. She had to keep her cool and think her way out of whatever the hell Gary had cooked up to destroy her. She stood. “Come on. Now. Let’s go. I’ll prove there’s nothing on my computer. Then we’ll check
your
computer, Dobbins.”
“Fair enough.” Both men stood and the three of them trooped down the hall. Elizabeth felt as if she were moving in some kind of dark, murky haze. She was scared now—scared at how confident Gary had seemed about “proof” on her computer.
They entered her office and Gary shut the door. Elizabeth booted up her computer and typed in her access code. It was denied. She turned helplessly toward the men. “I can’t get in.”
“You’ll need to call tech, Sir,” Gary said to Art with a small, sour smile. “They’ll give us a temporary password for Elizabeth’s account. Then you can decide if you want to give it to her.”
“Get ‘em on the line,” Art said gruffly, refusing to meet Elizabeth’s eye. He sat at Elizabeth’s desk, typing in the information he was fed over the phone.
Once they were logged in, Gary, who along with Elizabeth had been hovering behind Art, said, “The most obvious first step is to check the history.”
“Her what?”
“Here, I’ll show you. It’s a log of where she’s been on the Internet.” Gary leaned over Art, opened the browser and clicked on the history tab. Then he stepped back. “See that tab there?
Show all history
? Click on that and then we’ll see.”
He seemed awfully sure of himself. She was surer than ever now he’d somehow broken into her computer and planted incriminating evidence of some kind. Art was peering down the list.
He clicked on one marked XXXBDSM and the screen opened to a pornographic site featuring scantily clad girls bound in rope, with promises of hot XXX videos for $19.95.
He whipped his head back toward Elizabeth. “
Well
. I guess Gary knows you better than you thought, hmm? I must say, this is troubling. Not that I particularly care if you visit these sites, Elizabeth, on your own time. But at these offices.
Really.
I’m afraid your credibility has been severely damaged by your foolish actions.”
“There were more, did you see? A whole bunch of them,” Gary interjected eagerly.
Elizabeth staggered over to her sofa. She felt as if she’d been sucker-punched. Why didn’t Gary just get out the knife and stab her in the guts and be done with it? “Art. I am completely innocent in all this. Whatever he’s done, I have to hand it Gary for sneakiness. He gets the underhanded nasty awards of the century. If you choose to believe him over me, that’s your prerogative. I had a job before I got this one. I’m sure I can get another. I’ve brought several very lucrative clients to this firm. I’m sure you’ll understand if their loyalties lie with me, not with Wallace & Pratt.”
She knew her threat was thinly veiled. She didn’t give a damn. At this point she was ready to quit on principle. The only thing that held her back was the knowledge then Gary would win.
“There’s, uh…there’s one more thing, Art.” Gary’s expression was one of pure malice when he glanced toward her. “The email. The email she sent me after she had the bad taste to drag me to that sex club.”
“I never—!” Elizabeth roared. Both Gary and Art glanced toward her closed door.
“You’re distraught,” Art’s voice was nearly kind. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”
“No.” Anger had restored her somewhat. She spoke carefully through clenched teeth. “Show us the email, Gary. Now.”
He bowed toward her in a mocking manner. “As you wish.”
~*~
Elizabeth drifted in and out of a dream, trying to wake up. She was standing on a raised platform. She was naked except for rope wrapped around her legs, hobbling her. Wallace and Dobbins were in the audience, along with all the rest of her team at work, plus a whole pack of leering dirty old men. Though she couldn’t see him, Cole’s deep voice intoned, “Who will bid fifty? Do I hear fifty for this slave?”
She jerked awake, her body covered in sweat, the sheets twisted around her legs. There was a bitter taste in her mouth. Sunlight shone through the cracks in her blinds and she squinted at it, at first not recalling how she came to be home in bed, the blinds drawn, sleeping in the middle of the day.
The memories flooded in and she groaned, falling back against the pillows. As a final nail in her professional coffin, Gary had opened his email, showing them both that message crammed with lies, obviously written by him, sent from
her
email address.
Gary printed the email and handed them each a copy. Elizabeth scanned hers, astonishment and outrage again rendering her temporarily speechless. She read more quickly than Art. When she glanced up at him, he was still reading. His eyes were wide, his skin reddening.
She had to hand it to Gary. He’d packed it all in to the email—her supposed culpability regarding the slave auction, her secret life as a sex pervert, their now-defunct love affair, the veiled threat of rigging his annual review if he dared betray her and even a dig at “old man Wallace”—a term she never would have used.
It had been too much. Hot tears sprang to her eyes, infuriating her, as she made it a staunch policy
never
to cry in a professional setting—no matter what. But she’d never been faced with something like this. The magnitude of Gary’s deceit and willingness to destroy her had completely disarmed her. The email was the last straw. Somehow he’d hacked into both her computer and her email, using them to falsely incriminate her in so many ways.
If Art believed him over her, he’d have no choice but to fire her. If she’d really done what she’d been accused of, dragging an employee to a sex club while seriously intoxicated, and surfing the Web for pornography on company time, not to mention having sex with a guy who worked for her, and then subtly threatening to withhold his raise if he didn’t keep his mouth shut
—how could she expect Art, or “old man Wallace” as he now believed she thought of him, to keep her on?
To his credit, he hadn't fired her then and there. Instead he said again, “Go home, Elizabeth.
You don’t look well. Take as much time as you need. We’ll talk when you’re feeling more yourself.”
She nodded, deeply embarrassed at the tears now spilling shamelessly down her cheeks, cursing her inability to hide her feelings the way most men could. They’d left her alone, shutting her door with a soft click. She knew the buzz would be all over the office by the end of the day that something was wrong with her. Probably Gary would let “slip” all sorts of slanderous lies about her, lies that would further cripple her ability to be an effective manager going forward.
Now hiding out in her apartment and feeling hugely sorry for herself, Elizabeth reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels that had sent her into the midday mini-coma in the first place and poured herself several ounces. She threw it back, glad for its warming, if false, sense of temporary peace.
Her cell phone rang and she reached for it, peering at the caller ID. It was Cole. Despite her misery, her heart took a little leap of delight at seeing his number. She clutched the phone, not answering. It has hard to believe she’d been so happy the night before—spending an amazing evening with the most exciting, charismatic man she had ever met, and now her world was literally crashing down around her. How could she admit to him what a mess she’d made trying to handle the Gary debacle on her own? How humiliating to confess she’d let that little twerp somehow get the better of her.
The phone rang several more times and then went to voicemail. Elizabeth poured herself another drink, gulped it and buried her head beneath her pillows.
The persistent buzzing finally penetrated a deep sleep. Elizabeth struggled to come awake, reaching for her alarm clock. With eyes still shut, she found and depressed the off button, but the buzzing continued.
Full consciousness returned and she sat up in bed, trying to identify the sound. It was her intercom—someone was downstairs in the lobby of her building, someone to see her. She looked at the clock, shocked to see it was after six in the evening. She’d spent the entire day in a drunken sleep, hiding from her problems, hiding from the world. Now, it seemed, the world was trying to find her.
She stumbled out of bed, hurrying into the living room toward her front door. She depressed the button on the intercom box, her voice breathless. “Yes?”
“Elizabeth. Are you all right?”
“Cole? Is that you?”
“Yes, I’m sorry, yes. It’s me. I hope I haven’t overstepped by just coming over, but when you didn’t answer your cell and they told me you’d left the office quite a few hours earlier—
gone home sick, your secretary said—well, I was worried, based on what you had to face this morning. So, you’re okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Her response was automatic and not entirely honest. She took a breath and tried to clear her head. She wasn’t used to drinking so much, and certainly not in the middle of the day. What had she been thinking? “Come on up. I’ll buzz you in. I’m on the third floor, second apartment on the left.”
She pressed the lock release button, holding it down for a good five seconds to give him time to get in. She hurried to the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water, gargled with some mouthwash and ran her fingers through her disheveled hair. She looked awful, her eyes puffy and red, the mark of a wrinkled sheet down one cheek like a scar.