Chapter 3
The break room was down the hall past the copy machine and it smelled like burnt coffee and someone's leftover soup. I sat at the small table with a paper cup of water I hadn't drunk and my hands were shaking so bad the surface rippled. My uniform still had the crease from the marble table. Through the window in the door I could see the hallway traffic, people in office clothes moving with files, and nobody looked at me but I felt looked at anyway.
After about ten minutes the man in the velvet blazer came in alone. He didn't bring the guards. He had a thin stack of papers and the silver terminal tucked under one arm. He set the papers down and pulled out the chair across from me and sat, which surprised me because most managers stood.
"This is the log," he said. He turned the top sheet so I could read it. It was a payroll approval report. Each line had a time stamp and a code. Three lines in a row, 15:07 on three different nights, all said APPROVED: OLIVIA M. - CODE 4472. Next to it, in smaller print, ASSIGNED: MAYA COLLINS.
"Olivia's been in New York for a week," he said again, not as a question this time. "I just got off the phone. She hasn't logged in since she left. She was at a foundation dinner last night."
I stared at the code. 4472. I had seen that number before on a sticky note on the supervisor's desk by the cleaning cart.
"I don't know that code, sir," I said. It was true.
"I know," he said. "That's why I'm asking you to look." He slid another sheet over. It was a copy of the hand-written shift add-on sheet. The rows for 15:00 and 15:07 were filled in my name, but the handwriting was rushed and loopy, not mine. My own signature on file below was tight and small. The loopy one leaned to the right.
"Is that your handwriting?" he asked.
I shook my head. My throat was dry despite the water.
"No."
He tapped the terminal. "This is the device that approved it. Someone pressed the green button here, in this office, after hours. Not from New York."
For the first time since I'd sat down, I let myself breathe normally. The panic that I would be blamed for faking hours was easing into something else, something colder. Someone had used my name to fill hours and someone else's code to approve them.
He watched me realize it. His voice dropped.
"Maya, I need you to tell me who handed you that schedule the first night you stayed late."
I thought back to Tuesday. I had been clocking out at six, my cleaning cart by the elevator, the white cloth over my arm just like today. The floor supervisor, a woman in her forties with a tight ponytail, had come over with the white paper and said, "We had a call-out, can you cover? Olivia approved it." She'd smiled and handed me the sheet. The header MAYA COLLINS was already typed, the yellow highlights already there.
"It was the floor supervisor," I said. "She gave me the paper."
He wrote that down. He didn't seem surprised, just grim.
May you like
"She's on her way in now," he said. He stood and collected the papers. "Stay here. Don't talk to anyone about the code. I'll come get you when she's here."
He left the door half open, and through it I could see the supervisor walking down the hall in her black blazer, heels clicking on the tile, holding a coffee like it was any other afternoon, and she hadn't yet seen my schedule on top of his stack.
