Free Bodily Harm by Robert Dugoni

agency. It’s proprietary. If you release an unauthorized report I will see that you are fired and that the Justice Department prosecutes you to the fullest extent of the law. Do you understand me?”
    LeRoy’s lower lip quivered, but she fought back the tears. A stabbing pain pierced her, exactly where she would have expected, just between the shoulder blades.
    LEROY HURRIED BACK to her cubicle and began to dump the contents of her desk drawers into the cardboard box she found in the supply closet, pausing briefly to dab her eyes with a tissue. She wasn’t bothering to organize her belongings. She didn’t care. Pens and pencils mixed with paper clips and scraps of paper. She grabbed the picture frame with the photo of her former boyfriend, over which she had drawn a bull’s-eye in permanent marker, and tossed it in with a snow globe from Fort Lauderdale. A tear trickled from the corner of her eye but she quickly wiped it away, not wanting to give anyone the satisfaction.
    “You’re upset, Anne. Take a minute to think about this.” Peggy Seeley stood outside her cubicle, alternately trying to calm LeRoy and to ask her further questions.
    “There’s nothing to think about. This is a waste of my time.”
    “Did he say why he was pulling the plug?”
    “He said they didn’t have the funds.”
    “Well, that’s probably true,” Seeley said.
    LeRoy stopped what she was doing. “Then why did he bother to have me pursue it at all?” she countered. “What a colossal waste of time. It’s exactly as everyone said it would be.”
    “Calm down. Don’t make any rash decisions.”
    LeRoy didn’t want to hear it, especially not from Seeley, who didn’t even like to order food in a restaurant unless she could see the cook making it. The two had little in common except their jobs. Seeley was overweight and didn’t care. LeRoy worked out daily to try to keep her weight at an even 120 pounds. At twenty-nine, Seeley wore no makeup, wire-rimmed glasses, and did little but brush her light brown hair that extended to the middle of her back. LeRoy wasn’t a fashion princess by any stretch of the imagination, but she did take a few minutes each morning to apply basic makeup. She suspected their friendship would fizzle after she had left the agency.
    “‘Rash’? The only rash decision I made was taking a job at this shithole in the first place.”
    “Thanks for that.”
    “We don’t get paid squat. We’re not appreciated, and he just confirmed that we serve no purpose. What’s the point?”
    “This isn’t exactly the best economy to be out looking for a job.”
    “I don’t care. I’ll work in a restaurant again before I stay here another day.”
    “Give it a day or two. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”
    “Trust me; he’s not changing his mind. When I pushed him on it he pounded his fist on the desk and—”
    “ Albert pounded his fist? Are you sure you were in the right office?”
    The staff had often joked that Payne’s bland demeanor and passive nature were the result of twenty-five years of boredomthat had desensitized him. The man had to be desensitized to put up with all the bureaucratic bullshit for so long. LeRoy wasn’t about to suffer the same fate. Though she had been optimistic about the new administration, she wouldn’t sit around and wait to find out if things really would change.
    “He looked like a thermometer popping out from a cooked turkey. I thought his head was going to explode.”
    LeRoy pulled out a memory stick from her backpack, shoved it into a UBS port on her computer, and sat at the keyboard.
    “What are you doing?” Seeley asked.
    “I’m not done with this, not after all the time I’ve invested.”
    “You can’t take your work; it’s proprietary.”
    “They’re not going to get away with this.”
    “Who?”
    “The agency, Powers, whoever is behind pulling the plug.”
    “You’re going to get yourself in trouble, Anne, and for what? Didn’t you learn anything