Free Shades of Grey by Clea Simon Page B

an hour late when she ducked into her cubicle. Strangely, nobody seemed to notice.
    ‘Psst.’ Joanie’s jet-black eyes blinked at her over the cubicle wall. ‘You missed all the excitement.’
    ‘Why, what happened?’ Dulcie couldn’t figure out why they both were whispering, until she realized the office was awfully quiet. ‘I overslept.’
    ‘Not to worry. I’ll swear you were here if anyone asks. But I doubt they will.’ Joanie paused for effect. ‘I don’t know who will even be left when they’re done!’
    Dulcie thought of her sweater. Maybe something else had been stolen. ‘Come on, Joanie. Spill.’
    Joanie leaned farther over the carpeted cubicle wall, savoring her moment of drama. ‘Well, first thing, when I got in, all the bigwigs were in the lobby, buzzing like someone had stepped on their ant’s nest.’ Dulcie blinked away the rather confused image that came to mind. ‘Then they all wheeled around and took off. For about ten minutes, there were no supervisors around. None. So I figured I’d take an early break. Anyway, I was just outside when I saw two big guys come in – real bruisers – and when they came out, about five minutes later, they had one of the guys from Accounting with them – in handcuffs!’
    ‘ Handcuffs ?’ Dulcie couldn’t keep the skepticism from her voice. Joanie was a drama queen.
    But the other girl nodded vigorously. ‘Handcuffs! Real ones.’ She sounded like she knew the difference. ‘I cannot wait to grill Ricky on this. Oh, and everyone from IT is in a meeting, too. I was trying to download some music and thought I’d froze the system. Nobody home. This is big. Whatever it is.’
    Now that was curious. Whatever was going on didn’t get Dulcie’s sweater back, but it did add a certain spice to the day. Around eleven, when Dulcie took her first break, she decided to poke around a bit. Maybe she would see her sweater on the back of a chair. Maybe she could ‘liberate’ it. What she found instead was an office humming with rumor, and very few managers in evidence. The temptation to find out more was too great. Joanie had her source, Ricky, in Accounting. So Dulcie headed over to IT, where at least the staff members could be assumed to be reasonably intelligent.
    But when she pushed open the glass-fronted door to their section, she saw what Joanie had been talking about. The place, usually a hive of activity, was deserted. The Guitar Hero posters looked down on empty cubicles. One screen, however, was still glowing, and Dulcie walked toward it.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ Dulcie spun around to find herself facing a very tall, very skinny, and very angry geek.
    ‘I’m Dulcie. A temp.’
    ‘I didn’t ask who you were, I asked what you were doing here.’ He pushed past her and, leaning over the keyboard, quickly typed in something that made the screen go black. In his wake, she got a whiff of nervous sweat. ‘This area is off limits.’ He turned back to her and she saw how two purple blotches in his cheeks clashed with his acne.
    ‘It was unlocked. I didn’t know.’ Dulcie could feel her own face growing hot with color, but the programmer turned away to grab a chair. ‘I just wanted to know what happened.’
    ‘You and everyone else.’ He wheeled the chair toward his desk. ‘Forty-eight hours at least we’ve been working on this.’
    ‘I came in late and everything was in an uproar.’ Dulcie wasn’t good at this feminine wiles stuff, but how hard could it be? She pulled a nearby chair close and sat on the edge, trying to look demure. She lowered her voice. ‘I figured you folks here might know.’
    He turned to stare at her. He didn’t look taken in. ‘And you just happened to be Little Miss Curious? You didn’t happen to input a little program while you were just kicking around?’
    ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’ She sat up straight in her chair, realizing too late that this meant sticking out her chest. The pale-faced