Free The Aspen Account by Bryan Devore Page B

stainless steel file cabinets against the far wall of Laidlaw’s office. Starting on the nearest cabinet, he pulled the top drawer open and started flipping through the labeled files. His eyes glided across the various contract names. The documents were organized by client type, some of them going back several years. No good—what he needed was current.
    A sudden change in his peripheral vision made him jump, banging his elbow on the edge of the open file drawer. The lights he had activated by walking down the hallway were now turning off.  He watched as the darkness rushed toward him in twenty-foot jumps, until all the lights were out and he found himself standing exposed in the only lit office in the department. Then he realized with horror that if the revenue manager arrived to find his lights on, he would know at once that someone had been in his office. And since all rooms and offices had motion sensor lights, there was no way for Michael to turn them off from inside. Only time could cover his tracks, and time was in short supply.
    He flipped frantically to the end of the alphabet, to a customer’s name he recognized from the new-contracts schedule he had seen last week. So the new contracts were here, he thought to himself—stored out of reach, waiting for Falcon to do his worst with them. But as Michael returned the contract to the folder, his forearm brushed it, smearing a thin streak of blood along the right margin—the file drawer edge had cut him just below the elbow. Knowing he could do nothing about it, he pushed the paper back into the folder and closed the cabinet. But just as the latch snapped shut on the shiny metallic doors, he saw a glimmer of light reflected in the metal. The light grew brighter, and he turned around to see a wall of illumination approaching steadily down the hallway, just as the wave of darkness had done a few minutes earlier. Someone was coming to work.
    Shutting the drawer, he left the office and closed the door behind him. The corridor lights were still moving toward him in the distance, but no one was visible yet above the cubicle walls. His own motion triggered the lights above him as he hurried toward a cubicle across the hallway and grabbed an interoffice envelope from the side of the person’s desk. Making sure it was empty, he snatched a pen and scribbled “Russell Laidlaw” on it before darting back to the revenue manager’s office and shoving it under the doorway. Then he turned, tucked his hands in his pockets, and, with his head discreetly lowered, walked away from the two approaching men who were now visible in the distance.
     
    As Michael moved down the far end of the corridor, Laidlaw and Danny, his assistant, rounded the corner and went to Laidlaw’s office. In the assistant’s hand were the revenue carve-out schedules they had taken from the assistant’s desk on the way. Both men stopped as they reached the window to the office.
    “Why are your lights on?” Danny asked.
    “I don’t know,” Laidlaw confessed.
    But the answer became clear when they opened the door and saw, in the center of the room, an interoffice envelope addressed to Mr. Laidlaw. Clearly an overzealous employee from the mailroom had shoved it under the door just minutes ago, so quickly that it had triggered the motion sensors in the ceiling. But curiously, the envelope was empty, and Laidlaw shook his head at the mailroom personnel’s sloppy performance of late. Then, remembering the urgency in Diamond’s voice, he rushed to the filing cabinet and grabbed the documents needed for the meeting. Closing his office door, they moved back down the hallway at a brisk walk to the elevator. 
    As they waited to be taken to the twentieth floor, he noticed a strange red smear on the edge of the last file.
     
    *     *     *
     
    At eight o’clock that night, Michael told Andrea and Dustin they could go home. He was comfortable with the progress they had made, but the real reason he was