CHAPTER TWENTY
Facing the Music
It dawned on me, as I got ready for work the next day, that I hadn’t really thought this whole hatch-the-dragon-at-home thing through. I had no way to contain a nascent reptile in my condo. Or to keep him fed, for that matter. The frozen pork might hold him for now but based on what I’d seen of the training manual, I’d need to get him some real food, soon. But they still expected me at work, and it was too late to call in sick.
So I locked down my condo as best I could while Octavius ate breakfast.
“Hey,” I said to him.
Octavius looked up from his pile of hastily chopped pork.
“I have to leave for a while.” A little part of me found it ridiculous that I was trying to talk to a day-old reptile. “Will you be okay here on your own?”
He chirped once and went back to eating, which I took as a yes. I think he understood, though he also tried to follow me out the door as I left. This created another ten-minute delay as I coaxed him back inside and did the explanation all over again.
Bottom line, I got to work half an hour later than usual. The whole way there, I worried about leaving Octavius for so long. I had no idea how the little dragon would handle being alone for nine hours. Maybe I should have locked him up, but I wanted to build his trust and didn’t think that was the best way to start. I kept mulling this over on my way in, and it distracted me enough that I didn’t notice Evelyn waiting for me in the design lab until I nearly ran her over.
I stopped short. “Evelyn?”
She straightened, as if she’d been lingering but didn’t want it to seem that way. Strange. She usually had a senior staff meeting first thing in the morning. Why would she skip it? A cold knot of discomfort started to form in my belly.
“Noah Parker.” She didn’t smile. If anything, her face showed as little emotion as I’d ever seen on it. “Would you come to my office?”
“Now?”
“It’s important.”
It wasn’t really a request, either. I nodded wordlessly and followed her. Crap, they already know. I wasn’t sure how, but my money was on Fulton. Maybe he suspected me in the elevator or saw something on his omnipresent security cameras. It didn’t matter. The guy was good at his job. I screwed up somehow, and now it was time to pay the piper.
In Evelyn’s office, she took her chair, gestured me to the one facing it, and pressed the switch to activate the hermetic seal on her door. I didn’t look at her as I sat down. The palms of my hands grew damp with sweat.
“I had a meeting with Robert this morning,” she said, without preamble. “About what you’ve done.”
Shock and fear paralyzed me, like a rabbit that hears a hawk scream. I forced a swallow down my dry throat. “Okay . . .”
“We want to keep this quiet.”
She slid a legal-sized, sky-blue envelope across her table. It had my name typewritten on the front.
I didn’t need to read it to know what it said. I’d been around long enough to see a few people get the dreaded blue envelope from HR. I tried to pick it up but couldn’t get my fingers to cooperate. I guess my hands were shaking. I palmed it across the cool glass to myself, clutched it against my chest, and stood to leave. I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say, really. This is the end.
“Well, are you going to read it?”
“Don’t need to,” I mumbled.
She wrinkled her brow and frowned at me. “Open it, Noah.”
I sighed. “Fine.” I flipped open the envelope and yanked out the folded letter. A second, rectangular sheet fluttered to the floor. White-blue-white-blue-white-blue. It looked like a check. I snatched it up and looked. Yeah, it was a check all right. For half a year’s salary and made out to me. “W—what is this?”
“Cracking domestication has made this company solvent, at least for the moment. I told Robert it’s only right to reward the designer who helped make it happen.”
“It was Wong’s design—”
“He told me about your help. I also checked his code and recognized your trifecta in it. So I told Robert we had two designers who should share in the credit.”
“You . . . talked about me to Robert Greaves?” The thought of him hearing my name gave me a little spike of pleasure. But I hardly noticed that against the wellspring of relief that flooded me. I’m not in trouble. My plan was still in motion.
“He really believes that design is the key to our company’s future. It’s a new era for us, Noah.”
I half-fell into the chair. The relief and shock turned my muscles to jelly. “I don’t know what to say.”
Evelyn smiled. “Say that you’ll help me bring more dragons to the world.”
“Try and stop me,” I said.