Southern Comfort - Fern Michaels [15]
With still enough coffee left in her cup for another five minutes, Kate drove steadily until she saw the turnoff for the field office, where she sat in the parking lot to finish her drink. She rolled down the windows to enjoy the bright sunny day Arizona was known for. In another hour, she would need the air-conditioning in the car. The big question was, where would she be in another hour?
Kate finished her coffee, crushed the paper cup, then dropped it into the trash bag she kept on the door handle. As much as she dreaded what was about to happen, she knew she had to get on with it. Sitting there contemplating her belly button wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She reached over for her canvas bag and rooted around until she found her ID on a chain. She looped it around her neck, grabbed the bag, and got out of the car.
Kate looked at her watch. It wasn’t nine o’clock yet, but the parking lot was deserted, and there was no one walking about. Normally that quadrant was a beehive of activity no matter the time of day or night. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was some kind of omen.
The hum of traffic on the main road was steady, so people were out and about, going God only knew where. A formation of birds flew overhead in a V. Where were they going?
Kate licked at her lips, drew a deep breath, then yanked at the heavy plate-glass door. She marched across the lobby to the security desk, flipped her ID, and signed in. The guard nodded as she headed to the security checkpoint, breezed through, grabbed her bag—which had been duly noted as containing her Sig Sauer—off the belt, and headed for the elevator that would take her to the fourth floor, where she’d worked for so long. After today, she would never come back.
She was alone in the elevator, something that rarely happened. More often than not there was a gaggle of people inside. When the doors slid open, she stepped out into a hall that was blindingly bright from all the overhead fluorescent lights. She looked around as she shifted her bag to a more comfortable position on her shoulder. She headed straight down the hall to Arnold Jellard’s office.
Kate frowned as she looked around. There was no sight of Josh Levinson or Roy Jacobson. Were they out in the field? She’d seen Sandra Martin’s neat-but-empty cubicle, so obviously the third member of her team still hadn’t been replaced. With Kate’s departure, the team would be down to just Josh and Roy. The frown stayed put when she rapped on the glass door. The blinds were closed, which could mean one of two things: Jellard was with someone, or he was taking a break with his feet up on the desk, coffee cup in hand. When the knock wasn’t acknowledged, she walked down the hall to the kitchen, where she knew there would be coffee and donuts. The only problem was, there was no coffee and no pink box of donuts.
Kate was so used to making the coffee that she fell into her old routine and scooped out coffee into the clean pot. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something she knew nothing about was going on. She asked herself why she should even care? It was going to take a good five minutes for the coffee to drip into the pot. She might as well use the time to clean out her cubicle, not that there was that much to clean out. She’d never brought clutter to the office. For the most part, she could chuck everything if she wanted to. Tissues, an extra pair of reading glasses, a bottle of nail polish, some breath mints, and two stale power bars. She dumped them all into her bag, then looked at the corkboard, with all its Post-it notes. She ripped them down, then tossed them in the trash can. She covered her computer and used one of the tissues to wipe a few cookie crumbs off her little desk. Now her cubicle was as neat as Sandra Martin