Chapter 1

Heath stared at the large stack of manila folders on his desk, then he looked down at the two large plastic bins full of at least twenty more of them. The enormous room was silent, but he knew that Dane was somewhere around. He rolled his chair to the end of his cubicle and poked his head out into the poor excuse for a hallway that ran between the cubicles in his row.

Seeing nothing, he stood up and peered over his cubicle walls. He glanced around the sea of cubicles that covered the large office space that Pristine Mortgage used for the post-closing department on the first floor of the Pristine building. No sign of Dane, although he had to be around somewhere. What really irritated Heath was that there was no sign of anyone else. From his cubicle, Heath could see out the tinted windows that surrounded the building, but not quite as well as he liked. The tint on the windows was dark, most likely in a dual effort to offer privacy and a modicum of safety to the building’s occupants, but also to probably keep out the heat during those warm summer months that frequently beset Maryland. Now in winter, those same windows were frosty.

Hoping for a better view, Heath walked down the hallway until he reached the wall of windows and peered out. There were no cars in the parking lot on this side of the building except for his and Dane’s. He imagined that there wasn’t anyone else in the entire ten story building except for the two of them. He took a deep breath, trying to expel the negativity that came with that thought.

Heath had not been raised to be disrespectful of his boss, or anyone, for that matter, but he seriously felt like screaming. The entire lot was covered in an odd mixture of snow and ice, and a frozen glaze enclosed the leaves of the numerous trees planted throughout the business park. If he hadn’t been so angry, he might have enjoyed the beautiful scene, but instead he stood there imagining how difficult it was going to be to get down the curvy hill that led to the enormous office building.

Heath took another breath, trying to calm himself down. If he didn’t, his mother would hear the tension in his voice. He walked back to his cubicle and used his work phone to dial his parents’ number.

“Hey, how are you? Yep, still at work. Well, we were going to, but we really need to get some stuff done. A lot of paperwork has to go out to the lending company. It secures our money. What? I know, but we should be fine. Actually, yeah, Dane swears that the delivery company is going to pick it up…I know. It seems a little hard to believe.”

Heath listened for a moment, letting his mother offer advice on how to deal with snow. From time to time, he could hear his father in the background, adding his own words of wisdom.

“Well, Dane has an SUV. He said he’ll drop me if he needs to. I know, they’re not much better than anything else. Yes, the whole DC area is closing up, but you know there are always a few people out there.”

Heath laughed, and then said, “You’re right, Mother; those people are idiots. If it’s too rough, we won’t drive in it. Well, we could stay here. There are couches in the lounge, and showers in the gym. There’s actually some food in the lounge refrigerator left over from the New Year’s party last week.”

Everything except the food part had been the truth. If he remembered correctly, there were myriad frozen dinners he and Dane could replace later without arising too much ire from their coworkers, and of course there was the old box of donuts from the department meeting a few days ago that no one had had the initiative to throw out. Perhaps he wasn’t telling a complete and utter lie, although if he were, he could only hope that in his retirement years, if he had a twenty-five-year-old child, he would be lied to as well. There was no need to worry his parents.

“You know actually, Mom. I also forgot, Dane lives near here. Yeah, some luxury apartments they put in down the street. He said I could sleep on the couch if I had to. You’re right, that probably is a good idea. Yes, we could walk there. I know, he’s a cool boss. No worries, I have boots in my car. Okay, if we need to do that, I will.”

Everything except for the boots in his car was a lie, as was the part about Dane being a cool boss. That ship had sailed today.