Royal Pain || Stranger Things

twenty-four || big bruv

Tatum drove outside of the city center to where most of the city maintenance buildings were lined up, Jolene pulling up outside of the singular phone company that operated in Hawkins city limits. All phone calls went through them, in or out.

She probably should have waited at the house for Hopper to call her, but it was as if she blinked and she was walking through the front doors only to earn strange looks from a plethora of adults.

The large-haired secretary behind the front desk peered over her glances with a perfectly fake smile, glasses perched on the edge of her nose. "Can I help you, miss?"

"Hi there," Tatum said with a smile, hoping her accent could charm her way through the ranks. "I was hoping you could help me out today. We've been receiving a couple of strange calls from a foreign man that we don't know and I would really like to see if I can find that number so we could ask him to stop."

The secretary blinked dully in her direction, slowly translating as she thought through the request. "You're looking to obtain a phone number?"

"Yes, someone's who's been calling us that we don't know and won't tell us who they are."

"Uh, give me second," she replied, pressing a few buttons before speaking into her headset. "Can you get me Mr. Brooke?" A pause. "Yeah, hi sir. So sorry to bother you. We have a young woman here requesting a specific number from her records. Yes, unknown caller looking to obtain the number." She cleared her throat, looking up to Tatum. "Please go through the double doors to your left. Mr. Brooke will meet you in the hall."

Tatum smiled appreciatively, side stepping the desk and going through the glass doors that ultimately served no purpose but making the office look more exclusive than a phone company should.

Before she could figure out what direction she needed to head, a suited man with surprisingly nice hair appeared around the corner with a friendly smile. "Are you Mr. Brooke?"

"I am." Maybe ten years older than Tatum, he offered out a hand as he reached her. "Call me Theo. And you are?"

"Tatum Rivers," she replied, earning a firm handshake before being guided to an office that oozed personality and ambition.

"Jordan Rivers' daughter?" Theo asked with a grin as he slid into the fancy office chair behind his desk.

"You know him?" Tatum hesitation was genuine, sure that he was much too young to have grown up with Jordan.

Mr. Brooke nodded assuringly, hands folding together in his lap. "Your mom was actually my teacher in middle school. I had her two different years. She was my favorite one. Fantastic teacher."

Tatum smiled softly, sitting on the loveseat facing his desk. "That's what I always hear."

"So, I hear you're looking to obtain a phone number from your call records? Someone's been calling you that you don't know?"

"Yeah, so we've gotten a call or two since we moved in from someone that doesn't speak English and we're not sure who it is or how they got the number," she lied coolly. "We moved to Hawkins less than a year ago so it's a wonder how they managed to get it. We're just hoping to give them a ring and ask them to stop."

Theo nodded, typing out a short message on his computer before a soft sound signaled that it had been sent off. "Sounds easy enough. The Rivers household log has been requested. We have computer files that track everything so we should be able to print it off. This one will pull up all of the phone numbers that went in and out of the landline so as long as you remember the time that the last call occurred, you can figure it out."