Ripple Effect

Chapter Forty-Nine: ...the chain of command.

Matt

Wednesday, 28th November, 2018

12:13 PM

Matt hooked the teabag out of the mug using the teaspoon and then catapulted it across the break room and towards the bin in the corner. It arced through the air, hit the grey plastic swing lid with a wet slap, causing the lid to lurch open, and then it slid down, dragging a little as it did so, and disappeared into the awaiting trash before the lid teetered shut once more.

"Nice shot." Kat's voice came from the doorway.

Matt spun around. Kat stood in the entrance, next to the trophy cabinet, with her hands tucked into the pockets of her suit pants whilst her expression showed a mix of surprise and genuine appreciation of the talent. He grinned. "You know, it's surprising the skills you pick up when you're meant to be writing a novel."

She smiled back, and then jerked her head towards the corridor behind her. "You got a minute?"

"Sure." He slurped from the top of the mug and lowered the surface level just enough that the tea wouldn't spill over when he walked, and then he followed her out onto the hallway that ran adjacent to the glass-walled offices and that led towards the secretary's office—still empty, untouched since the day of the poisoning. At least Cushing hadn't taken over that, even if he saw everything else as fair game.

In the main hall, members of staff wrestled on overcoats and chunky-knit scarves, leant over the desks to answer the trills of an abandoned telephone, or tapped away at the computer keyboard one-handedly whilst the other hand delivered sips from takeaway coffee cups or bites of wilted sandwiches to their lips. The usual lunchtime bustle.

Kat's behaviour, however, was anything but usual.

She peered through the slats of the blinds that shielded Jay's office, her brow nicked with an anxious frown that grew more and more engrained by the millisecond, and at the sight of Jay hunched over his desk, the handset of the office phone pressed to his ear, her pace quickened a fraction. She glanced back over her shoulder, as though to make sure that Matt was keeping up—or hadn't fallen into an abyss—and then she tilted her head towards her own office, her frown like a nudge that urged him on.

She held the door open for him, ushered him inside, and motioned for him to take a seat.

"What was that all about?" Matt sank down onto one of the chairs in front of the desk. He leant back against the thin cushion and rested one leg across the other, the mug of tea cradled loosely in front of his chest. But as Kat perched against the edge of the desk, his easy smile was met with an almost pained expression, one that made his smile sink beneath a wave of unease.

Kat spoke in a low voice, as though worried someone might hear them through the glass, her whole body tensed as she clutched the edge of the wood. "I reached out to my Russian counterparts about the BSR deal, but I didn't want to gut the secretary's proposal like Cushing asked for, so I softened the terms as little as possible. But it didn't exactly go as planned."

"Let me guess, they want to get rid of the clauses all together."

Kat nodded. The whites of her eyes shone. "And they're refusing to budge."

Matt lowered his foot to the floor, and then hunched forward in the seat, the mug clasped between his knees. He looked up at her. "Well, we always knew that might happen."

"I thought that if I gave them five per cent, maybe they'd ask for ten, then we could meet them in the middle, and it would save us from losing the whole thing. That's how it's meant to work, after all." Kat stared out through the frosted glass partition. Her eyes took on the same hazy tint, and as her gaze lingered there, she shook her head to herself. "But they know something's up with the secretary, and they know that we have no power to negotiate, not when Cushing's got about as much spine as a sea sponge."