Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,26
intelligence. In the thousand cases where we’ve deployed Inga, she’s never once failed us.”
The meeting adjourned soon afterward, with each analyst accompanying their corresponding manager back to their departments. Everyone on her team was eager to get started, scenting—as she had—the irresistible lure of the chase. Five days. Twenty million dollars. The pressure was indisputably on.
GREGG
AFTER THE meeting I offered Nora a tour of headquarters. To my infinite surprise, Logan joined us. I hadn’t thought she’d even show up for the meeting this morning. She’d promised to come when we spoke on the terrace last night, but she’d also threatened to kill me. Under the circumstances, lying seemed like the best-case scenario. Now that she’d made good on her promise, though, my stomach churned at the idea that the threat might also be true.
“I understand it’s an extremely busy week for both of you. I’m happy to shadow you during your normal routines to conduct the interviews,” Nora said as we left the conference room.
And get us talking while we were distracted. Smart.
“In or out of the steam room, right?” Logan joked and Nora flushed, looking momentarily flustered.
“You’re a member?” I turned to Nora. When I Googled her after Atlanta I’d imagined seeing her again, not for sex—she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in continuing a relationship—but for a fleeting moment of connection, a nod across a restaurant, a glance in the skyway. I’d looked for her in every crowd in Minneapolis and she’d been at Strike the whole time.
“I was,” Nora corrected, shifting uncomfortably. “I suspended my membership this morning, for the duration of the investigation.”
We proceeded with the tour, me leading the way while Logan’s spandex leggings and “Avocados for President” tank top flanked the other side of Nora’s immaculate suit. It was a surreal thing to walk through the halls of my company with my wife and my … could I call Nora Trier a lover? I didn’t know. If I’d had more practice cheating on my spouse, maybe I’d have learned the language. I wasn’t even feeling the right things. I should have been terrified that Nora would mention Atlanta, but the thought barely occurred. All I wanted to do was shove Logan’s face at Nora and shake her until she recognized what a decent woman looked like, the kind of person who didn’t threaten to throw their husband off a balcony. If Logan had understood decency, Atlanta never would have happened. A lot of things wouldn’t have happened.
We passed reception, where two towering body bags acted as columns on either side of the double doors, and moved into the administrative areas.
“Did we scare everyone away already?” Nora paused at an empty cubicle and tapped the mouse, prompting the monitor to boot up and flash a desktop photo of two fighters in a ring. One of the desk drawers was open an inch and she glanced at it before looking over the memos and a last-season Fitspo poster featuring Logan’s blackened silhouette against the exploding flash of a camera, with a single line at the bottom. YOUR FIGHT WILL BECOME LEGEND.
“Most of the staff will be at the stadium all week, but we can call any of them back at any time. Obviously you’ll have access to everyone you need. We simply ask for delicacy about the”—I felt Logan’s stare and didn’t trust myself to return it—“financial situation.”
We moved on, past high-performance computers, treadmill desks, the self-service smoothie bar and balcony garden overlooking Nicollet Mall. Talking about Strike and the people who built Strike calmed me. “From the very beginning, we vowed not to be one of those companies who give their investors everything and bleed their employees dry. That’s exactly the ‘do more with less’ corporate imperative that leads to disillusionment and burnout.”
“Your motto is ‘do more with more’?” Nora asked.
“It’s one of the things Gregg and I always agreed on.” Logan shifted from foot to foot, one or two degrees away from a boxer’s shuffle. She acted as though I wasn’t in the room and I wondered if Nora noticed how we both spoke exclusively to her. “Treating our employees like family. We don’t just recognize and reap their accomplishments. We see the whole person, for exactly what they are.”
There was a moment of silence before I forced a smile and led the way to the executive offices. Sara, my assistant, greeted us with a handful of brand-new, full-access security badges for the Parrish team. Nora accepted hers and followed Logan and me