Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,5
said so.”
“They do that on purpose,” Doris snapped. “The one in the main hall is set forward a little bit to keep everybody racing, as if they’re behind.”
“Well, we’re definitely behind on some things in here,” Joy said, “but that is a dirty trick with the clock.” She’d have to remember that.
She brought up her email again and found a couple things she needed to deal with. With those done, she returned to the project she had been working on last Friday and dove back in. She wondered if her conversation with Kai would bear any fruit because that missing case of ketamine definitely bothered Joy. But, if Kai gets in trouble over it, then Joy didn’t want Kai to deal with it either. Joy hadn’t been working for more than fifteen minutes when her phone buzzed. She picked it up and answered. Her section boss, James, ordered her to his office. He hung up before she had a chance to even respond.
Slowly she put down the receiver, grabbing paper and pen. She stood, wondering if she should grab her purse and her sweater too, and headed to her boss’s office.
As she walked into James’s office, he frowned at her. “I don’t know what your connection is, and it would have been nice if you had told me in the first place,” he snapped. “We don’t like employees keeping stuff secret from the bosses.”
She frowned at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He motioned behind her at two men she didn’t recognize. One reached out his hand and introduced himself as Johan and said the other one was Galen. Just then a third guy walked in, happy and bustling.
“Good, good, good. Everybody arrived.”
Her boss immediately stood to attention. “Sir?”
“These men are here at my request,” he said.
Confusion crossed her boss’s face. “I don’t understand.”
James looked at her, and she shrugged. “Don’t look at me.”
“Not at all,” the new arrival said, as he reached out a hand. “I’m Edward Thornton.” He introduced himself to Joy, as she shook his hand. “I’m on the board and have decided to open up an investigation into our inventory issues,” he said with a warm smile.
She was dumbfounded. She didn’t know if this was a result of her questions to Kai and wondered if she could even make something like this happen so fast. Joy didn’t understand.
Edward motioned her to the chair. “Sit down, sit down.”
She dropped in place, rather than sitting ladylike.
Johan and Galen stood off to the side, their arms crossed over their chests. They looked more like private security than investigators, but maybe it was the same thing; she didn’t know.
Edward turned to her section boss, almost wringing his hands in delight. “One of the issues we’ve always had is the comptroller’s concerns regarding the accounting of the inventory,” he said. “So I want these two guys, who are specialists in this field,” he said, with an expansive arm thrown toward the two men, “to go through our inventory processing and to look at our inventory database to see if everything is up to snuff.”
Her section boss struggled to keep his jaw closed as he muttered, “I didn’t think there were any problems with the inventory,” he said.
“No, but I’m certain you are aware that new regulations are coming out on how medications are stored and accounted for,” he said. “I want to start now because, as soon as that directive comes through, we’re meant to be in compliance within thirty days.”
“Normally we get months and months, if not years, for compliance,” her boss muttered, frowning.
“Usually that’s true,” Edward said. “In this case, it’s not. So I want to get a jump on it now.”
Her boss sat back and frowned.
Edward nodded. “You don’t like the fact that I’ve done this?” he asked. “You should be happy I involved you in the process.”
Her boss’s face immediately cleared, but she could see the effort it required of him. “I just, well, if I’m not doing a good job,” he said, “it would be nice to know.”
“Oh my,” Edward said. “Where would you get that idea? This is all about compliance and making sure that our processes are okay. I could have brought in a process engineer, but I thought maybe we wanted to do something much more low-key.”
She slid a glance at the two men, who looked like perfect candidates to be bouncers at a bar, and wondered just what the hell low-key was—because these men were anything but.