replied.
Miranda made a mental note to look into that.
“So what did this one-eyed bear do?” she asked.
“It wasn’t a bear,” Larry insisted. “It rushed through the trees at him. He could hear the branches thrashing around and then it made this loud snorting roar.”
“Then what?” Miranda asked.
“Then Joey said he heard someone singing in the distance,” Larry said.
“And?” Miranda asked, finding herself sort of intrigued in spite of herself.
“And it ran away,” he said.
“I see,” Miranda said. “Well, thank you for walking me through it. I’ll be sure to pass along this information to our legal team.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Larry asked.
She didn’t.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Miranda said. “It’s my job to ask the questions and convey the information. Shall we head back?”
Larry nodded sullenly.
Well, she couldn’t really blame the man. Miranda was feeling a bit sullen herself. She’d been hired as a high-level executive assistant, not a camp counselor. And while she was out wandering around the woods listening to ghost stories, her phone had been buzzing up a storm in her pocket.
“Is there someplace around here that I can make a call?” she asked Larry.
Larry looked at her like she had two heads and spread his arms wide, as if the forest were her personal phone booth.
“Someplace indoors,” she said.
“There’s an old cabin where we eat lunch if it rains,” he said dubiously.
“Perfect,” Miranda replied.
They marched on in silence until they got back to the trail.
Miranda was exhausted, and a nasty blister was developing on her right heel. It would be good to take a little break, catch up on calls and emails and then head up the path to her car.
At least she didn’t have to report back to Mr. Ward until morning. Lately, her demanding boss was spending more time away from the office, doing God only knew what.
One path wound into another and at last Larry pointed to something in the woods.
“There ya go.”
Miranda turned to behold a structure that could only be called a cabin by the most generous definition of the word. The corrugated metal roof was rusty and the little building itself was shedding blackened cedar shakes like a nervous cat.
“That’s it?” she asked.
“That’s it,” he told her. “Make yourself at home.”
“Only if I’m a cobweb,” she muttered to herself.
“Pardon?” Larry asked.
“Nothing, uh, thank you,” she said.
“No problem,” he told her. “See ya.”
Larry marched off while Miranda headed inside and lost herself in her business so quickly that she didn’t have time to mind the dingy interior.
A few hours later, she was still spread out at the rickety table in the so-called cabin. She was almost halfway through the emails on her tablet, and the phone was still buzzing like an angry hornet.
Cullen Ward was a powerful man, with powerful contacts who weren’t used to being patient. As his assistant, it was her job to stroke egos and smooth feathers without committing Mr. Ward to anything he didn’t want to do.
The door to the cabin creaked open and a couple of guys came in to collect their things.
“Uh, Miss Cannon, we’re heading out,” one of them said. “Larry said we should walk you to your car.”
She glanced back at her tablet. Three more emails had just popped up. If she could just get to the bottom of her inbox before the end of business hours, it would be much better than letting any of Mr. Ward’s contacts wait for her to get home.
“I’ll be okay on my own,” she told him. “I just need a few more minutes.”
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged. “You know your way out?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll just follow the path”
He gave her a little wave and the men filed out.
She turned back to her email as the phone rang again.
The calls went on for a bit, but finally slowed enough for her to respond to a handful of email messages.
The next time she picked up the phone she had barely said hello when the call cut off.
She held it away from her ear and studied the black screen. Her phone was totally dead.
“Shoot,” she said. Of course her charger was in her car.
She gave one last glance to her stuffed inbox on her tablet, and decided reluctantly that she’d better pack it in.
She stood up and stretched and then did a double take.
It was completely dark outside.
She must have lost track of time while she was wheeling and dealing in this stupid cabin. It wasn’t the first time she had done something like this,