Page 72 of Tiger Queen

“Then let’s pay her out,” I insisted. “That’s better than allowing her to stay here and do more damage.”

“We can’t afford to give someone two months of pay for zero work in return.” David glanced at me. “And after that interrogation, I’m not sure she did it.”

“Really? Because she started crying?” I laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “Is that really all it takes to make you lose your nerve?”

“Do not lecture me about what just happened in there,” David snapped. Fire shone in his blue eyes. “Regardless of what we suspect, that was totally inappropriate. You crossed a line. She could sue us for verbal harassment.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “I’d like to see her try.”

We reached the house and David opened the door. “Rachel, you’re incredibly smart, so I want you to stop and think about it for a minute. If Mary Beth is trying to hurt us from the inside, then she would love to sue us. Conscious effort to wound or harm another person with words and actions. That’s the legal definition of verbal harassment. She would certainly have a case, and at the least it would bog us down with legal expenses and hurt our reputation. Something we desperately need if we’re going to work with other zoos to move these animals.

“And if she’s not working with the AFF?” he added. “Then you just screamed at an innocent girl and called her a fucking bitch. That’s not okay. That’s the kind of abuse dad would throw at us and the other employees constantly.”

I laughed nervously and looked at the other two. Anthony was wincing at me, afraid to disagree. Jake nodded solemnly.

And if he was agreeing with David, then I knew it was the truth.

“We all need to cool down,” David said. “We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

He stormed upstairs. Anthony gave me another sorry look and followed.

“I still think she fucking did it,” Jake told me before leaving too.

I felt guilty the rest of the night. Once the heat of the moment was over, I recognized that I had crossed a line. I made one of the employees cry! An employee that had been shadowing me for the last two days and asking me lots of questions about the animals. Like I was her mentor.

I made myself a TV dinner and holed up in my bedroom.

The frustrating thing was that deep down, I was still certain she took the recording of us. I saw the guilt in her eyes! She had been on her phone a lot, and quickly put it away whenever I confronted her about it. And the peppy cheerleader attitude was definitely all an act. All signs pointed to her hiding something.

But that didn’t stop me from feeling like the world’s biggest asshole.

I watched more episodes of Tiger King in bed. None of the guys came to knock on my door and check on me. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better, or worse.

I struggled to sleep, and eventually gave up and took a shower at an ungodly hour of the morning. But that meant I was downstairs and waiting when David woke up. He grunted and said good morning, but nothing else.

We walked into the zoo together in silence. When it was too much for me to stand I finally let out an exasperated sigh.

“I’m sorry, okay?” I said. “You were right. I crossed a line with Mary Beth, and I’ve felt awful about it all night. I fucked up.”

He nodded, but didn’t look over. “It’s alright. I can’t blame you.”

“Well, you did blame me last night. You said I was acting like your father. And for that I’m sorry.”

“I just mean, I understand where you’re coming from,” he explained. “I was just as angry as you and Jake.”

“It didn’t seem like it.”

“I’m better at holding it in. I’ve had practice dealing with idiots at my two gyms. Have you ever seen someone hurl a barbell toward the ceiling because they thought that’s what a hammer throw exercise was? Because I have, and I called them things much worse than a fucking bitch.”

I laughed at the image. “I promise to keep my cool from now on. But what do we do now?”

“We have spare locks in the utility shed. I’m going to change the locks on all the employee buildings, and make sure that the only people with keys are you, me, and my brothers. That will limit the damage she can do. Aside from that?” He shrugged. “We keep an eye on her. Look for anything suspicious.”

“I still think the easiest thing would be to fire her.”

He laughed and started to make a joke, but then we reached the cross-road that led back to the parking lot. Jake was standing in the road, waving a flashlight for a big box truck that was backing up with a beeping noise.

“The hell’s going on here?” David asked.

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