Page 5 of In the Nick of Time
Standingup from his ergonomic office chair, Doug stretched his back before looking out the window next to his desk. As a senior agent—with only one hundred and eighty-three days, sixhours, and… forty-seven seconds until retirement—he’d earned a cubicle with a view. A view of a parking lot and an empty street, but it was better than what some of the other agents had.
The higher-ups had been making the cubicles smaller and smaller since budget cuts started after the Suez Canal debacle. But hey, they’d stopped some Very Bad People from importing a drug even more addictive than fentanyl. Soon everyone would be standing up at skinny desks to work regardless of whether they foiled criminals like Aeric Tozer, aka The Darkness. Such a pretentious name.
But at least Doug had a view.
At the beginning of his career, Doug had had an office all to himself. Now he was going to be sharing a desk with the new guy. It was hard to wrap his head around that, but it was his reality.
Shoving his hands in his pockets to keep himself from cracking his knuckles, Doug glared out the window. Usually it was fairly boring out there in normal-land. This suboffice was located in the most boring business park in the state.Nothing to see here, we are innocuouswas the vibe SPAM was going for. They were mostly successful.
Doug’s attention was snagged by one of the ugliest cars he’d ever seen in real life moving slowly on the street below. Scratch that. It was the single ugliest car he had ever seen. Painted an odd bronze-yellow color, the vehicle looked like a cross between an angry bee and a constipated bear.
“What the hell is that?” Doug leaned forward, banging his forehead against the windowpane.
As he stood there, fascinated by the sheer hideousness of the vehicle, it came to a stop in the middle of the street. The driver’s side door opened up and a younger-than-Doug man emerged. Even from where Doug was standing—and because he had 20/10 eyesight—he noted that the driver was flustered and appeared to be talking to someone or something in the street.
If Doug himself had been in the market for a boy toy, he wouldn’t have minded taking the driver for a spin around the block. But he wasn’t in the market for anything, especially not for men fifteen or more years younger than he was.
He eyed the guy’s black suit with the stove-pipe legs, the skinny tie, the crisp white shirt, and the shiny oxfords. Far too hip for Doug’s taste. He preferred down-to-earth men who wore jeans and polo shirts, much like what Doug was wearing at the moment. Was it dress code? No, but obviously SPAM wasn’t planning on letting him go because of it.
Much to his disgust.
Doug returned to cataloguing everything that was wrong with the man on the street. The guy’s dark, wavy hair looked like it was due for a trim, and he could have used a little more muscle underneath that suit. Minutes had passed since Doug first spotted him, but he was still at least fifteen years younger than Doug’s forty-two. Doug had been at the top of his superhero game when the driver had still been learning to walk. Or fly, depending.
There was no love in Doug’s future. He was adopting a cat and it could sit out on the cabin’s porch with him. Maybe he’d let it drink prosecco too.
Bending down—don’t go there, Doug warned his libido—the driver hefted something large up off the pavement and lugged it over to his car where he placed it in the back seat. A suitcase? A small boulder? Then he climbed back behind the wheel and drove off.
The day’s entertainment over, Doug sat back down and began formulating a reply to April’s email.
PER MY PREVIOUS EMAIL
“Hmm.” Maybe all caps was a bad idea. Doug selected the words and changed to a less scream-like font size.
As a senior member of the subpar team, I prefer working alone. And, as negotiated, I will not be taking any further assignments as Long Shot. Thus, there is no point in assigning a new agent as my partner.
A muffled explosion from outside told Doug the Innovation Unit’s newest test car had ignited, so it must be close to noon. If this Nicholas Sedgewick kid was reporting for duty, where the hell was he?
Didn’t matter. Doug wasn’t working with him.
He refocused on the email he was attempting to compose. Ten minutes later, he hadn’t added anything new because what he really wanted to say wasfuck youbut he also wanted his retirement benefits. He was about to click Send when the elevator and his email pinged at the same time.
Subject: Nicholas Sedgewick
Nicholas Sedgewick has arrived. Proceed to the elevator bay and escort Mr. Sedgewick to your shared workstation.
Proceed. He’d fuckingproceed, alright. The countdown calendar pinned to the wall of his cubicle caught his eye. November eighteenth was circled in red. Dragging in a lungful of oxygen through his nose, Doug held it for thirty seconds before blowing it back out.
Even before he finished weaving through the maze of cubicles, Doug had a bad feeling, one reminiscent of the beginning of a bad case of heartburn, that this “new partnership” was going to be much more complicated than the uppers made it seem. It always was.
Swinging around the last corner, Doug spotted him waiting at the elevator. The hot younger man who drove the angry bee slash constipated bear hybrid.
The kid was nervous. Good.
THREE
NICK
Is every day going to be like this?
