Page 39 of A Lifetime in 30 Days
Then she pressed on the gas and took off, making the widest, wildest right turn she’d ever made and then speeding down the street. She didn’t dare look through her rearview mirror or take a breath until she was three blocks away and had made another turn to get on the highway.
By the time Vanna made it to her office, she’d calmed down somewhat. She hadn’t called anyone while she’d been in the truck, preferring instead to listen to one of her gospel playlists in search of that peace that had been shaken by the ugly brown car.
It was probably nothing,she told herself an hour later as she stared at her computer screen. She hadn’t done a thing except sip on that smoothie since she’d been in the office. That car and that guy, who had been staring at her like he wasn’t a bit surprised to see her glance at him, couldn’t possibly mean anything. But wait—he had looked at her with a sort of smirk, hadn’t he? Now her hands began to shake again, and she cursed.
She reached down and opened the desk drawer where she kept her purse and pulled it out. Digging down to the bottom where she’d felt them this morning, she retrieved the papers she’d gotten last week. They were a mangled mess, so she smoothed them out on her desk, separating them so they looked like a miniature train on the surface. Then she sat back and stared at them.
Her gaze lingered on the caption on the first page, which read:Superior Court of the District of Columbia v. Savannah Laniece Diane Carlson.
In all the years that she’d been working in the legal field, never had she imagined seeing her own name on this type of official court document.
With a heavy sigh, she leaned forward so she could see the words. Then she began to read, her chest hitching when she saw some of the details Jovani had given her in his office. The ears he had on the street had definitely provided him more information than was typed on these forms; still, none of it gave any indication that two men would be sitting in a car on her block this morning.
Because it wasn’t related.
Right?
She desperately wanted to believe that, but the commonsense part of her just wouldn’t allow it to be so. She’d never seen the guy before,and couldn’t see the person in the passenger seat at all. Her glance had been too quick, her foot on the gas pedal too fast, to give her any type of real description of the man. Except that he was Black. That was undeniable, as was the immediate feeling that he knew exactly who she was.
This was ridiculous. All of it was. How in the hell had she gotten mixed up in a robbery, or conspiracy to embezzle, or whatever these papers were calling it? She’d never stolen anything in her life. The office supplies she took from work didn’t count, even in as much as they technically did. Everybody did that, and unless she was taking a computer or some other big item like that, neither HC Sr. nor Jr. was going to be pressing charges against her.
Still, that’s what she was being accused of—stealing.
On a whim, she turned to her computer and pulled up her online banking login. She went into the system and viewed the balance of her checking, savings, and the IRA account she’d opened as a backup to the 401K plan she had through the firm. With today’s current political climate, there was no way in hell she was depending totally on the social security she’d been paying into against her will since her first job when she was sixteen years old.
All the balances looked correct, and as she stared at the numbers on the screen, she wondered who else was looking at these numbers today. Who else was viewing her private financial information?
The phone ringing on her desk jerked her quickly out of those thoughts.
“Hello? Yes?” The two words spilled from her mouth even though she had no clue who was on the other end of the phone, whether it had been an outside call, to which this was the absolute wrong and unprofessional way to answer, or an inner-office call—in which case, her annoyed tone was only marginally problematic.
“Hey,” Sanni said. “You ready for lunch? Want to go out and get some air first?”
A quick glance at the bottom of the screen told her it was indeed almost one o’clock. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been sitting there reading those court documents and thinking about all this mess.
“Yeah, sure. Some fresh air sounds good,” she said. In fact, it sounded amazing.
She needed to clear her mind and get on with her life. Whatever was going to happen with the case was going to happen whether she sat at this desk worrying about it or not. She’d just hung up with Sanni and reached down into the drawer for her purse when it started to vibrate. Not her purse, but the phone inside it.
When she found the phone, she was shocked to see that it was on vibrate. She never kept her phone on vibrate when she was in the office, even though she probably should’ve. And she definitely didn’t put it on vibrate when she was driving. So when had she done it? When she realized the phone was ringing and not just vibrating from a notification, she hurriedly swiped it.
“Hey,” she said a little breathlessly, even though she hadn’t moved from that chair.
“Hey,” Aden said, confusion clear in his tone. “You okay? I’ve been texting you all morning and you haven’t replied. This is my second time calling. I was about to drive over to your office.”
She sat back in the chair and sighed. “Sorry,” she said, and closed her eyes. “I didn’t know the phone was on vibrate, and it was in my purse, in the drawer, so I’m just hearing it.”
“What’s wrong?” was his next question.
Her eyes shot open, and she straightened in the chair as if he could actually see her. “Nothing,” she replied. “I’ve just ... um, been busy this morning. That’s why I didn’t notice my phone.”
He was silent for a beat.
“You don’t sound like yourself,” he said.
She tried to smile. “Then who do I sound like?”
Another moment of silence. “How was your smoothie?” he asked.
