Working Stiff(123)

Casimir nodded. “So Val and Josie must have known about that.”

“Dammit, I hate those guys.” Rox jiggled the doorknob on her office door, but it didn’t turn. “Shit.”

Casimir said, “Stand back.”

Rox stepped away, and Casimir leaned to his side and kicked the door hard. It popped open and slammed into the wall behind it, spraying wood from the doorjamb into the office.

“Did you take karate at some point?” Rox asked.

“Tae kwon do.”

They walked into her office, and Rox shut the door behind them. It drifted open a little because the latch was very broken. “What else do I not know about you?”

Even in the low light, she saw him flinch. “We’ll talk about that on the plane.”

They ran around to the other side of the desk, rolling her big office chair back and away, and Rox tugged her computer out of her purse. Her big rubber plant was still there, and she felt bad about abandoning it.

She set her laptop on the desk and opened the lid. The token had fallen to the bottom of her purse, and it took her a minute to fish it out. The blue glow from the computer screen washed over the token, and Rox held it in both hands, angling the tiny stick toward the computer so that she could see the numbers on it.

Casimir lit the flashlight on his phone again and shone the light on her hands and the small security device.

They watched the token, waiting, until the nine digit number changed with a flash.

Rox scrambled to type her identification number into the computer and then type the security code displayed on the token in the next box.

She tapped the Enter key, and the law firm’s home screen zoomed into view.

“I’ll be damned,” she said. “They didn’t disable my security ID, either. Those bastards must’ve really thought that we were dead. I thought that I was going to have to use Wren’s, but I didn’t really want to get her into trouble.”

Rox navigated to the folder with the master client list.

Casimir walked over to the window beside her door and peered through it, watching the dark office.

“See anything?” she asked.

“No.” He kept watching at the window, anyway.

Rox downloaded the entire client list, hundreds of names and email addresses, onto her laptop. “I’ve got the emails. They didn’t add any extra layers of security after they fired us.”

“Good. Go ahead.”

“Are you sure? I was pretty angry when we wrote this.”

“We edited it, and the clients need to know. It sounds professional. I wouldn’t let anything unprofessional go out, and I don’t think you would either. If for any reason we don’t make it to the plane, or if the file doesn’t make it to the ethics committee, the clients need to know.”

That thought chilled her. They—whomever they were—had nearly killed Casimir in that car accident, and they had made two more attempts on both of them within the last day.

Yeah, they needed to send the emails now.

Rox fired up the email management system and pasted in the letter that she and Casimir had written. Under the careful, polite language, the words seethed with rage on their clients’ behalf. The clients, all those actors and singers and musicians and writers, had been bilked out of millions upon millions of dollars, and they damned well deserved to know it.

She imported the email list, doing it manually instead of using the list in the email server to make sure that she got absolutely every client that Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg had ever had. She added her own email address at the bottom so that she could make sure that the email went out.

The email program ground, sending the emails.

Rox’s phone pinged, indicating an email had arrived. She checked it, and it was indeed their message.

Which meant that thousands of other emails had gone out, too, and thousands of clients were going to start calling Val, Josie, and other lawyers as soon as they saw them. Some of those people were on the East Coast, which meant that they were probably already out of bed.

“Okay. I’m done.” She slapped the lid of her laptop closed.

“So that’s it. We burned it all down. Val and Josie will have nothing left after the clients go after them.” Casimir shook his head. “It took Val decades to build this law firm, and it will be gone.”

“It’s chopping down a tree that is rotten to the core. She was screwing over our clients. They deserved her honesty. They deserved her best work for them.”

Casimir sighed. “Yes, they deserved her honesty, and the others at the firm deserve ours.”

“Come on. Let’s go. Arthur’s plane will be waiting for us.”

“I can’t leave,” Casimir said.