Working Stiff(125)
“Okay, then.”
“What time is it?” he asked, even though he was holding his phone.
Rox consulted her own phone. “Nine-oh-seven.”
“Is Wren out there?”
“Let me text.” She paused, and her eyebrows rose. “Yeah, she’s early today.”
Casimir looked at his own phone. “All right, we’ve got five minutes. Let’s go.”
“Five minutes to what?” But Casimir had already opened the office door and was walking out into the main floor area.
Rox trotted after him. “Hey! Five minutes to what?”
When she yelled, people turned. A wave of silence propagated through the large center area of the law office. At the disruption, heads popped up over the short upholstered walls like prairie dogs emerging from their holes to look for predators.
Casimir’s stride lengthened. At six-four, he was easily tall enough to see over the cubicle dividers, but he leapt up onto a desk in the center of the room. It swayed under his legs for a moment and he looked down at it, but he kept his balance.
Casimir announced, “May I have everyone’s attention, please?”
Rox almost giggled. Sometimes that British accent of his was jarring.
He snapped his fingers in the air. “Everyone? For just a moment?”
Who snapped their fingers to get people’s attention? Only a Brit. Or a guy who was Dutch but whom everyone thought was a Brit because he didn’t tell anyone anything about himself that he didn’t have to.
Rox clutched her purse more closely to her stomach, suddenly fearful for him.
Casimir said, “I need to talk to you all. The car accident that injured me a few months ago was a murder attempt. After I was fired yesterday, there were two more attempts to kill Rox and myself: a sniper shot at us as we drove home on the freeway—”
A collective gasp withdrew the air from the room, and the muttering amplified as the admins and paralegals remembered seeing the sniper shootings on the news the previous night and discussed it among themselves.
One woman asked, “They were shooting at you guys?”
He said, “We were in the SUV that was initially attacked. Rox was driving.”
The field of faces, hundreds of them, all turned toward Rox, scrutinizing her and her total lack of make-up and too-tight gym clothes that she had borrowed from Brandy.
She waved, swiveling her hand like the Queen. She could feel that her face had scrunched up into an uncomfortable grin that looked more like she was baring her teeth at them. Damn, of all the times that she should have been ready with her resting bitch face plus prim smile.
“Rox was almost killed, too?” Wren shrieked.
Casimir said, “Both by the sniper and when they firebombed the house.”
This time, the mutter swelled into chatter and talking.
Someone yelled, “A bomb?”
“Yes. Bombs were thrown at my house last night. It burned. The house was entirely destroyed.”
Gasps.
More talking.
Grumbling.
Angry mutters.
“That was your house on the news last night?”
“Unfortunately,” Casimir said.
“You should sue the hell out of them!”
Rox almost laughed, and she bowed her head to swing her hair forward around her face.
Wren called out to her, “Rox, are you okay?”
Rox nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Casimir glanced at his phone. “We believe that the reason why these attempts on our lives have been occurring is that there have been some gross irregularities in the contracts that we have been approving for clients. I have found clauses in the contracts that Valerie Arbeitman and Josie Silverman worked on that are egregiously unethical. I have confirmed that these contracts were actually signed by all parties. I believe that Val and Josie were approving these contracts and allowing agents and studios to swindle our clients.”
A mutter cascaded through the room. People looked at each other, squinting and frowning.
A woman’s voice said, “But that’s illegal.”
Someone else yelled, “So is shooting people and burning down houses.”
A nervous giggle rose from the crowd.
Casimir glanced at his phone again. He looked back up at all of their friends and coworkers. “Murder and swindling clients are both illegal. That’s why I have informed all of our current and previous clients that they may have problematic clauses in their contracts and that they may have recourse in the civil and criminal courts. All of them.”
This time, no one said anything.
Silence spread over the room as everyone realized that all of the law firm’s clients were going to call the office that morning.
Every single one of them.
Except for a few who would go straight to their own lawyers.