Oh hello sir." She greeted politely, "I need assistance accessing the separate server. I came from the finance floor."
"Oh, the Junk server. What would you be looking for in it?" He inquired. She acted as though she didn't hear him.
"Is there someone who can help me with it then?"
"Yes," He turned around and yelled, "Gray! Get me Caleb!"
She heard no voice in response and could only assume the Gray person had gone to get Caleb. Wait, could it actually be Caleb? The Caleb she planned to seek out. If it was then that would make things a lot more easier for her.
"So Miss. Finance floor lady, how come I don't see a tag?"
"I left it back at my desk." She responded simply, she did not want to make small talk with the man she knew he was trying to be nice; she just wanted to wait for Caleb in peace.
"Hmmm," he sipped his coffee, "What's it like working up there under Fred?"
"Okay I guess."
"You called boss?" A new person said joining them, it was a tall, slender man with hair dyed red and cool blue eyes. He turned his gaze to her and smiled at her, before turning back to the man, "How may I be of service?"
"Ah, Caleb, there you are!" He replied heartily patting his back, "This lady here wants to access our junk drawer, help her out will ya." Giving him one last tap, he walked away leaving Michelle alone with Caleb.
"Come with me, Miss?" His voice was quiet not at all matching his appearance
"Michelle. Please just call me Michelle." She did not want any formalities between them especially since she wanted to recruit him.
"Of course, my name's Caleb as I'm sure you might have heard. Let's just go to the Junk server room. It's on a different floor."
"Right. Lead the way." Together they entered the elevator heading up to the 75th floor. "Why's the server room so high up?"
"No clue. That's how I met it and Boss didn't have an explanation for me either."
"Ah, alright."
"What department are you from?"
"Finance department, 50th floor."
"Yeesh, that means you're working under Fred. What's that like?"
"Your leader asked me the same question. You guys have something against Mr. Frederick?"
"You could say that. He's a raging dipshit who thinks the IT department is meant to handle every little issue that he has. One time, he called us because his personal phone was lagging, his personal phone. The man went crazy, insisting we sent someone up to fix it."
"What ended up being the issue then?"
"He had too many tabs open and a lot of unnecessary apps downloaded. We sent one of our interns to him, she came back almost crying."
"Damn, here I though the hate was limited to our department. Guess I was wrong."
"I don't think there's a department that likes him, except the design department."
The elevator opened on the 75th floor, the Junk server room was more of a floor. There was a security guard at the entrance, who waived them in once he saw it was Caleb.
"No body search?"
"I come here a lot, I'm the one who does the routine memory cleanup of the server. So what do you need?" He asked as he sat in front of the computer that was connected to the server.
"I need access to the files that show how much the company had spent on the previous designs that the design team submitted and I also need the estimates that Finance gave for each of them."
"Hmm, that might take a while depending on how far back you want it."
"Make it 4 years but if you can back further, that'd be great."
"Alright, make yourself comfortable. Also do you have what I'll be transferring the data to?"
"What?"
"A flash drive or your phone?"
"Oh, here." She handed him a flash drive. He collected it and got to work. The screen got filled with a series of numbers and names both of which she did not understand, so she busied herself with her phone.
"So Michelle, what made you come work at Hart Industries?" He asked his hands scrolling and selecting files.
My grandfather is the owner she thought but did not say it out loud, if he didn't know her identity she was going to work with it and see how he would act around someone he felt was on the same level as he was.
"It's a great company that provides great benefits, why wouldn't anyone want to work here."
"I suppose that's true." He responded his voice thoughtful.
"Why did you come to work here?" She asked in return.
"Me? Nah, I didn't but my brother insisted I did. It was the only way to help my family."
"Help your family? What do you me-"
Suddenly he turned around and handed her the flash drive.
"Here you go, I was able to go as far back as 6 years but it a lot of data so I tried my best to sort and divide them into two groups."
"Wow, it only took about forty five minutes, I thought you said it would take a while?" she asked in surprise as she collected the drive from him.
"Yes well, I always enjoy pushing past my limit." He replied smiling sheepishly. "Did you want anything else?"
"Yeah, your number."
"What?" He sputtered.
"I don't want to have to come down to IT every time, so could I get your number. If it's no trouble?"
"Nope, not at all."
She collected his number and together they got back on the elevator where she got off her floor and waved good-bye to him.
"So did you get what you needed?" Meg asked.
"I would like to think so but I won't know till I check it out."
"Well then what are you waiting for?"
"I don't want to check it here. If Freddy was the one who deleted them I don't want him to know I got access to them."
"Right of course, so you'll check it at your place then?"
"Yep. I really hope I find what I'm looking for."
"You just let me know how it goes alright, text it to me then tell me physically on Monday."
Chuckling she responded, "Yes ma'am."
Michelle arrived home to the giggling of teenagers, specifically Lucy's 'friends' or as she privately called them, her sycophants.
"Oh my gosh Mira, you did not." The voice let a squeal. "Did you really say that to Todd's girlfriend?"
She entered the house fully and found Lucy and her three friends lounged around in the living room. The one who squealed was Gwen- she was slender with long brown hair almost reaching her waist and big doe brown eyes. Mira was a pretty red head with hazel eyes and the final friend, Lucy's most loyal friend, Crystal was a black haired, grey eyed girl who barely spoke but always did whatever Lucy asked of her no matter how insane the request was. She found such level of devotion scary.
"Big sis!" Lucy called out cheerfully, running towards her and ambushing her with a hug. Her cheerful attitude was suspicious, especially since she had avoided Lucy for the last three weeks. "Welcome back, how was work?"
Ah, so that's what she was doing. Lucy always made sure that outsiders only ever saw the perfect family, that they only ever saw a little sister who was loved by all her siblings and parents. Well, no time like the present to shatter such an illusion.
Pulling herself from Lucy's embrace, she gave a curt "it was fine" and made her way to the stairs. She could sense Lucy was not expecting her to react the way she did- usually she would sit with Lucy and her friends playing maid as she brought them refreshments and such. That was probably what she was expecting.
"Woah, what was that about?" Gwen asked.
"Yeah, I though you said your sister would come and make us her special rolls. She practically blew off your greeting." Mira said voice rising slightly.
"Come on guys, my sister's probably just tired." Lucy responded in a placating tone, "plus there's tons of other things for us to eat. And if you still want rolls we could ask the chef to make them."
"Yes but it wouldn't be the same." Mira whined. "Your sister's cinnamon rolls are absolutely divine."
"Mira!" Lucy snapped, "Forget about the cinnamon rolls. You're not going to die if you don't eat cinnamon rolls."
Chastised, Mira shrunk back and managed a small sorry then remained quiet for the rest of her stay.
Upstairs in her room, Michelle opened her laptop and connected the drive immediately opening it. The screen opened with two folders that where named 'cost' and 'budget'
Ah so that's what he meant she thought. Then she clicked on costs, which was also arranged by years, she clicked on the most recent one.
The breakdown of the money spent was done so halfheartedly she had to grab her notepad and get comfortable. The ink cost, printing cost, paper cost and production of the goods with the new design all came to about tem million. That was a high amount. Ten million was how much it cost the company to print the new designs and also to recreate the same product then put the new design on them and send them out into the market. Next, she clicked on budget; the proposed budget for that year was five million. Half of what was actually spent.
If she wanted she could use this to complete what Freddy asked her to do, but something told her to keep digging. The year before that the cost was twenty five million and the proposed budget was eight million. All the other four years had similar discrepancies. The money proposed was a lot less than the money that was spent it would seem. And Freddy tried getting rid of this so that no one could know. There was also the fact that all these started about seven years after he had gotten promoted to General Manager, Freddy had been working for Hart Industries for twenty years. Guess he got greedy and decided to increase the amount on the costs so that when that amount left the company account no one would blink an eye.
This was good but it still was not enough to hook him. She needed physical evidence- like maybe catching him doctoring the files, yes that would be perfect.
There was an insistent knock at her door that didn't seem to want to let up despite her ignoring it. With a loud groan she was hoping the person on the other side of the door heard, she stormed to the door and yanked it open.
"What?" She asked curtly. The person at the door was Logan. "When someone doesn't answer your knocking, it means you should leave them be."
"Mom and Dad want to speak to us." He responded.
"What for?"
"I don't know." He shrugged, but she could tell by the small smirk he thought he hid that he did know. Not in the mood to argue with him, she locked her door and followed him downstairs where everyone else was seated in the living room. She stood at a corner near the stairs refusing to join them.
"Good, everyone's here." Abigail said her tone giddy, "Your father and I have splendid news."
Michelle already knew what was coming so she didn't join in when the rest of them asked what the news was with keen interest.
"We've planned a family vacation for the five of us." Lionel said turning to stare at Michelle.