The Checklist Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Alexandra Massengale

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542029278

  ISBN-10: 1542029279

  Cover design and illustration by Liz Casal

  To the wolves who raised me, thank you.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Sorry about the death sentence.”

  Dylan looked up from the document she was scanning, a little startled to find Kahn MacElroy, notorious Kaplan and Associates office gossip, looking down at her from over her beige cubicle wall.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Oh. You haven’t seen the email?” Kahn asked, pity dripping from his lips.

  If there was an email with bad news in it, especially bad news for her, it must have been sent in the last five minutes. Dylan was religious about checking her email.

  “Nope. Just here reading these briefs. Prepping for the Les Enfants project.” She kept her smile neat.

  “You’ll want to read this email.” He shrugged.

  Dylan hated the fact that Kahn knew something she didn’t. But she couldn’t look with him there.

  “I will, eventually,” she said, turning her attention back to the document and summoning all her willpower to wait Kahn out.

  “I’ll leave you to it.” Kahn’s tone was less sympathetic once he realized he wouldn’t get the inside scoop.

  Dylan waited until the olive green of his sweater rounded the corner before furiously wheeling her chair over to her screen.

  To: All Associates

  From: Jared Gilroy

  Subject: Congratulations, Dylan Delacroix!

  In light of Dylan’s unplanned leadership on the Davis Communications project, it is with great excitement that I announce her placement with me on the Technocore team. Her quick thinking and willingness to step in when the Davis project was off-track produced one of the best corporate turnarounds Kaplan saw last year. I’m confident Dylan has what it takes to turn Technocore around. Be sure to stop by her desk before Friday and wish her good luck on this next assignment.

  Jared Gilroy

  Junior Partner

  Kaplan & Associates—Helping your company get results!

  Dylan stared at the email, then checked her pulse. No, she wasn’t dead or hallucinating. She swallowed hard and reread the email. Kaplan didn’t usually send out placement announcements before notifying the employee. Surely this was a mistake. She’d saved Jared’s job on the Davis Communications project. There was no way she should have been assigned anything less than Les Enfants in Paris. Everyone at Kaplan knew the further you climbed, the better the assignment. She had been practicing with a French tutor for weeks.

  A muffled thunk thunk on her cubicle wall made Dylan jump, interrupting her third reading of the email. Barb Maisewell stood in the entrance, looking genuinely perplexed. Her suits were always frumpy, and her insistence on wearing maroon didn’t help, but Dylan liked Barb. She was one part office mother, one part gossip mill. You’d think that as head assistant to the elusive Mrs. Kaplan, she’d be discreet, but Barb was the exact opposite. If she liked you, Barb would tell you whatever she heard about you from the top brass. She was half the reason Dylan had bought that stupid, expensive French Rosetta Stone subscription.

  Barb opened her mouth, sympathy puckering her face. “Technocore, huh?” Dylan didn’t say anything, so she plowed on. “Jared must be really bitter about you making him look bad with the Davis thing. I heard rumors about you and Paris just last week. Wonder what changed?”

  “I’m sure there is a mix-up. In fact, I was on my way to meet with Jared now.” Dylan tried to appear as if talking to her weasel-faced boss had always been her plan.

  Barb looked at her as if she were a tad delusional, ignoring Dylan’s attempt to salvage the situation. “Honey, if I don’t see you, have a great time in Seattle. Technocore is . . . well, it’s a challenge. But I know you can do it.”

  After giving her a quick hug, Barb scuttled toward the kitchen, probably to gossip with someone else about Dylan’s assignment. Dylan stood up, then took a moment to straighten her untwisted hem and check for any flyaway hairs, carefully smoothing her center part, before walking toward Jared’s office. It wouldn’t do to appear unprofessional. If there was any trait Kaplan and Associates could count on, it was that Dylan was always professional.

  Taking a controlled breath, she knocked on the office door. After a few heartbeats, Jared’s familiar nasal invited her in.

  “Hi, Jared. I saw the announcement. Did I miss something?” Dylan kept the anger out of her voice as she sat down, uninvited. Across from her was the biggest pastel-wearing asshole she knew. Unfortunately, Jared was also her direct supervisor and the one person standing between her and a chance to make junior partner before the end of the year. She waited for him to answer, registering a boost in his uncomfortably healthy glow. It was the kind of tan some white people got from playing lots of tennis in the sun. Only, Jared acquired his through a tanning booth.

  “Right. The partners suggested I go, but I really feel Technocore is perfect for you.” He smiled, his teeth the same unnerving shade of white as the walls, as if he were handing her a compliment and not the career death sentence Technocore was. In the last six months, the company’s hapless founder had made every unforgivable management gaffe known to man and even a few new ones that had surprised both Dylan and the press. Technocore had gone from a groundbreaking start-up to a profit-sinking black hole in record time, losing employees, money, and public opinion faster than a politician in an infidelity scandal. They didn’t need Kaplan and Associates. They needed a miracle. Or, Dylan thought, they at least needed their founder to get a clue and stop wearing hoodies.

  Jared continued, shifting uncomfortably in his chair under her fixed gaze. “The firm has been brought in as a personal favor to Mr. Kaplan. I’m sure you saw the article in Management Today. Anyway, we need a quick intervention on this one. Share prices have been down for the last two quarters. As you may know, Technocore’s board of directors is looking for a new productivity consultant to get their image cleaned up and their leadership in line by the end of Q3.”

  “I’m sorry.” Dylan’s mind instinctively jumped over the condescending sections of his speech and homed in on the important details. “The third quarter? Of this year? That timeline is overly ambitious. We are already midway through April.”

  “That’s why you’ll be stationed in Seattle for the duration of the project. There is really
no time for back-and-forth here.”

  “Jared, I don’t mean to question anyone’s judgment; you certainly know more than I do about the project, but I’m sure I could commute and—”

  “Look, Dylan. I’m going to need you to be a team player on this one,” Jared said, dropping the encouraging-manager persona and doubling down on the jargon-riddled belittling she was familiar with. “The cowboy antics may have worked well with Davis, but Technocore is the real deal. Not the big-fish-small-pond stuff you are used to. We need to be rowing in the same direction on this, got it?”

  Dylan did her best to bite back a sarcastic remark about not being able to hear him over the volume of his sherbet sweater. “Yes, of course. I understand. But won’t the senior partners notice that I’m there and not you? I mean, we don’t look alike or anything.”

  “You’ll be handling research and first steps. I’ll have ultimate approval of the analysis and produce the final report. Besides, you’re from Seattle, correct? You have a better grasp of the culture. After the whole Davis Communications”—Jared paused to find the right word—“ordeal, I want to make sure we have our best and brightest on the ground.”

  Dylan thought her boss should have used the word fiasco, but that would have been an indictment of his own work and a possible admission that she’d saved his job. An act she was steadily growing to regret.

  “I see.” Taking a deep breath, Dylan tried a change in tactics. “The thing is, Nicolas and I are looking at moving into a condo soon . . .” Dylan smoothed the hemline of her pencil skirt and started praying. Unless God was wearing noise-canceling headphones, he would hear her begging to stay in Houston. If she couldn’t have Paris, at least he could leave her in the humidity.

  “That’s great. Do this successfully, and your condo budget increases exponentially.” What Jared didn’t add was that if she failed—and anyone would—she wouldn’t have a job, let alone a condo budget. His simpering grin expanded. “Besides, don’t you have family there? It’ll be like a nice, long vacation. Save the company money too.”

  Dylan’s heart plummeted to her stomach. She could think of about 1,422 other things she would rather do than see her family.

  Taking her silence for consent, Jared added, “I’ll have accounting send over your travel details. See you in Seattle!” He gave a jaunty, dismissive wave, effectively telling Dylan to get out.

  “Merde!” she whispered as she left Jared’s office. She had to hand it to him. The man was an evil genius. Jared was going to torpedo her career, and he was going to make her stay in the house of bedlam while he did it. Shaking her head, Dylan collected her handbag, computer case, and blazer before power walking toward the door.

  Dylan continued her march to the car, moving as fast as her Manolos would allow, which was faster than most people could move in flats. Since leaving Seattle, she had gotten good at moving quickly in an ankle-breaking shoe. She had also figured out how to flat iron her curls into oblivion. The Houston humidity was no match for her skill and salon-quality hair products. All these talents would be useless in Seattle. Sloshing through the tireless drizzle in extreme heels was a dangerous impracticality, and wielding an umbrella was something no self-respecting local would tolerate.

  After pressing the unlock button, Dylan crawled into her car and glanced around the parking lot to make sure none of her coworkers were there to witness her cutting loose. Then she laughed, the sound bordering on hysterics. She had managed to avoid going back to Seattle for years, and now she’d be making up for lost time.

  Holding her breath, she slowly counted to ten. She was meeting Nicolas at the gym soon, and if she didn’t get it together, he would start his workout without her. Exhaling loudly, she eased out of the parking lot, using the voice-recognition feature on her phone to start an Unfortunately, I’m Going Home checklist. To-do listing was a technique she’d developed while living in her parents’ structureless madhouse, and it always helped. Sure, nearly everyone but Nicolas, including three-quarters of her coworkers, six of her closest friends, and her butcher, thought her listing was ridiculous. But those people didn’t know what it was to unironically wear pajamas to school because your parents lost track of the laundry one too many times . . .

  Dylan cut the memory off, redirecting her focus to the list. First, her standard appointments would be canceled: eyebrow threading, manicures, blowouts, and waxing. Easy enough to manage while she waited to board the plane on Friday. Also, dry cleaning, prescheduled workouts, and her ballet tickets needed to be handled. And, of course, she had to call her parents. Her thumb hovered over the call button on the steering wheel as mental recordings of every bizarre conversation she’d had with them in the last six months replayed in her head. If her father went on another tangent about his favorite disco queen, she was pretty sure she’d be forced to slam her car into a brick wall. Noticing the panic creeping up inside her, she decided to wait until after her workout, which she was officially late for.

  Dylan grabbed her gym bag and jogged through the door, inspecting a chip in her nail polish as she stepped into the familiar smell of sweat and sanitizer. Waving hello to the tiny-T-shirt-loving man at the front desk, she streaked into the locker room and threw on a pair of running capris and a matching top. She took just enough time in the mirror to work her thick hair into a smooth high ponytail before blending a nearly imperceptible smudge of sepia foundation into the reddish-brown skin near the edge of her jaw and swiping away a stray spot of mascara. Giving herself a nod of approval, she bolted out of the locker room and took the stairs two at a time to find Nicolas mid–bicep extension. Her shoulders relaxed as she released the tension in her chest. There was a familiar comfort that accompanied seeing Nicolas, his blond hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, wearing the autopilot look he got when he was exercising. Or having sex.

  Dylan felt instantly guilty. Thinking her boyfriend had an autopilot for sex didn’t sound great. And autopilot or not, Dylan was glad to have someone stable in her life. Someone who knew her well enough that she could vent about her forced family vacation, manipulative boss, and possible loss of employment without sounding whiny. Nicolas loved routines and a job well done even more than she did. After years of hit-and-miss parenting, meeting him had been a godsend. No matter how messy her family seemed, he was always consistent. Dylan knew what she was getting with him, and although robotic at times, Nicolas’s response to her was always reliable.

  “Hey, sorry. Work was a bear,” Dylan said, bouncing to a stop in front of him and rocking back on her heels as he took out one earbud.

  “No worries, I figured as much.”

  “Today was possibly the worst day ever.”

  “Listen, I already did the lat pull downs and the leg press. You can come back for those later.” Nicolas pushed the strands of sweaty hair out of his eyes, his ivory skin red from exertion.

  “Right. Sure.” Dylan nodded, feeling her ponytail bounce against the back of her head. “So guess where they’re sending me? And let me eliminate the fun possibilities now. It isn’t Paris.”

  Nicolas resumed his repetitions, answering her query with a grunt.

  “Seattle. Two months. Technocore. Can you believe it?”

  “Not great,” Nicolas grunted, his eyes sliding toward himself in the gym’s mirrored wall.

  “Not great at all! I think Jared is trying to get me fired over the Davis Communications thing. It isn’t my fault he thought giving people company tchotchkes as they were being laid off was a good idea. Of course it backfired. No one feels better when handed a Rubik’s Cube and a pink slip.”

  “If you ask me, Jared is the one who needs a fidget spinner and a pink slip,” Nicolas grunt-laughed, the joke encouraging Dylan.

  “What was he thinking? Here. Now you have an activity to do while you wait in the unemployment line.” Dylan’s arms windmilled around the gym, getting more animated as she gathered steam. “You know what really bothers Jared?” Dylan propped a fist on her hip and pointed a f
inger at nothing. “That stupid article. As if anyone cares about press in Management Today. It’s a trade journal. It isn’t the Bible or anything.”

  “Right.” Nicolas nodded, the sound of metal plates clicking on the machine.

  “If they hadn’t called me the Davis Communications Savior, none of this would be happening. Severance packages for minimum wage employees isn’t rocket science. Besides, savior is a—”

  “Hey, babe, can we talk about it at home? I’m in the zone right now.” Extending his designer earbud toward her, Nicolas explained, “It’s Skrillex,” before putting it back in his ear.

  “Yeah, sure,” Dylan said, then nodded her agreement, realizing he couldn’t hear her answer.

  Nicolas was right. She’d probably vented enough. After all, complaining wasn’t really productive. Ambling over to the ab-crunch machine, she selected her settings and gritted her teeth. Giving the padded seat a look of disdain, Dylan resigned herself to taking her frustration out on the gym equipment.

  Dylan stood over the contents of her underwear drawer, trying to find the matching panties to her favorite bra as her throat burned. She wanted to cry, but Nicolas needed to make some calls, so she decided to pack while he shouted over SportsCenter at a first-year associate.

  “Where the hell are they?” Dylan asked her dirty-laundry hamper, clutching the bra as disappointment set in. All her bras had matching panties. If Dylan was rushed to the emergency room, she didn’t want the paramedics wondering why she had leopard on top and pink lace on the bottom. She looked at her suitcase and back down at the bra. It wasn’t like she needed lingerie. After three years of living together, Nicolas was more likely to give his attention to email than her underwear.

  Bringing her mind back to the task at hand, Dylan gave the bra a hard look. She should leave it behind or throw it out, but she really didn’t want to. Placing the bra with the other sets, she reasoned that she’d pick up replacement panties when she got to Seattle.

  Putting a check mark next to suitcase on her list, she cringed. She had stalled all week, and now there was no way around it. She had packed, answered her email, confirmed her travel arrangements, and even tracked down the strongest antifrizz product the salon carried to accompany her industrial-grade flat iron. If the product didn’t work against the rain, nothing would. The only item left was calling her family.