Reboot by DE McCluskey

Author:DE McCluskey [McCluskey, DE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

18.

CARL HAD BEEN acting strange all week.

Tasha liked Carl the most out of the rest of the IT team, he was the most down-to-earth, the most normal out of all of them.

She was well aware that she included herself in that list.

She knew she was a strange one; she’d readily admitted it to anyone. But being strange didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy the reliance on someone who was normal from time to time.

Carl was that normality to her, an oasis in a desert of strange.

He was funny, he was irreverent, and, ultimately, he had an empathy Tasha could relate to but, more importantly, needed.

So, when her normality anchor was acting strange, it irked her.

Her anxiety had doubled since yesterday when he’d gone home early. There had been a vibe about him, just a little something she couldn’t quite put her finger on but felt like she needed to. She had his personal mobile number and followed him on social media, she liked his comics and loved the idea of the naughty reindeer, but they hadn’t really been friends, the kind who messaged each other.

She had written a text to him, a full ten lines of concern; she’d hovered over the send button, deliberating with herself whether to send it or not. In the end, her anxiety increased as the situation got the better of her, and she deleted the message.

This morning’s outburst had trigged her again. She was determined to find out what was happening with him. She’d followed him around to the managing director’s office and watched him go inside, then pretended to be working on an empty desk in the open plan office when he stormed out and into the server room.

She had observed, from afar, as Gerard Medley, a man she instinctively mistrusted, left his office. Then Jodi had walked around and entered Server Room One.

Tasha left the spare desk after rebooting the machine to make it look like she had done something.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Dean asked as she re-entered the department, never taking his head out of the two-monitor set up he was using.

‘I had a couple of jobs on desks. Why? Who’s asking?’ she replied a little too fast for her own liking—she didn’t want to sound so defensive.

Dean chuckled. ‘No one. I was just wondering, as your phone was ringing, that’s all.’

Tasha shook her head. ‘Sorry, Dean, I just don’t think I’m myself today.’

‘Frigging hell, that’ll be two of you, then. You and Carl.’

‘Have you noticed it too?’ she asked, initiating the longest conversation she had ever had with this colleague.

‘Yeah, ever since he was fixing Gerard’s laptop the other day. He just hasn’t been the same.’ To Tasha’s surprise, Dean turned away from his monitors and looked at her. ‘Do you think there was something on there he shouldn’t have seen?’ he asked. His grin spread right across his whole face—Tasha thought it looked sly.

She looked towards the IT build room. ‘Hmm, let’s see,’ she said.

Dean turned back to his machine; his interest in what was happening in Carl’s life had already waned, and his own importance had taken over.

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