Read Online Masks (Out of the Box Book 9) by Robert J. Crane - Free Book Online

don’t see whatever you’re—”
    “He was impatient and irritable with me before you came in—”
    “Maybe he’s a racist.”
    “—and he’s totally cool when you come in?” Clarice ignored her jibe, giving her a knowing look. “I saw how he was talking to you. I think you walking in turned his attitude around.”
    “Uck,” Jamie said, slumping so that her face pressed against the paper calendar pages that lay across her desk. The paper was cool and a little scratchy against her cheek. “He’s probably five years older than Kyra.”
    “You could be a cougar,” Clarice said, clearly taking this possibility and running with it. “All, mrow and—”
    “Please stop,” Jamie said.
    “I mean, did you see that boy? He was built —”
    “I just want …” Jamie said, lifting her head off the desk. She stopped, the raw weariness of the use of her powers to cross to Manhattan and back this morning, the stress of saving Nadine Griffin, arguing with her and Frost and Kyra, and then remembering that her life was waiting with an urgent appointment of its own back here on the island … “I just want things to be smoother. I want the business to work. I want for everyone here to be okay.” She lifted a hand and gestured around the walls separating her from her employees. “I just want everything to be okay.”
    And I want for things between me and Kyra to be better.
    Clarice looked at her pityingly. “I didn’t hear anything about a man in there anywhere, and it makes me sad for you. Squad goals don’t have to be the only goals in your life.”
    “But they’re the only ones I need to bring to work,” Jamie said, pulling herself off her desk. She looked out the windows into the building’s interior and saw, fortunately, no one in the hall. Her office was a little off the beaten path, but normally she would have lowered the blinds before indulging in such a blatant display of self-pity as putting her head on her desk. No time for that , she thought, pulling her hair back and grabbing a binder out of the drawer. She whipped a ponytail into shape in seconds while Clarice watched her with something between envy and annoyance, and then Jamie shut her desk drawer firmly, a symbolic closing on a disastrous morning.
    “All right,” she said, trying to fill her voice with renewed energy. “It’s going to be a better afternoon—”
    “Because a handsome banker with a cute butt and gorgeous eyes walking in to hand you money and profitability is just a bust of a start to the day—”
    “Clarice,” Jamie said, back to peppy, positive and affirmed. “We have work to do.”
    Clarice looked like she was torn between serving up another piece of her mind and the need to get on about the—surely numerous—things on her schedule. Her mouth was slightly open, a mutinous look in those dark eyes, but a professional smile won out over the look that would have told Jamie that her best friend was about to tear a strip out of her backside. “We’ll talk about this later,” Clarice said. Jamie knew that they would, in great detail, but for now Clarice left, shutting the door behind her, and Jamie nodded once, sure of her direction, and dove into the pile of invoices sitting at the corner of her desk.

13.
Sienna
    I don’t like traffic, as a rule. It has a lot to do with my distaste for crowds and waiting. Some people—mostly reporters—have taken this to mean I don’t like people. It’s actually the opposite. I like people, at least in the abstract. Or on an individual basis. Or as a general, whole idea.
    But when you put them in crowds and unleash them around me, I get antsy. There are a few reasons for this, none of which really bear discussing right now, save for the one where being surrounded by people feels a little like bugs crawling over my skin. It’s nothing they do; it’s the fact that I can … feel them around me. Walking. Talking. Existing. Ignoring me (hopefully). They’re a presence that presses