Part 3What the Budget Bought

"Keep twenty or thirty for yourself, buy yourself a drink, something. The rest comes back to the department. We've got to make this stretch, you know?"

Wow.

He'd swallowed twenty-nine thousand seven hundred dollars, and he still wanted to scrape the fat off the scraps of the last three hundred.

I choked down my disgust and gave him a smile that never reached my eyes.

"You give an instruction, Derek. How would I ignore it?

"Don't worry. Soon as I'm done I'll send you the receipts and whatever's left. Books will be spotless, nothing shaved off."

"Huh. I didn't have you figured for it, Dylan, but you know how to play ball."

He raised an eyebrow, thrilled that he had the department's softest touch this thoroughly under his thumb.

Why else would I do his job, save him money, and make him look good in front of the staff?

"Go on and set it up. Call me when the presentation's ready. Nobody picks up a fork before I get there."

He walked back to his office in wonderful spirits.

Probably already picturing himself working through a beef banquet while counting the twenty-nine thousand seven hundred sitting in his personal account.

Shame.

I'm not that fond of paying for other people's theft.

At six that evening the break room became a dining room.

I'd opened every cooler, pulled the contents out, and laid tablecloths over the whole spread.

I killed the overhead lights on purpose. My coworkers sat around the tables we'd pushed together, forks in hand, breathing in the strange spiced smell and practically drooling.

"That smells incredible. Is that braised pork?"

"I smell crab."

Derek took the head of the table like he was holding court and cleared his throat to start his speech.

That was when the laugh came from the doorway.

"Everyone's here already. Looks like I timed it perfectly."

Aunt Victoria pushed the door open, presence turned all the way up.

Derek jumped hard enough to nearly drop his mug.

He'd never dreamed the owner, who never had a free hour, would actually turn up to a small department dinner.

But he recovered fast, hurrying over with a fawning smile that pushed every crease in his face together.

"Ms. Langford, you came down yourself. I was just about to report to you, this whole dinner was cooked by Dylan personally.

"The budget was, ahem, we decided against a big restaurant, but eating here shows we're taking the company's push for careful spending seriously. It's all heart, ma'am."

Aunt Victoria nodded pleasantly, her eyes moving over the covered tables.

"Good, good. That's exactly the kind of down-to-earth thinking I like. I hear Dylan can cook, and I skipped dinner, so let's eat."

Derek shot me a smug look and waved a hand at me.

"Dylan, the chairwoman's spoken. What are you standing around for? Get those covers off and let her taste your work."

I stood beside the table, looking at all that greed and triumph on Derek's face, and felt my mouth go thin and cold.

"Of course, Derek.

"This is the deluxe twenty-person spread I put together with the three-hundred-dollar budget you personally approved."

The words were barely out before I yanked the tablecloth away.

No careful plating. No steaming home-cooked dishes.

Dozens of foil meal pouches, torn open, standing upright in the coolers.

The braised pork had the gray sheen of meat that had been dead a very long time, capped with a hardened layer of industrial lard.

The so-called crab was two bags of crab-flavored starch sticks, still squashed together inside the plastic.

The pepper steak was the disaster inside the disaster: a black lump of sauce with barely a strand of beef visible.

Cheap preservative and bottom-shelf artificial flavor bloomed through the room and hit the back of everyone's throat.

Dead silence.

Every person there froze with a fork suspended in midair.

Derek's face went green.

He jabbed a violently shaking finger at the table and roared.

"D-Dylan! Have you lost your mind?

"The chairwoman is standing right here. I told you to cook dinner. What is this, hog slop?"