White Out: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller by Eric Dimbleby Read Free Book Online Page A

ended with a bang.
    By noon, Annie noticed that most of the staff had slithered out for an early lunch. Many of them didn't bother returning, as a couple additional inches accumulated in the next hour. If their supervisors were okay with them sneaking out on a regular work day, regardless of the weather, she wasn't going to stop them. It wasn’t her place, anyway. Someday, it would be, but not on that day.
    Annie had bigger fish to fry, so she'd wait right up until the last minute to escape the storm. She'd secured a meeting with the Chief Financial Officer for four o'clock. He was a difficult man to pin down, and when you did achieve that success, one had to make the best of it. Annie had been working on a side project with her cube-neighbor, Freddie Hanson, since early July. The project had all but fallen apart after some early hurdles in their data collection (mostly due to some technical issues at one of the associate firms on the west coast), but Annie adeptly figured out a way to right the ship and keep the project in motion.
    Garrett, the CFO since the Reagan administration, was willing to hear her out, to observe her findings and act if necessary. Annie was secretly certain that this would be the notch she needed, to propel herself to a new position. If she could show old Garrett Johnson the very "creative” and perfectly legal accounting she’d contrived, it might just be her ticket to ride. It was all based on a legal loophole that the tricky brains at the IRS had failed to close. It was clearly stated and well documented, completely on the up-and-up, and if it was as solid as she believed it to be, it could save the company a hundred thousand dollars in the first year alone, with even larger windfalls in later years.
    Two o'clock came, and she stared out the window, chatting briefly with Tony about how she needed to get some better snow tires over the weekend. They observed the grim parking lot, growing anxious with every flake that descended. There were only a handful of cars remaining. One of them belonged to Garrett, so her meeting wasn't canceled just yet. She emailed him, asking for an earlier audience due the inclement weather, but he hadn't responded.
    Three o'clock came and Annie was pretty sure she wasn't going to make it home without a lift from somebody. Tony offered to stay behind in case she needed him, but she was averse to that scenario, as she was aware of the way he looked at her when she passed by. He was most certainly an "ass man," tried and true. Something in that was flattering.
    Winnie was still in the office. Her station wagon parked right next to Annie’s car. Good old Winnie was always good for a favor. That is, if Winnie’s car was any better at traversing the snow. She’d been bragging about her new snow tires recently, something that Annie took note of. Always take note of any and all options, her father used to say.
    As she approached Garrett's office, ready to fire financial theories on all cylinders, she saw a scrawled note pinned to the door: All meetings cancelled for today. Head home and drive safe! –Garrett.
    The bastard. His goddamned car was still in the parking lot!
    How could the weasel pull such unprofessional bullshit on her?
    Didn't he check his fucking schedule? Didn't he have any couth about him?
    Annie was on fire, fully ready to eviscerate anybody that came near her. She could feel her face flushing with an unpleasant warmth, as if she’d been drinking too much wine, but was absent of that type of euphoric feeling. When Tony approached her, he asked if everything was all right, and she laid it all out with such rapid fire that she couldn’t keep up with her own words: "That cocksucker left me hanging here all day, thinking we had a meeting. This is what happens to me. This is what happens to women in this company. I go above and beyond to protect us (listen to me saying us , like they care about my ass) from a serious monetary loss and this is how he repays