The solution had been simple. Sara had started coming in later and working later. Of course, she still had to see Warrick during the workday, but she saw less of him. He was an early bird. Honestly, that was her preferred work time also. But she found she focused better if she just avoided him. So she came in at eleven and worked until eight o’clock. She’d always had a lot of autonomy shifting between different worksites for Jack Sutton. It was one of the things she liked about the job.
When she got in at eleven, most of the staff left for lunch soon after and she had a good hour or two to focus on her own. If she had any questions for Warrick, she met with him briefly after lunch, then went back down to her office on the lower level. It meant they saw each other once a day at most.
It also gave her a solid two hours of peace and quiet in the evening when nobody else was around. Sara liked quiet. She’d always been that way, always able to work better on her own without people around to pester her. In fact, in the military, it had been a huge struggle to get used to working as a team, and she still preferred to work on her own if given the choice.
She stretched her neck from side to side trying to work the kinks out, and glanced at the clock. She hadn’t realized she’d worked quite that late. She was usually pretty good about leaving by eight or eight-thirty at the latest. Today though, she made a lot of progress on one of the reports Warrick had asked her to put together. She’d begun to realize that he knew what he was doing. He was analyzing her product left to right, inside and out, in ways she hadn’t even thought about. And he’d actually managed to shave time and money off of production. When she’d seen he’d done it without diminishing the quality, she’d been impressed.
She turned back to her computer. If she stayed another half an hour she could get this finished up, drop it upstairs for Warrick and still be home by midnight. And then she probably wouldn’t need to see him tomorrow.
Yes, avoiding him was stupid, but Samantha had put ideas into her head that she was doing everything she could not to think about. It wasn’t working, but she was trying. Avoidance seemed like the best policy right now.
Twenty minutes later, Sara stepped out of the elevator and walked down the hall toward Warrick’s office.
“Come on, let’s just get you to the couch. I don’t think I could get you to my car myself, so you have to sleep it off here for a while.”
Sara stopped in the doorway, unsure of what to do. Maybe it wasn’t too late to walk away. She knew who the man was. She'd seen his picture plenty of times in the paper over the last few months, but she had yet to meet Jonathan Simms. He was no longer working with the company. After the scandal had hit the papers, and his involvement had come out, he had resigned pretty quickly. Simms Pharmaceutical was a family company, but he had betrayed that family when he’d shown William Tyvek the formula to a drug that ultimately allowed Tyvek to frame Warrick Staunton.
From the looks of things, Staunton and Simms were still talking. Well, not so much talking. Simms was currently struggling to get an extremely inebriated Staunton over to the couch.
Sara took one step backward, thinking to walk away without being seen, then thought better of it when she saw Simms nearly go down under the weight of the younger man. Jonathan Simms was tall, but he was a lot thinner than Warrick. And he was much older. In fact, he looked older than the pictures she’d seen of him in the news only months before.
“I’ve got him,” Sara said as she moved forward and slipped herself under Warrick’s other arm.
Warrick turned to her, eyes dazed. “Did you know? When you got in that car, Vicki, did you know about her?”
Simms grunted under the weight of Warrick even though Sara was now taking a great deal of it on herself. “Ignore him. He only drinks hard alcohol once a year, but when he does, he hits it hard. Help me get him over here.”
Together they wrestled Warrick over to the couch where he slumped down, but continued to look at her. He didn’t say anything more as Simms took off his shoes and slid him over so he laid with his head on one arm of the couch. Simms busied himself lifting Warrick’s legs onto the other side, arranging him as best you could arrange a man his size on the couch meant to seat two.
Now anger crossed Warrick’s face. “You should have fought harder. You should have tried harder.”
“Sleep it off Warrick,” Simms said, ushering Sara out of the office with one hand on her shoulder. He shut the door behind them, then turned to apologize. “Sorry about that. I had a feeling he might not get himself home for that this year, what with selling the house and all. He’s got the condo to go to of course, but I figured I would check here for him.”
“This year?” Sara didn’t know why she was asking anything. She should go. She could give the report to him at work in the morning.
“He does this every year. It’s the anniversary of his wife’s death. Only time he drinks.” Simms looked back at the office door and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll stick around a few hours then see if I can wake him up and drive him home. Thank you for your help. I’m Warrick’s uncle, Jonathan.” He extended his hand and she shook it, still a little stunned at what she’d just witnessed. She honestly wasn’t sure what to think of Simms. The employees here talked about him as if he were greatly missed. They made him sound like he was Santa Claus or something. Always happy, always kind and friendly to everyone.
To her, he was partly responsible for a number of people being killed, including veterans. She was friends with Jax Cutter, who had lost his best friend, Leo Kent. Leo had been a Marine at one time, but battles with PTSD and alcohol had led him to the streets. He’d been one of the men killed by William Tyvek.
She couldn’t help but feel Jonathan Simms should have foreseen something. Then again, who would’ve foreseen what William Tyvek had done? Still, going to him with the formula that was proprietary just because his own company had decided they wouldn’t work on the drug any longer, had been the catalyst for everything that had happened from there.
“Sara Blackburn.” She shook his hand. “Why was he calling me Vicki back there?” She tilted her head toward the door and fought the urge to shiver at the strange feeling she had.
“It’s nothing,” Simms said. “His wife’s name was Vicki.” He squinted his eyes at Sara. “I guess you do have her eyes. It’s not the exact eye color or anything like that. It’s hard to put my finger on it. Her hair was a completely different color and her face was a different shape. But there’s something about your eyes that look just like hers.”
Sara took a step back. It was odd being told you looked like a dead woman. Or rather didn’t exactly look like a dead woman, but sort of looked like her. The whole incident was odd and she wanted nothing more than to get out of there.
“Okay, well I’m just going to get going.”
He didn’t argue, nor did he say anything as she walked toward the elevators. She looked back and saw him settle himself on one of the lobby couches. She’d be lying to herself if she said she wouldn’t spend the ride home wondering what Warrick’s questions had meant.