Focal Point

Duty Calls

             Echo Lawrence sat at her desk, entirely bored out of her mind. Her department was currently working on a case, but it was going nowhere and she was getting frustrated getting nothing. All the leads ended up being dead ends and she was sick of trying. They weren't doing for any reason other than to appease the chief. Sometimes Echo seriously hated her job. 

             It’s not like she was required to do a lot, or even do boring things all the time. She was usually in the field. She preferred to be there, that’s what she was good at, that is what she had been trained for. Sitting at a desk for all hours in the day did not make her have a good attitude, and to top it off she was hungry. Being hungry made her so blasted grumpy, and it was only 10 am.

             Echo sighed and looked at her watch.”2 minutes later then last time I looked" she mumbled under her breath. As she looked down she saw the dark coffee stain on her white shirt and felt embarrassed all over again. The morning did not go very well and Echo wasn’t very happy with the impression that the new guy now had of her. She didn’t really care but watching someone dump the other half of her coffee all over her already coffee dumped shirt, well, it was awkward. Echo wasn't generally very clumsy, she was taught very well how not to be. But sometimes, well let’s just say, Murphy's Law came into play.

             Her morning started out very rushed, which was where it began to go bad. Echo's sister was in town and they had stayed up really late the night before catching up on life and she was too tired to get up when her alarm rang, so she decided that a few more minutes wouldn't hurt. Those few more minutes turned into about an hour. Echo was so late and freaking out, as she ran out the door she had yelled to her sister to eat whatever she could find and she would be back at 5. She grabbed an iced coffee and a muffin on her way to work and when she arrived she took the stairs.

             Echo was not an elevator girl. She hated them. She avoided them at all costs, unless it just couldn't be helped. Today was the only day in the history of working at that company that she wished she would have taken the elevator. As she was climbing up the flights of stairs she was thinking about the case she was working on. As she hit the fourth floor she paused at the door to straighten her shirt and went to open it as it was thrust open and smacked into her and her coffee, spilling it all over her clean white shirt. Two guys were jogging down the stairs laughing, not even realizing what had just happened.

             "Great, thanks jerks." she said while looking down at her shirt, "This is just great"

             She turned the corner seething while she looked down at her coffee covered shirt, “at least I have half a coffee.” She said as she looked into her almost empty cup. When she glanced back up she saw an unfamiliar, but rather amused looking, attractive face. He was trying to suppress as smile but it wasn’t working. Echo obviously wasn’t paying attention because she was glaring at that attractive face and tripped over the mailroom cart tossing the rest of her coffee in the air and down on top of her again. The attractive man ran over to help her up.

“Are you okay?” he asked concerned as he pulled out a handkerchief and helped her wipe her face off.

            All she could think of to say was, “Who the hell carries handkerchiefs these days? This isn’t Jane Austen.”

            “And you’re very welcome.” He said with a forced smile.

            She shook her head, “Oh, I’m sorry. I have had a tough morning…as you can see.” She said as she gestured to her horribly stained shirt. “Thank you for your help.” She smiled up at him and he smiled back.

            “Sure, glad to help.” He offered her a hand up and she stood starting to feel quite embarrassed.   

            “I better get to my desk, “she looked at her watch. “I am quite late.”

            “Yeah, I’ll see ya around.” He said and headed towards the elevator. 

             Echo shook herself and hurried to her office. It was going to be a long day.

                                                ~                      ~                      ~

           Many hours later, Echo stared at the computer screen before her. She was at a loss and at the end of her rope. There was no evidence, no reason to keep pushing on. She was frustrated and hungry. She was also mad at her boss. But that was a normal occurrence. He was always pissing everyone off. She moved her mouse around the photo she was studying and zoomed in here and there.

            “What the hell am I looking for Bryant?” She muttered.

             No one answered. She didn’t expect anyone to. She was alone after hours and bored crazy. Bryant had told her she couldn’t leave till she finished the case. And she was ready to quit. There wasn’t a case here but he didn’t think what she said mattered.

            “Fine” she grumbled as she switched to the next picture and the next and through all 205 of the ‘evidence’ photos that Bryant’s team had taken and sent to her for analyzing. She was pretty sure that he was doing it to get back at her for taking an extra vacation day without pre-asking for it. It wasn’t her fault the plane she was getting on after she was coming back decided to malfunction and she was forced to wait till another option was available. She couldn’t change that, and he was still punishing her for it.

            “That little set back was almost a month ago Bryant” she huffed. Why did he have to be so difficult? She was planning on just leaving if she didn’t find something in the next 2 minutes. It wasn’t worth her sanity.  She clicked through the last 8 photos and stopped and looked up when she heard a crash on the lower floor. It was loud and unexpected. Who was here? The janitors didn’t come for another 20 minutes. She got up slowly and reached for the bat she kept close by her desk. She kicked of her heels and crept over to the door and made her way to the stairs and down to the 3rd floor.

            The bat was up and she was on watch, prepared and quite nervous. She silently moved towards the break room and stopped in her tracks when she heard a deep voice. Whoever it was was singing. Singing! She peeked in the side of the door where the glass gave her a clear view of the man’s backside. It looked as if he had dropped something and was attempting to pick it up. She reached for the door handle and opened it slowly so to not scare him. It scared him anyways. He whirled around glass shard in his hand aiming towards her. She didn’t take time to think. She just reacted. The bat came down, the glass went flying and he gasped as his brain registered the pain of a broken hand.

            “Dammit Kirra! He yelled. “I needed this hand!”

            She got up in his face and hissed. “I don’t go by that name, you know that. What the hell are you doing here, Damien?”

Holding his hand and trying to breathe through the pain he replied, “We need you. No one knows him like you do. I can’t even get in to see him. Plus, you’re not fulfilling your side of the bargain for being here and you know that.”

            “Don’t tell me what I am and not doing Damien. You don’t have that privilege.”  She turned to walk out of the room and then called over her shoulder. “Clean up the glass. I won’t have time after cleaning up the mess you have so obviously made out of this operation.”

            She went back to her desk and wrote a quick note to Bryant telling him she had to quit and she wasn’t coming back.  She didn’t have time for a two weeks’ notice and she knew that the office would be freaking out come morning. She was their best operative. And they knew it.  But, duty calls, and she happened to be the one carrying the cell phone.