Scorched to Ash Beneath the Blazing Sun novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Callie Frost

I did not take Callie Frost into the back office alone.

I took her into the supply room, where Brice could stand in the doorway with his arms crossed and Rhonda could sit on a stack of dog food with a clipboard.

My phone sat on a shelf between us with the voice recorder running.

Callie looked at the three of us and tried a small, wounded smile.

It did nothing.

She stopped trying.

"Fine," she said. "I'll say it once."

"I drank that bottle on purpose."

Rhonda's pen stopped moving.

"I wasn't dizzy. I wasn't thirsty. I was standing next to a woman who was falling apart, and Lance was looking at her like she was a chore."

"I wanted him to look at me like that."

"So when he took the bottle from you, I let him give it to me."

"I knew you needed it. I drank every drop in front of the camera so you would see me do it."

I kept my face still.

She was not asking for mercy.

She was telling me the way you tell someone a price.

"Why are you here, Callie?" I asked.

"Because Lance's lawyer called me at six this morning."

Her voice shook for the first time.

"He said the company would not be covering my legal fees. He said Lance's position is that I led the group's decisions on the trail and he followed my lead."

"My lead," she said. "He told me I was a marketing manager who had no business being in charge of anything."

"He's saying you did it," Rhonda said.

"He's saying I did all of it."

Callie laughed, short and ugly.

"Two years I've worked for that man. I covered for him with his mother. I've done his birthday cards."

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