As the low, steady hum of the open-plan office washed over him, Ryan’s gaze drifted from the glowing audit confirmation on his screen back to the edge of his monitor bezel. There, pinned squarely over the plastic frame, sat a fresh square of neon-yellow paper that hadn't been there a moment ago. The handwriting was unmistakably Marcus’s—the brisk, slanted scrawl of a senior logistics coordinator who had cleaned out his desk and departed Corravale Beverages months ago. Scrawled across the paper in thick black marker was a blunt, frantic warning: Saw the cc on the regional notice. They’re setting you up to take the fall for Mascot tomorrow morning. Don't sign anything.
A sharp cough from across the pod made Ryan flinch, his hand snapping out to snatch the note before anyone could glance his way. Sarah from accounts rolled past his desk, wheeling a trolley stacked with folder binders and chatting idly with another colleague about an upcoming supplier lunch. Ryan forced his features into the blank, polite mask of an ordinary, slightly overworked marketing coordinator, sliding the yellow square into his pocket alongside the growing collection of impossible evidence while murmuring a polite afternoon greeting.
The digital clock in the corner crept toward 14:45. The rest of the fifth-floor marketing pod moved through the sluggish, caffeine-fueled trough of the mid-afternoon slump—typing emails, arguing softly over stubborn printer queues, and pretending to care about upcoming seasonal beverage campaigns. Ryan sat frozen in his ergonomic chair, staring at the flashing cursor of his inbox, knowing he had less than twenty hours before an audit he never scheduled would arrive to question a warehouse he had never set foot in.