Out of the Wild: A Wilderness Survival Thriller Read online

“Of course not.”

  She leaned forward in her seat. “But you said you took care of it.”

  “And I did. Dawson handled it.”

  She offered back a look of confusion. “But that would have meant… he had a pitch all ready to go?”

  He made another clicking sound with his mouth. God, she hated it when he did that.

  Roger leaned back in his seat all smug-like. “I know. That kid is golden.”

  “Yeah, golden.” Kara ground her teeth. “Roger, that pitch was mine.”

  He got this serious expression. The same one he wore when he pretended he gave a shit about a client. “Kara, just because your father flies by the seat of his pants it doesn’t mean we should. I heard your pitch and decided to see what Dawson could come up with just in case. You know — a plan B. I’m glad I did.”

  “But… you said you liked it. I’m confused.”

  He burped and placed both hands on the table. “I did. It was… catchy… cute… but risky.”

  “Risky?”

  He breathed in deeply and got up to make himself a coffee from his fancy three thousand dollar espresso machine. “It wouldn’t have flown with the client.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No, it’s the one thing I do know, Kara. Let me ask you something. Do you know the reason why Dawson is rising so fast in this company?”

  “Because he kisses ass?” she shot back.

  He laughed. “No, Kara, because he adheres to guidelines, respects clients’ wishes, and ultimately seals the deal.” He took a breath. “And that’s what we did this morning.”

  Roger bent at the waist to put the portafilter in, cranking the handle then tapping a button. The machine churned to life. He turned and leaned against the counter while Kara continued.

  “I don’t understand. They came to us because they were having trouble selling. They wanted a solution. You specifically asked me to create an ad that tells a story. I did that. Okay, I thought outside the box but that’s what we are paid to do. Come up with fresh, new branding that helps clients sell products and services.”

  He waved a finger. “No, you have it all wrong. You’re paid to follow what is tried and true, not take risks. You want to do that,” he chuckled, “go work for your father.”

  “You think we can leave my father out of this?”

  She’d mentioned him a few times over the years, and as he did with all his employees, he’d run extensive background checks. From there he formed his inaccurate opinions.

  There was a break in the conversation.

  Roger ran a hand over his cleanly shaven face. “How do I put this so you understand?” he mused. “What I’m saying is in this business there are no guarantees, okay. If the clients want X, we give them X not Z. That’s what pays the bills.”

  “But they wanted Z.”

  “No, they think they want Z but then after we create that they tell you they want X and had we listened at the start that’s what we would have created.”

  “But my job is to sell.”

  “Yes, to them. That’s the difference here, Kara. Remember the first rule, the client is right even if they are not. Your job is to sell to them. That’s what keeps things running, keeps the client happy, and the bank account stays full.” He gave a broad smile.

  “And what if X doesn’t work?”

  Roger carried his coffee back to the table.

  “You know as well as I do there are many working parts to this business. That’s why our copywriters and designers aren’t affiliated with us. They’re freelance. The work is contracted out. Some choose to do the work here, others at home. It lets us pass the buck. And let’s face it, in this town, most of the businesses that come to us don’t even last five years — so who cares.”

  “I care. That’s a scam.”

  He leaned forward. “Darlin’, that’s advertising.”

  She shook her head and looked out the window.

  “Look, I like you, Karla, a lot, but when it comes to digging deep and pulling out what’s required to survive, some have it, some don’t.” He reached under a stack of paperwork and pulled out a white envelope.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think you know.” He slid it in front of her. She scooped it up and opened it to find a check, a final check.

  She lifted her eyes. “Is this a joke?”

  “I never joke when it comes to business.”

  “Come on, Roger. Don’t do this.”

  “It’s already done.”

  Kara stared back. “This is all I know.”

  “Is it?”

  “Well, what else can I do?”

  “Become a pilot, I hear they are in desperate need right now.”

  “Don’t do this to me. I need this job.”

  “And I need employees I can depend on. Strong employees who can find their way out of a difficult predicament. If you had really wanted to make sure you landed that client, you would have delivered one pitch in your style and one in ours. You’ve got to cover your bases, Karla because it’s a wild world out there and it will eat you up and spit you out.”

  “So this is you spitting me out? What about the Blakeman account? I’ve worked on that for years.”

  “Dawson’s handling it now.”

  She scoffed. “You gave it to him?”

  “You were already this close to losing it,” he said, bringing up a finger and thumb. There was a pause. “Look, when was the last time you took a weekend off? Maybe this is a good thing.”

  “That depends, when was the last time you allowed me a weekend off?”

  “Don’t spin this back on me. We are all adults here.”

  “You sure about that?” She shook her head as she rose. “After all I’ve done.”

  “Like I said, there are many ways to the top, you chose yours.”

  The penny dropped. Kara knew what he was referring to. She’d turned him down when he wanted to have sex with her at a work party a few months earlier. “So that’s what this is about?” He remained stoic as she swiped the check off the table. Kara didn’t stick around. She knew how things worked, it was the revolving door. You either shined, bent over or they sent you packing. She made it to her desk and collected her things. Across the room, Dawson stood with a few others, a smug grin widening.

  3

  Oddly, she felt relieved. Although getting fired would require some tactful explaining when applying for a new job, no longer having to deal with the lofty expectations of Roger Manning was perhaps a blessing more than a curse.

  The journey back to her apartment in the neighborhood of Carson was a sullen one. Along the way she got a call from the mechanic working on her lemon of a vehicle to tell her the damage, of course, it was more than she could afford so she opted not to repair it and instead have it towed to the salvage yard where she might get a few bucks for parts.

  The two-level brown apartments weren’t in the safest area. Every time she returned home, she found herself looking over her shoulder as she made a mad dash from her vehicle to the building. Kara thanked the driver before making her way in. In over four years, barring two days she was sick, this was the first time she’d returned in the middle of a workday.

  After collecting mail, which amounted to a handful of bills and some junk flyers, she double-timed it up the steps, juggling both bag and mail while quietly trying to get her keys out before her landlord…

  “Kara.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, key in hand. She swore he had ears like a bat. Turning her head down the hallway, she offered a warm smile. “Mr. Garcia, I was just about to swing by with the rent but I figured you’d be out running errands.” Javier Garcia was a short, bulbous looking man, with salt-and-pepper hair and a thick mustache. He was kind but very meticulous when it came to finances. When Kara had first arrived, he’d chewed her ear off for the better part of two hours, telling her his life story of his parents coming from Puerto Rico and how he’d gotten into the real estate business.
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br />   “Yeah, yeah, I bet you were.” He eyed her skeptically, smiling as he leaned up against the frame of his doorway. If she’d only had one of the ground floor apartments, she could have slipped in and out without issue.

  “Here, I’ve got some money for you,” she said.

  “That would be a first.”

  In all fairness, she’d paid her rent on time, month after month for several years until Thomas moved in, her now ex-boyfriend. Things were good for a time despite him pinballing from one job to the next. That’s when they started to fall behind. With him holding down the fort at home, and not wanting to seem like a leech, he’d offered to lift some of the responsibilities from her shoulders — run errands, do housework, pay the bills, and whatnot. She thought he was being sweet, and having less on her plate was a welcome relief. That was until Mr. Garcia informed her she was two months behind on her rent. She wouldn’t have minded if that was all, but somehow he’d managed to forget to pay the phone and electricity bill. She soon discovered instead of paying bills, the loser had been hitting the bar and blowing it on drink.

  Kara dug into her bag and took out what little cash she had. She wasn’t in the habit of carrying large bills out of fear of being mugged. She uncrumpled a ten-dollar bill and handed it to him. “I’ll have the rest for you this evening when I get to the bank.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. I see you have a new boyfriend. I hope he’s better than the last.”

  “You and me both,” she said.

  “Maybe he can give you the rest of my money.”

  Kara snorted. “Tonight. You have my word.”

  “Your word doesn’t keep the lights on,” he said as he shuffled back inside.

  Kara returned to her apartment and let herself in, tossing the keys into a small brown bowl on the counter, and kicking off her shoes. In the backroom, she heard a commotion, a chair being moved, knocked over, or something heavy dropping?

  “Matt!? You’ll never believe the day I’ve had,” she said, thumbing through the mail as she wandered to the back and opened the bedroom door.

  “Oh hey, babe,” he said standing half-naked with a sheet wrapped around his waist like some Greek god. A puzzled look formed as her eyes darted to the window, where the drapes were blowing in the breeze. “So I was thinking…” he started to say as her eyes drifted down to a pair of skimpy panties, red. They weren’t hers.

  “What the hell is that?” she asked, snagging them up and dangling them in his face. He backed up. “Who do these belong to?”

  “You.”

  “Matt.”

  “Oh, um…”

  Before he could say another word, she slipped around him and darted to the window and looked out just in time to see a dirty blonde, struggling to put a sneaker on while hopping down the driveway. She was wearing a jean jacket and had a top balled up under one arm.

  “You cheating sonofabitch.”

  “Now Kara. Calm down,” he said, extending a hand as he backed up.

  “Calm down? Calm down!?”

  “She doesn’t mean anything to me. I…”

  She shoved him out of the bedroom, and he fell backward as she stepped on the sheet, pulling it down and revealing his nakedness. Before he had a chance to bombard her with excuses, apologies, or whatever the hell he was thinking, she thrust him out of the apartment into the hallway and slammed the door.

  “Kara. My clothes!”

  “You’ll find them outside the window.” She charged into the bedroom and collected them from hangers in the closet and tossed them down to the flower beds, one after the other. She couldn’t believe it. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. Was there anything good to come of this day? As soon as the last of his belongings were outside, she slumped down below the window, her back to the wall, and the dam broke. All her emotions rose to the surface as she wrapped her arms around her knees and dropped her chin. She was angry, at herself more than anyone else.

  As darkness fell over California, and the last faint strands of light vanished, Kara curled up in front of a flickering TV with a large glass of red wine, pondering her options. Instead of waiting until Monday, and focusing on the worry of uncertainty, she’d already spent the afternoon phoning multiple ad agencies to little or no avail. It didn’t matter that she had years of experience, had worked with well-known brands, the question eventually came up. And you are no longer working for them because…?

  She could have lied but one phone call to Roger and that would have been it, so she figured it was better to bite the bullet and remain truthful, hoping that her experience would speak for itself. The replies varied:

  Send over your résumé.

  I’m afraid we’re just not hiring right now.

  We’ll think it over.

  Try again on Monday, HR has gone home for the day.

  If there was an excuse to be heard, she heard it that afternoon. The reality was as large as Los Angeles was, people talked, rumors swirled and the chance of getting her foot in the door without starting at the bottom again would be next to none. Roger knew that. This was nothing but a power move, in the hope she would crawl back to him and beg for her job back in exchange for pleasing his nether regions. No, she wouldn’t do it. She’d rather fall on her own sword.

  Turning the volume down on the TV, she fired up Facetime on her phone and contacted the one person who always put a smile on her face — Irene Jessop, a long-time friend from Anchorage, Alaska. She’d known Irene as far back as high school. An Alaskan through and through, tough-skinned, she worked a variety of seasonal jobs, one of which was as a bartender, to pay for running a dogsled team in the Iditarod, the annual long-distance sled race that ran from Anchorage to Nome.

  Irene was convinced she could win, and Kara had no doubts she could do it. But the race wasn’t cheap, with a $4,000 entry fee, but the prize money of $500,000 split among the top 20 finishers was more than enough incentive.

  Irene appeared on the screen, larger than life, and giving Kara various shaky shots of the bar she was working at. She wore a black t-shirt with a blue logo, and her bright red hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail. The background music was loud, and there were several hunched patrons, sitting at the bar swigging beer, chatting, and watching sports on overhead flatscreens.

  “One moment, hon, let me find a quiet place. Hey Rick! Take over for me.”

  The screen went dark, her footsteps clattered and a few seconds later she appeared on the screen again in what looked like a bathroom stall.

  “You’re not…”

  “Hey, when nature calls, you gotta go,” she said over the sound of tinkling pee. “So how are you, darlin’? I tried reaching you Tuesday to wish you a happy birthday but got no answer. Did you get my gift?”

  “I did. Thank you. It’s lovely.”

  “So… how did you spend the special day?”

  “Out with Matt. He took me to a Mexican restaurant.”

  “Nice. How is that rascal?”

  A pause.

  “Wouldn’t know. Probably cold. I tossed him out on his ear.”

  “Oh.” Her tone dropped. “Dare I ask?”

  Kara cocked her head but said nothing.

  “What an asshole,” Irene replied. “You know, I had this feeling about him from the moment I saw him.”

  “I do seem to have good taste in men.” Kara snorted. “Anyway, he’s gone now and so is my job… and my car.”

  Irene screwed up her nose as she wrestled with underpants and flushed the toilet, then stepped out into the back room. “When it rains it pours.”

  “You can say that again,” she said. “That’s the sound of my life going down the drain.”

  Irene burst out laughing. “Oh hon, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. That can’t be easy. I wish you were here, I would bring over a bottle of wine and we could drink ourselves into obscurity.” Kara lifted a half-filled bottle, and Irene smiled back. “You want to talk about it?”

  She scrunched her nose and shook her head. “N
ah. Hey, uh, how’s my father?”

  “Good from what I’ve seen. He shows his face from time to time, but come to think of it, I haven’t seen him in a few weeks. Why, are you thinking of coming home? Please tell me you are, William is driving me up the wall.”

  William was Irene’s other half. Now there was a good man.

  Kara ran a hand over her forehead as she let out a low groan. “I can’t. I have to find a job on Monday, and another set of wheels and…” She looked off absently across the room, wondering if it was all worth it, the rat race, the continual scrambling to climb the corporate ladder. She missed the free-spirited nature of Alaskan life, jumping from one seasonal job to another. Before leaving for California, she’d done it all: roofing, commercial fisherwoman, hostess at a bed and breakfast, cook on a guide boat.

  “You know what. I have just the job for you.”

  “Irene, I’m not cleaning up puke at the end of the night. Been there, done that.”

  Irene laughed. “No, they save that for me. Give me a second,” she said. She sauntered off down the corridor, all the while bringing her up to speed on what had been happening in Anchorage. Friends they knew, places where they used to hang out that were now closed or had been turned into another business. It had been eleven years since she’d returned home and even longer since she’d spoken to her father beyond a few text messages. Not that she hadn’t tried over the years but their schedules never seemed to align.

  “Hey, Rick. Rick! What was the number for that couple who need someone for their kids while they go hunting?”

  Rick bellowed a name back followed by a number. He was like a walking job bank. If there was a job to be had, he knew the details or someone who did. That was the beauty of managing a bar.

  Rick told Irene how much Kara would be paid, where it was, and what she’d have to do. A wilderness nanny was someone who carted kids around, watched over them, and drained them of energy while tourists or parents hunted. It was a good wage, and it often covered travel expenses and accommodation.

  “You get that?” Irene asked, getting back on the phone.

  “Yeah but…”