Crystal giggled, watching her friend's reaction.
“The ogre calls…” Gracie muttered.
Crystal grinned wider. She had missed her friend but that wasn’t the only reason that she was glad Gracie was back.
“He’s been such a nightmare, ever since you left. I swear he’s been in a bad mood for the past two months.”
There was another loud bang on the wall. Klarov was getting impatient. The few framed pictures that were still up on the wall rattled precariously.
“He’s always in a bad mood!” Gracie said, putting her bag down on her desk and heading back out.
Klarov’s grandfather had started the agency back in the day. Gracie didn’t know much about what the business was like back then, except that it was Grandpa Klarov that had bought these offices. Her boss had once tried to convince her that, back when the agency started, it had been considered luxurious. Gracie did not believe him.
Eventually, the grandfather had left the business to his eldest son. The son had done well, the business had flourished, the name Klarov becoming synonymous with discretion and reliability.
Most of the clients they got nowadays were because of that reputation, even though the agency's glory days were long gone.
Gracie pushed open Klarov’s door without knocking. She figured he was expecting her anyway.
Klarov was a tall man with a mess of unkempt hair that was, Gracie thought critically, exactly what a real-life ogre would look like. He lounged back in his chair, one arm stretched out to bang on the wall again.
“You read magazines, Gracie?”
Gracie pulled out the chair in front of Klarov’s desk, the nice one that was reserved for clients, and sat down.
“Nice to see you too, Klarov.”
“You know,” Klarov smirked, raising a cocky eyebrow. It amazed Gracie that a man in a tiny, windowless office, could be so damned confident all the time. “You can just call me Pete.”
“Klarov suits you better.”
“Yep, there’s that Gracie wit that we’ve all been missing,” he opened one of the desk drawers, pulled out a bundle of papers and tossed them across the desk so that Gracie could see it was actually a magazine. “Have you ever read this?”
Gracie picked it up, flicking through. “Not this particular issue. I used to buy it when I was a kid.”
“Well, this is going to be one of the last issues unless we can help them.”
Grace flipped the magazine closed, looking down at the familiar bold name printed on the front cover: Attitude.
Did teenagers still buy magazines?!?
It was hardly a surprise that Attitude was in trouble. Actually, the only surprise to Gracie was that the magazine was still in print
“Do they need help setting up their website?”
Klarov gave her an unimpressed look and held out his hand for the magazine back. Gracie held it out, but it was still too far away and Gracie had to half stand to reach Klarov’s hand.
“No. Someone keeps stealing their articles and leaking them online hours before Attitude goes to print. The owner thinks it’s a case of industrial espionage.”
“Riiight,” Gracie said skeptically, “You know it’s far more likely they’ve been hacked by some troll sitting in his parent’s basement somewhere.”
“That’s what I told the owner a month ago and he got some IT experts in. They’re not being hacked. It’s someone from their office. Cheer up, Gracie. This is going to be easy. I’ve got a job lined up for you at Attitude, all you have to do is keep an eye on the staff and report back anything suspicious.”
“I hate industrial espionage cases.”
“Yeah? What kind of cases do you actually enjoy, Gracie?”
Gracie shook her head. There were plenty of cases that she enjoyed. Klarov had a habit of deliberately misunderstanding her words.