Chapter 646

The walk back from the restaurant didn’t take long, and since you’d had a late start to lunch to begin with and had been talking with Garrison for so long, you were out of the lunchtime press. Downtown was a lot nicer when it wasn’t a rush hour - you could walk without constantly weaving around people or bumping into them, and the traffic didn’t feel like it was ready to run you down whenever you were crossing the street, even with a light.

The lateness of your return also meant that, by the time you got back and Garrison had headed off to his office while you, Sabrina and Eric headed for the conference room, there were only a couple of hours left in the day.

Your last day. Last afternoon. Last hours.

Each of you had an offboarding email waiting for you in your inboxes when you logged onto your computers from HR, reminding you of all the stuff that needed to be done before you could leave for the day.

“Are we really done ... working?” Eric asked as the three of you read through the short lists.

“I guess so,” you said, shaking your head slowly. “They want our computers up to IT by 4 PM, and most of the other stuff requires us to do stuff on our computers...”

“Let’s do a half hour of work,” Sabrina suggested. “We could probably not, but I just- I don’t feel done yet. And Garrison just spent a bunch of money on us.”

You and Eric agreed, and you set a timer on Eric’s phone for thirty minutes and started one last work sprint. Settling into your routine, you focused on the tasks at hand, and the easy banter slipped into only the occasional murmur.

The timer went off before you knew it, and you’d completed three tasks on the master list. Eric had tackled a big one, and Sabrina had picked off six of the smaller ones that were easier to handle in batches when you already had the sluggish processing program open. You almost stood up and reached over to snooze Eric’s phone, but stopped yourself and let him turn it off as the three of you exhaled.