NINESomewhere between preparing for her father’s birthday party and a boss named Godzilla, Anaya found herself going to work three hours early to catch up on the mounds of paper piled on her desk. It had been a week since the board approved the draft contract for the navy base with the assumption that local contractors would be given precedence in the development bids.
Anaya didn’t mind starting so early as she could be more productive when no one was in the office. Even though she didn’t get as much done as she wanted, she felt good about the paper shuffling and sending canned email replies. She read Carl’s first text message of the day, which yielded her first real smile of the day. She responded with a promise to stop by after work, then dived back into editing a grant.
At nine o’cloc
