She Framed Me at Work,So I Sent Her to Prison

The Labor Day long weekend was right around the corner, and my scheming coworker was waving the duty roster in my face.

"Hailey, I'm so sorry, but it looks like you're pulling the heavier load again this year."

Hope Fox pointed at the schedule like she was showing off a trophy. Fiveday weekend, and she had two shifts while I had three.

I shrugged, completely unbothered.

"Fine by me. Triple pay means one extra day of work is one extra day of money."

Hope's eyes lit up instantly.

"Hailey, you really mean that? Then would you be a sweetheart and cover my—"

I cut her off with a sharp wave of my hand.

I knew exactly what she was scheming.

Last year she'd used a vacation as an excuse. When her shift came around, she played dead and claimed she couldn't make it back.

Mr. Greyson blew his top, and since I needed to keep my job, I gritted my teeth and covered for her.

Five straight days without a break. My body gave out completely, and I spent the next month on medical leave.

This year, I was not falling into the same trap twice.

——

I fixed Hope with a cold stare and slid the roster back across the desk.

The smile froze on her face.

"Hailey, you can't do this to me!"

She squeezed in next to my desk, her voice pitched high and wheedling, already reaching for my arm.

"Come on, have a heart! I already found discount flights to Miami. If I cancel now, I lose the booking fee!"

"And my mom hasn't been doing well lately. I was hoping to take her to the beach over the long weekend so she could relax..."

I lifted my gaze and cut her off.

"Save it."

My voice was ice. "Hope, you pulled the exact same routine last year. Said you were taking your mom to see a specialist. And what happened?"

"When your shift came around, your phone went straight to voicemail. You didn't even read my texts."

I stood up.

"You vanished without a trace, and I covered for you five days straight!"

"I passed out from low blood sugar in the subway station and spent over a month on medical leave."

"Forget the attendance bonus I lost. Did you reimburse me a single cent for the hospital bills?"

Hope's expression soured, her dirty laundry aired for everyone to hear.

Seeing that tactic wasn't working, she switched gears on a dime. Her eyes reddened, tears glistening on cue.

She didn't bother arguing with me. Instead, she turned toward the male coworkers, dabbing at her eyes.

Dennis Finch, the guy who orbited her like a satellite and brought her coffee every morning, jumped in immediately.

"Hailey Chavez, we're all coworkers here. Do you have to be so harsh?"

Dennis puffed up his neck. "She's got a real situation going on. You're free during the holiday anyway. What's the big deal about covering one shift? Show a little compassion, would you?"

I let out a cold laugh and locked eyes with him.

"Dennis, if you're so worried about your precious little bestie, why don't you cover her shifts yourself?"

"Two days over the long weekend, six hundred bucks a day in overtime. That's twelve hundred dollars, all yours. Go file the request with HR."

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"

The second he realized it meant giving up his own holiday, Dennis's face turned the color of a bruised plum. He stammered for a while, then shrank back behind his monitor.

Nobody said a word.

With no one left to fight her battle, Hope clenched her jaw and stalked back to her seat.

As she turned, something vicious flickered behind her eyes.

If she couldn't take it by force, she'd find another way.

The first three days of the long weekend passed with eerie calm.

Then, on the afternoon of the third day, just before clocking out, I deliberately took a trip to the restroom at the far end of the hallway and lingered for a good fifteen minutes.

When I pushed open the office door and walked back to my desk, a cold smile tugged at my lips.

Sitting dead center on my desk was a heavy ring of brasscolored spare keys to the company warehouse.

Tucked beneath them was a sticky note in obnoxious pink, scrawled in Hope's signature cutesy handwriting: "Thanks for agreeing to cover my shifts after all, Hailey! You're the best! I left the keys here for you. Mwah~"

I glanced over at Hope's workstation. Computer off. Desk spotless. She was long gone.

She'd dropped the key and the note, snapped a photo, and figured that was enough to fake a handover.

I didn't make a scene. I slipped the key into my coat pocket.

When you nail someone, you weld the evidence shut. One shot. One kill.

I walked to the window and looked down.

On the curb outside the building's front entrance, Hope stood in oversized sunglasses and a flowy resort dress, one hand on a pink rolling suitcase, the other tapping at her phone as she waited for her rideshare.

I headed downstairs immediately.

Hope had her back to the lobby doors, all her attention fixed on a car still stuck at the intersection.

I pretended to be on a call and walked right past her.

The instant I brushed by the suitcase, my fingertip hooked the zipper of the hidden compartment along its bottom edge.

One faint tug. I shoved the spare key, the one with the metal warehouseaccess tag stamped with the company name, deep into the compartment and yanked the zipper shut.

I turned and melted into the crowd.

The rideshare pulled up. Hope cheerfully had the driver load her suitcase into the trunk and sped off without a backward glance.

I watched the car disappear down the block and let the corner of my mouth curl.

This one's on you now, Hope. No getting out of it.

The next morning I didn't set an alarm. Slept until my body decided it was done.

I sat on the couch in my apartment, coffee in hand, eyes fixed on the phone lying on the coffee table.

At 8:05, the phone started buzzing nonstop.

Hope's name flashed on the screen. Call after call after call.

One. Two. Three.

I watched, stonefaced. Didn't need to guess what she was scheming.

She was sprawled across a kingsize hotel bed in Miami right now, hammering my number over and over.

She wanted to badger me into caving. Wear me down until I dragged myself to the office, unlocked the doors, and covered her shift.

Even if I didn't pick up. Even if I flatout refused. She wouldn't care.

She was betting on the next domino: the moment nobody showed up and Mr. Greyson discovered the warehouse unmanned, he'd call me, guilttrip me about "the bigger picture," and force me to clean up her mess.

I stared at the screen and smiled. Cold.

"Guilttrip me? Please."

I switched the phone to airplane mode and shoved it under my pillow.

Meanwhile, on a beach thousands of miles away in Miami, Hope listened to the automated voice telling her the number she'd dialed had been powered off. Not a flicker of panic. She laughed out loud.

"You want to go up against me? That's the best you've got, Hailey? Playing dead and turning off your phone?"

She tossed her phone onto the beach lounger.

"Fine. Go ahead, dig your heels in, don't show up. I'd love to see how you explain yourself when the boss checks in and finds nobody there."

She slid her sunglasses on and strolled toward the ocean, already rehearsing the scene where she'd watch me get torn apart.

Ten o'clock that morning, a fourinch firesuppression main on the second floor of the office building, corroded beyond its limit, blew apart.

A muffled boom. A highpressure column of water punched through the ceiling and roared down through the pipe shafts toward the first floor.

Directly below the second floor sat our company's primary inventory warehouse, packed wall to wall with highvalue goods.

Outside the warehouse's heavy steel security shutter, water was rising fast.

Inside were the precision electronic instrument control boards Mr. Greyson had mortgaged his wife's property to afford before the long weekend. Over twenty thousand units. Worth north of eighty thousand dollars.

Ten minutes submerged. That was all it would take. Every last one of them, destroyed.

The entire shipment was scheduled to go out to a major client in Silicon Valley the first business day after the holiday.

By the time a security guard heard the noise and made it to the first floor, murky brown water was already sloshing over his ankles, bubbling up through the gap beneath the warehouse door.

He called the building manager immediately.

The building manager pulled up the security footage, then dialed Mr. Greyson.