The coffee hit Riley Hale before she had time to turn away.

By seven o'clock that evening, the glass towers of downtown Seattle were glowing like giant gold lanterns against the darkening sky.

The lower levels of Anderson Meridian Group were empty, save for the hum of vacuum cleaners and the rhythmic slosh of mops in yellow plastic buckets.

Riley sat in the basement breakroom, a tiny, windowless concrete box situated right next to the main furnace room. The walls were painted a dull, peeling green, and the air smelled perpetually of old bleach and burnt popcorn.

Sitting around the long laminate table were four other custodians: Hector, a sixty-year-old man who had worked in the building since it opened; Elena, a young mother working two jobs to pay for her daughter's braces; Ben, a former trade apprentice with a ruined shoulder; and Martha.

They were sharing a box of lukewarm fried chicken that Hector had bought with his overtime pay.

"Zach Porter’s a bastard," Hector said in Spanish-accented English, chewing on a wing. "Last month, he dropped an entire box of shredded documents on the floor right after I finished waxing the fifth floor. Looked me dead in the eye and said, 'Oops.' Didn't even apologize."

"He does it on purpose," Elena agreed, wiping her hands on a paper napkin. "He knows we can't say anything. You complain to Cara Whitmore, and suddenly your hours get cut from forty to twenty-two."

"Why doesn't facility management step in?" Riley asked, taking a small bite of chicken.

Ben snorted. "Facility management? You mean Mr. Vance? He's in Cara’s pocket. They manipulate the overtime schedules. Any time the corporate office allocates funds for weekend maintenance bonuses, Vance and Whitmore pocket the administrative fee and report that we worked 'voluntary normal hours.'"

Riley froze with her chicken halfway to her mouth. "That’s wage theft."

"It’s how things work," Ben said simply. "You complain, you get put on the night shift at the warehouse in Kent. Nobody wants to go to Kent. The security guards down there treat you like a criminal."

Riley looked around the table.

These were the people her financial reports at the Chicago firm had listed as Operational Expense Category 4: Subcontracted Maintenance Overhead.

In spreadsheets, they were numbers to be shaved down by two percent every fiscal year to improve earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization. In boardrooms, cutting their healthcare benefits was called "optimizing operational efficiency."

Here, in this damp basement room, Hector was saving for his grandson's college tuition. Elena was praying her daughter wouldn't get bullied for her crooked teeth. Ben was taking illegal painkillers just to get through a eight-hour shift without crying from shoulder spasms.

And Martha was coughing up blood because she couldn't afford a fifty-dollar co-pay at an urgent care clinic.

"How much is the co-pay for the company health clinic upstairs?" Riley asked softly.

Martha laughed dryly. "The company clinic? That’s for corporate staff, dear. Tier-3 staff—that's us—only get the basic indemnity plan. It doesn't cover specialist visits or bloodwork until you meet a five-thousand-dollar deductible."

"Charles Anderson spoke at the annual meeting last year," Elena mentioned, picking at her food. "He said employees are the heart of this company. He looked so sincere on the big screen."

"Charles Anderson lives in a house on Bainbridge Island with six bedrooms," Hector grunted. "He doesn't know what happens down here. Guys like him build the ship, but guys like Zach Porter run the engine room and steal the coal."

Riley stared down at her hands. Her knuckles were rough, stained with blue ink from a leaking pen she had picked up off the hallway floor.

Her father hadn't known. Or maybe he had known, but had chosen not to look too closely because the numbers on the twenty-eighth floor always came out balanced.

"He's going to know," Riley whispered under her breath.