But before the situation escalated, Katja's mobile phone rang and she smiled weakly as she went to answer it. "Uh, howdy, y'all?" she settled on in answering the phone in an utterly unconvincing accent, still trying to impersonate Missy.
"Miss Perssen, it's Corporal Thomas," came the gruff reply one of her superiors, and the young woman involuntarily pulled her shoulders back and stood up straighter. "Are you coming into work today, or have you quit?" His loud voice fit with his solidly athletic thirty-something frame, and though she was completely intimidated by him she also had something of a crush on him.
"Um, I'm down in the property office, sir," Katja stammered, dropping all pretext of the accent now as she made her way to the door, the cat-and-mouse game with the custodian now forgotten. "I'll be right there." The pretty blonde hurried through the building, but she was still new and the hallways all looked the same, so it ended up taking her several minutes to arrive, blushing as she saw Corporal Duane Thomas standing with his arms crossed near her temporary desk.
"Step into my office, Miss Perssen," the handsome black man invited her wearily, Katja failing to notice both that he once more referred to her as a civilian instead of as a cadet, or that the interior windows of his office were obscured by closed venetian blinds. "I don't know what business you think you have in the property office..." She smiled apologetically up at him as she brushed by him to enter the room, hoping for her first assignment, dreading that she was in trouble, and for the moment forgetting about Missy.
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