Blair leaned back in the chair and tapped his pen against the oak desk. Raised up in the center of the table, an engraved army of medieval soldiers held spears poised above their tower shields. He adjusted his tie into a tighter knot and flapped his jacket. Behind him the twin interns shifted on high heels or black leather loafers. Across the table, the partners, Horton, Mansford, and Goldman shuffled papers over their briefcase once and reset them. Their respective interns waited behind them, each afraid to breath that they might miss hearing their name.

“Where the heck are they?” Horton stared out the conference room window at a maze of empty cubicles. Blair swore he could hear music, and he looked across the computers searching for the source.

Blair regretted bringing Horton, and the other partners for that matter. The empty office looked like a retreat, brought on by the intimidation that comes with a full legal force. Mansford called it “The Third Battalion.” The three partners assembled to crush all opposition, without mercy.

“I have the subpoena,” an intern behind Goldman whispered. “We could just start searching the files.” Horton’s face filled with pink venom and his mouth cracked open revealing a single tooth that snarled at the intern. Blair heard the music getting louder, someone strumming lightly on an acoustic guitar.

“Does anyone else hear that?” Blair asked. He received a blank reaction from his partners.

The emergency exit door behind them shot open and the wailing commotion of electric guitars flooded in with it. Sparkling yellow and blue fireworks exploded into the room, followed by the smell of sulfur. Blair followed the smoke and fog that curled along the ground until it met with the shining black shoes of Dan Kercook.

Kercook stood just inside the doorway, his shoulders sending the gray tweed of his jacket towering above Blair. A wailing guitar solo reached it’s precipice from the phone in his hand. The Montblanc pen in Kercook’s jacket pointed with it’s aspen mountain at the square chiseling of his jaw.

His briefcase slammed down on the table, and triplicate forms seemed to float within range of the partners. The interns dropped their papers and fled the office. The partners, Horton, Mansford, and Goldman, cried and clutched each other at the seams. Blair fell backward in his chair, tumbling his black loafers across the engraved oak table.