I stood rooted in my spot behind the desk for a moment, uncertain what to do.

Sure, I could easily take on Mr. Hyper-hydrosis, overpower him before he had a chance to pull the gun he most certainly carried.  I could detect, quite faintly, the smell of gun oil beneath the overpowering body odor.  But there was no guarantee that he would be cooperative or help lead me to where his gang members were keeping Howard.

My other option, then, was to hide, hopefully see what he was doing here, and follow him back to home base.

I glanced around the room looking for a spot to hide.

There really wasn’t anywhere.  Not even under Howard’s desk, which was an open concept one, completely open at the front; likely to more easily faciliate his lunch-hour blowjobs.

I felt a wave of panic as his footsteps stopped at the door to the office.  I heard the sound of a key going into the lock on the door.

With no place else to go, I figured I’d try the oldest trick in the book and hide behind the door.  Not that using the oldest tricks in the book -- like that notepad trick I’d just used -- had helped get me very far yet today.  But I had to keep trying.

The door opened just as I’d lunged across the room to my last ditch chosen hiding spot.  As Mr. Sweaty-pants moved into the room, trailing just behind the foul spice of his body odor, I felt like a kid who’d been caught without much time to find an optimal hiding place, and prepared for him to detect me and attack.

He moved directly to the desk and I managed to catch a quick peek at him before carefully reaching forward to grasp the door knob and ease the door open just a bit more to better conceal where I stood.  He was wearing the same dark suit I’d seen on him in the alley and he had very short army style buzz cut blonde hair.  I immediately knew he wasn’t the leader I’d seen standing at Gary’s head and watching the other two kick him.  Tall and wide -- the phrase “built like a brick shithouse” came to mind -- he’d been one of the henchmen I’d seen earlier.

Behind the propped open door, I could no longer see him.  But that was a good thing.  Hopefully he couldn’t see me.  I amused myself for a moment thinking about if the situation had been reversed and he’d been the one hiding that his nasty sweaty odor would have given away his hiding spot quite easily.  I thought back to all those times I’d played hide and seek as a child, wondering just how much better I would have been at it had I possessed these wolfish traits then.  For an amusing moment, I also thought about how difficult a time this poor bastard would have had hiding from anyone given his raunchy smell -- wolf scent or no wolf scent, he would have been found no matter where he stuffed his greasy little body.

He came back into my line of vision as he moved around the left side of Howard’s desk.  I held my breath as he disappeared again behind the desk.

He picked up something from the desktop and then headed back around the right side of the desk -- fortunately on the side of the room that allowed me the best chance of concealment behind the propped open door.

Then he headed back out of the office door, not even bothering to close it behind him.

I cautiously peered after him.

He was carrying Howard’s laptop in his meaty right hand like some small paperback novel.

As he approached the elevator, I saw Howard’s assistant walking toward the office.  It was obvious that she would have seen him coming out of the office, but she barely glanced at him as they passed each other, even despite the distinctly foul smell coming off of his body.  Instead, she was looking past him, at my gaping face peeking out the doorway.

“Hey!” she shouted at me.  “What are you doing in there?”

 Mr. Hyper-hydrosis was just getting into the elevator as she shouted, and he turned to look at what the commotion was.  A flash of recognition lit across his face, his heartbeat skipped a beat, and a fresh new wave of sweat oozed through his pores.  It was obvious that he recognized me from the alley.  He glanced about the office seeming to make a decision that there would be too many people around for him to do anything about me here.

He punched a button -- likely the “close door” button on the elevator and scowled in my direction.  Despite knowing I’d be able to overpower him, it still gave me a chill to consider having to face off with such a large, meaty, angry man.

His angry scowl disappeared behind the closing elevator doors, but his odor remained strong almost as if he’d still been standing waiting for the next elevator to arrive.

Faces and heads started appearing over cubicle walls and people who were already walking around in the hallways stopped in their tracks and looked in my direction.  They all gave off the scent of curious onlookers; partially annoyed for the interruption in their routine, but tinged with the eau of curiosity not about what was going down, but whether or not it would prove to be more interesting to watch than getting back to work would be.

I gave a sheepish wave in the direction of Howard’s assistant, who kept walking toward me.

“I was just looking for the bathroom,” I said in a loud voice and kept walking toward the elevator.  A few of the heads that had popped up sank back down; the scent of many of the people who’d been aroused by the shout of Howard’s assistant were no longer interested, thinking the momentary exciting distraction was over.

But no less than three people in the area maintained an interested aura about them, and one of them other than Howard’s assistant flashed an angry, more violent response.

As I still walked toward her, hearing her heartbeat continue to pick up dramatically, combined with a bitter anger fused with a wave of fear, I realized she was in on the whole deal with Mr. Hyper-hydrosis and part of her fear was that she was being caught betraying her boss.

One of the tall, thin gentlemen approaching from the end of the hallway had that indignant air of anger about him.  His intent, I could easily tell, was to confront me.  About five cubicles back, there was another young man who gave off the same fight-reflex scent.  He was rounding the side of his cubicle and also heading toward me.

Neither of them frightened me so much as the sound that came to me from down the end of the hall.  The quiet tapping of a four digit number into a phone and the whispered voice:  “We have an intruder on the sixty-second floor.”  I knew security would be here within minutes and that I didn’t have much time.

“Where do they have Howard,” I asked her in a quiet voice as I got within a few footsteps of her.  The intense combined mix of anger and fear coming off her was so strong, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her blonde curly hair unrolling and recurling itself in time to the strong steady beat of her heart.  Her reaction to my words was an intense flare of anger.

“Go to hell,” she hissed under her breath.  And as one of her colleagues got within a few steps of us, she smirked at me as she yelled out.  “No, don’t touch me!  Leave me alone!”

The buddy closest to me reached for my arm, saying, “Listen, pal, we don’t want any trouble here,” and the whole office area filled with the scent of the morbidly curious; the wave of scent would have sounded like:  “Ooooh, there’s something very good about to go down here!”

I easily shrugged off the hand of the Good Samaritan, remembering that he was an innocent bystander here -- that everyone in this office, with the exception of this bitter bitch before me, was innocent.

Unable to resist saying it, I leaned in close to her and said.  “I outta stick you alone in a locked room with Howard’s fiancé for ten minutes.  She’d wipe that smirk off your face permanently for fucking Howard.”

Her demeanor, her scent, her heartbeat changed immediately to surprise.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.  Buddy behind me tried putting a hand on my arm again, this time saying.  “That’s about enough out of you.”

The other guy who was heading my way was within a few steps of us.

Again, I easily shrugged myself out of the man’s grasp, then took a few steps toward the elevators, pushing my way past the other fellow forcefully, but without hurting him either.

With these jokers, all the witnesses and security on their way, Howard’s slutty secretary wasn’t going to be giving up information any time soon.  My best bet would be to follow Mr. Sweatypants.
At least he left a distinctive enough trail.

There wasn’t time to wait for an elevator, not with these two Good Samaritan’s here; and certainly not with office security on their way.

My best bet would be to hoof it down the stairs and hope I could get down quickly enough so as not to lose too much of the body odor trail of my quarry.