“I understand,” I said into the silent line. “Give me five minutes. I’ll log in right away.”

I lowered the phone. Gordon frowned. “What happened?”

“My manager just called,” I replied. “One of our clients has a major system outage. There’s an emergency meeting, and I need my laptop immediately.”

Rita frowned. “But you’re supposed to pay for my shopping.”

“I know. Go ahead and start browsing. Have the associates set everything aside for you. I’ll stay here, handle the emergency, and meet you at the register in about thirty minutes.”

The irritation vanished from Rita’s face instantly. “Anything I want?”