by Ali Vali
“Let’s see if I can channel my helpless-female side.”
Chapter Sixteen
“It’s a good thing the windows don’t open,” Frankie said the next afternoon as he reached for Vivien’s hand. She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t heard him come in. “You look like you’re ready to jump.”
“And miss out on the stockholder dinner tonight?” she said mockingly. “I had an appointment to have all my finger and toenails ripped out but rescheduled to feel even more pain tonight. Even if I could fling myself out of here, Daddy would make me go encased in plaster. Never mind that I was in the middle of the Gulf until last night—he wasn’t buying that I was tired.”
“Cheer up, a long weekend’s coming, and I promised I’d go with you to wherever you want to dive next. Unless you want to do something else.”
“How about something we can do together?” She kissed the top of his head and put her hand on the side of his neck. “Maybe we should go shell hunting.”
“Or we could sit on the sand and drink,” he said and laughed. “We’re old enough to get away with that now.”
She smiled and nodded. “Did you get all my numbers for me?”
“Steve’s not too happy every time I wheel in there, but yes, and I’m putting everything together. He thinks you’re avoiding him.”
“Vivien.” Steve interrupted them almost as if the mention of his name had conjured him up. “I made a reservation for lunch, so if you’re ready.”
“Did we have an appointment?” She let Frankie go and checked her book. “I already have plans with Franklin and Marsha.”
“I’ll call and add two.” Steve walked toward her and touched her hand before he picked up her phone and asked her assistant to do just that. “I don’t like taking no for an answer.”
“That’s obvious, but we’ll have to meet you there,” she said, and Frankie’s eyes widened. Her answer made Steve smile in a way that made his feelings of victory obvious.
“Um,” Frankie said when they were alone again, and she raised her finger to stop him from saying anything else.
“Come on, we don’t want to be late.” The sound of footsteps followed her statement, and she curled her fingers into fists. Her days would be long if she had to worry about Steve spying on her, along with the pressure she was under from her father.
She followed Frankie down to his car before calling Marsha and making her brother laugh when she spoke in pig Latin. They were quiet as she pointed out the places where she wanted him to turn until they were close to the Rum House restaurant on Magazine Street in uptown New Orleans.
“Are we running some kind of covert operation?” Frankie asked once they were out of the car.
“It’s creepy that he always knows where I am and what we’ve been talking about. I’m probably just paranoid, but I’m beginning to think he’s found a way to spy on me that’s not Daddy trying to push us together.” She nodded to the hostess who held the door open for them. Marsha was already waiting and had obviously ordered drinks.
“He’s not my favorite person, but that’s a little out there,” Franklin said as he maneuvered himself next to Marsha since it was the spot without a chair.
Her fantasy had always been that the two people she loved most in the world would find each other, but Frankie was way too shy for Marsha’s taste. If he learned to be a little more adventurous, Marsha would tilt his world off kilter, but in a good way since his self-perceived disability had never been an issue for her.
“What’s a little out there?” Marsha asked as Vivien dropped into the chair across from her.
“I think Steven’s bugged my office,” she said as she dipped a tortilla chip into the guacamole covered in mango chunks. “Frankie thinks I’m crazy, but since I’ve been in my overly decorated office, he knows my every move, and he’s got insight into all my conversations.”
“What do you mean?” Franklin asked as he gave Marsha a thumbs-up after trying his rum punch.
“He pointed out the mistakes,” she made air quotes, “you made in the paperwork you forwarded me yesterday. All the stuff on his list was from our talk about it, and before you think he’s a good guesser, that was something you worked on at home. It’s not on our system.”
Franklin sat back and stared at her, appearing as disgusted as he obviously felt. “How do we find out if that’s what he’s doing?”
“Let me help y’all out with this,” Marsha said, waving her hand. “I’ll make a few calls and let you know before I do anything.”
“Thanks for believing me.” She reached for Frankie and Marsha’s hands. “Where the hell would I be without you both?”
“I’ll explain why you don’t have to worry about us not being there for you later,” Marsha said and squeezed her fingers, “but right now glance to your left real quick.”
“What the fuck?” Since Steve was the kind of guy who drove a car to be noticed, it was hard to miss the brightest candy-apple-red Corvette she’d ever seen parked right outside. At any other time she would’ve admired the beautiful lines of the American classic, but it was one more prop in Steve’s carefully crafted image. “Part of me wanted to be convinced I was being paranoid.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to avoid me,” Steve said as he sat next to her. “I thought we had a date?”
“And we’re beginning to think you don’t get it when people are trying their best to get away from you,” Franklin said, and Vivien could hear his teeth grinding. He only did that when he was truly angry. “Why don’t you either get out of here and let us enjoy each other’s company, or order a taco and choke on it.”
“Careful, Franklin,” Steve said and laughed. “I almost feel threatened.”
“So is my sister by your stalking. How’d you get here? I doubt this place would’ve been my first guess to look for Vivien if I was searching for her, and I know for damn sure you’re not that lucky.” The volume of Franklin’s voice was starting to rise, and the bartender came out from behind the carved oak bar.
“Hey, man, you got nothing better to do than bother these people?” The guy was bigger than Steve, but Steve didn’t appear intimidated. “If that wasn’t real clear, get the fuck out.”
“See you both back at the office. It’s plain to me that a conversation is necessary so you understand what’s expected of you.” Steve left, not giving them a chance to respond, and Vivien realized it also gave him an out in answering Frankie’s question on how he’d found them.
“What an asshole,” Marsha said as she placed her hand on the bartender’s forearm. “Thanks, Harris.”
“Did I miss a meeting and that asshole became my boss?” Vivien asked. Her skin itched from the anger coursing through her. “Because he sure sounds like we’re at the office to please him.”
“I think it’s time to enjoy the trust fund Granddad Palmer left us,” Frankie said.
“Are you serious?”
“While you were offshore I had to deal with Steve, and I’m sick of it. He acts like that whenever Dad’s not around, then a perfect kiss-ass whenever he is.”
“But you love your job, Frankie,” Vivien said, sorry she’d complained so much. The only interest Frankie had aside from spending time with her was his job.
“If I get bored I’ll find something with one of the majors. Being an attorney who specializes in maritime contracts has to be good for something, right?”
“Then this time I’ll follow your lead.”
*
“What’s the alarm?” Kai asked as she entered the operations room. She’d tasked Isla with hacking Triton’s system and overloading the sensor closest to the foreign one.
“One of the security gismos is going ape shit,” the supervisor said. “Want me to turn it off and get someone in the water?”
“Why don’t you let the Oceanagraph folks earn their keep,” she said nonchalantly. “They can check the rest of them in that area once they get their equipment wet. In my experience
, once one goes out they all do, but this time it could just be a fish with a bad sense of direction.”
“Thanks, Boss. The divers will love you for keeping them topside in this mess.”
The weather had been nasty when the sun came up and had gotten progressively worse as heavy rain lashed the windows, casting dark-gray shadows over everything. “Good nap weather, for sure,” she said as the sub team headed for their command module on deck. “I haven’t met those guys so I’ll head down there. Call if anything else fucks up.”
The module was cold and cramped, but the chill was necessary to keep the equipment cool. Kai stood between the two comfortable leather chairs the pilots used and watched the monitors. She might not have known the crew, but she was familiar with Oceanagraph since the guys who’d found the Titanic and her final resting place had utilized their equipment. The owner seemed to be a lot like Vivien in that he worked so he could afford the explorer in him.
“There’s our problem,” the guy on her left said as he pointed to the sensor lit up in red. “It’s still in one piece, so if they can reboot it tell them to try.”
Kai touched the shell at her throat and focused on the man on her right. While her mothers were better at implanting thoughts into others they didn’t know, if the subject was open enough, and since she wasn’t asking for anything complicated, she could usually pull it off.
The guy guided the rover to the right. “Let’s do a three-sixty to make sure before we tell them to do anything.” He moved the joy stick a little more and there it was. “What the hell?” the man said with no prompting from her. “Did they fuck up and put one too close to this one? If that’s the case, the interference could make this thing wiggy all the time.”
“That don’t look like the security sensors Palmer installed,” the other guy said. “Do you know what it is?” he asked her.
“Are you sure you’ve never seen it before?”
Both men shook their heads.
“I’d tell you to bring it up, but I can’t know for sure that it’s not dangerous because your buddy’s right. That doesn’t resemble ours at all.” She radioed for her number two to come down and sit with these guys. “You two do a sweep of every inch of this thing and see if you find anything else that doesn’t belong down there. If you do, don’t touch it and come get me.”
She waited for her replacement outside, enjoying the Gulf breeze and rain on her skin. With any luck this incident would bring Vivien back. “Don’t let anyone in the water near what we found, and if anyone tries it, shackle them when they come back up.”
“You got it,” Barney Hickman, her assistant operator, said as he shielded his eyes from the weather.
She went back to the command center and waited before calling it in, glad she did since they found six more of the foreign modules. They still needed to check the deeper sections, and if the spacing was consistent she figured they’d find another hundred or so.
“Do you want to evac the rig?” Barney asked when she went back down to check the map they’d made of where the extra sensors were.
“Not right now, but if upper management wants us to remove whatever these things are, I’m going to recommend it.”
Barney took his hard hat off and scratched the top of his head where his hair was thinning. The rain had slacked off but the humidity was brutal, so Barney started fanning himself with his clipboard.
“That’ll go over like a ton of shit hitting that pretty building downtown. Old man Palmer doesn’t like shutting down for nothing, and evacuating this mother will cost a bunch of money.”
“It’ll cost even more if we’re sitting on something that’s rigged to blow,” she said as they walked to where the crew was placing new pipe down the well. “I don’t know that for sure so don’t let that go any further than us two, but we all know once we’re fully operational, Palmer will jump in status as far as the majors like BP and Shell are concerned. This isn’t a mom-and-pop anymore, and they’re all after Triton’s design. If they can’t get it, they’ll try everything to discredit it.”
“You really think someone would do that to get ahead?” Barney took his safety glasses off next and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “How are you not sweating in this soup?”
“Business is ruthless, you know that, and I think cool thoughts.” She laughed when he lifted his middle finger in her direction and decided it was time to move on with her plan. “Keep an eye on everything, and I’ll go see what our bosses want us to do.”
She dialed the number Vivien had given her and put her feet on the desk while she waited for the ringing to stop. It surprised her that she’d actually missed Vivien as much as she had after she’d gone. “I’m losing my mind.”
“You’ve only been out there a day, so insanity shouldn’t be a problem yet,” Vivien said dryly.
“Actually it’s you who might go a little insane once I tell you what we found today.” Kai heard a male voice asking Vivien what was going on, and she wondered if it was Steve.
“Was it a spill that destroyed Triton?”
“No.”
“Then believe me, nothing you can tell me will be worse than what’s happened today. Actually you should call the office and report whatever it is, since Frankie and I might be leaving for a really long vacation.” The man with Vivien laughed at that, so Kai guessed it had to be Franklin.
“How long?” Kai dropped her feet to the ground and opened the small book on her desk that contained all the contacts for the Palmer offices. Vivien seemed to have quickly forgotten whatever they’d done together once she got back to her life, and Kai clicked her teeth together as a way to stay quiet. If that was the case, she’d have time enough later to analyze what an idiot she’d been.
“Until we run out of the trust our grandfather left us,” Vivien said and exhaled loudly. “We should be broke by the year thirty-five hundred or so.”
“Good luck then and sorry to bother you.” She hung up and thought about her next step as far as who to call. It had to be someone who wouldn’t strip her of the authority to get anywhere near the sensors. They were the answer to a puzzle she didn’t know existed until she’d seen them. Vivien would’ve taken the lead but would’ve included her in the process—that she was sure about.
The next logical person was Winston Palmer, but the gamble there was he might turn things over to his lackey Steve. “Hopefully he’s got more sense that that,” she said as she picked up the phone again, only to have it ring.
“What’d you find?” Vivien asked.
“Are you sure you want to know? If I tell you it might mess up your vacation plans.”
Vivien laughed softly. “You are a bit of a pain in the ass, aren’t you? And it saves me from calling you later. I wasn’t going to disappear on you, so don’t sound so defensive, guppy.”
“I’ll agree with you this one time because of what I’m getting ready to dump on you, and if you never call me guppy again.” She explained what was happening, and all Vivien did through the process was grunt to let her know she was still on the line. “That’s the extent of it.”
“You’ve been there a day, for the love of God,” Vivien said and laughed. “I guess we can’t quit today, Frankie.”
“You want me to get everyone off this thing?”
“Let’s wait until we talk to my father, but I’ll call you back as soon as we’re done.”
“You got it, and hopefully by then I’ll have an answer for you as to how many more we have to deal with.” She accessed a map of the other production platforms close to them and wrote down the coordinates of the closest two. If she found any other sensors or whatever they were, then perhaps they were attached not to spy on Triton but to triangulate between platforms to perhaps map something. “I thought I’d go visit some of our neighbors and see if we were the only lucky ones.”
“Give me a couple of hours and you can carry out your plan, which sounds good. I don’t want my father rupturing an artery or taking you out if you jump ahead too
much.”
“Thanks for the warning, and I look forward to hearing from you,” Kai said as the last of her anger disappeared. “But if it comes to Winston blowing up over this, I’ll take the blame.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Two reasons,” she said and put her feet back on the desk so she could push back far enough to stare at the ceiling. “It isn’t your fault, and Winston would probably be happier screaming at me.”
“Like I’ve said before, you don’t know my father very well.”
“That’s okay, but I think his daughter is a far more interesting person.”
Chapter Seventeen
Galen glanced at the clock next to their bed before sticking her tongue out at the ringing phone. She’d spent a great afternoon in bed enjoying Hadley’s romantic mood, so it had to be important if whoever it was decided to bother her here.
“Are you going to glare at it or do you want me to answer?” Hadley said from behind her as she tickled along her abdomen.
“I’ll get it since, if it’s about Kai, I’ll feel guilty for putting it off.” She answered, and Natal started off apologetic but did assure her it was important. “Give us twenty minutes and bring it to my office.”
“Was it about Kai?” Hadley asked as she guided Galen back down and covered her with her body.
She relished the sensation of Hadley’s hand slowly moving up her inner thigh, but they had to go. “Remember where your hand is right now so you can start there later, but we’ve got to shower and meet Natal in a half hour. To answer your question, though, it’s sort of about Kai, or at least what they found.”
“I guess they were ours after all, and Kai will think we’re spying on her no matter how much I deny it.”
