My phone buzzed. Shane.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” I answered, already knowing what he’d say.
“Shouldn’t you?” There was something slightly off in his voice—lighter than it needed to be, the humor sitting higher than usual. He’d probably been up since the breakup, not that he’d say so. “I know you’re on the plane.”
He’d had Cheryl send him my itinerary. Judas.
“How’s the head?”
I glanced at the bottle of painkillers still sitting on the table. “How do you do that?”
“Big meetings. Always.” Across the cabin, Mike smirked, pretending to still be resting his eyes. He’d been telling me the same thing for years. I never listened to him either.
“Yes, I took the damn pills. I’m fine, Shane.”
“Good.” A beat—easy, nothing behind it. “You know, you could go to the beach house after. Spend a few days. Marisol’s son Javier is covering while she’s out, I was down there a few weeks ago—he’s got it completely under control. And it’s been too long, Ash.”
My silence was enough. He kept going, which was the point—give him a pause and he’d fill it, and while he was filling it I could think. He was good at that. Better than he let on.
“I’ve got too much to handle with this acquisition.”
“You’ve always got too much to handle.” A pause. “One of these days someone’s going to make you slow down whether you like it or not.”
“Not likely.”
“We’ll see.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Call me after the meeting.”
“Shane—” I started. Because I could hear the thing underneath—the flatness at the edges, the particular way he was not mentioning himself. The breakup had been three weeks ago and he hadn’t brought it up once, which meant he was fine or he had decided I didn’t need to know. I almost asked. Almost saidhow are you actually doing. But asking meant he’d answer, and if he answered I’d have to do something with that, and I was thirty thousand feet in the air on my way to dismantle a man’s company. So I didn’t ask. “I will. Get some sleep.”
He clicked off before I could feel too much about it.
Shane had just had a bad few months—the breakup, and something before that at work he hadn’t fully explained. Which was how I knew he’d be calling every couple of days for the next few weeks, not about himself, about whatever I had going on. As soon as something went sideways in his own life, he turned outward. Focused on his brothers. Destry would probably get a call tomorrow. No telling how long it would take him to track down Devlin.
I put my phone on do not disturb and pulled up the specs again. This system was revolutionary. Most safety systems focused on either the workers or the environment. This integrated both, with real-time monitoring that could predict structural issues before they became catastrophic, and maintained bio readouts for each of the divers.
If we’d had something like this back then . . .
My hand tightened on the tablet. I could still hear it sometimes—the sound that came through the comms whenthe support structure failed. Three seconds of noise and then nothing. Nothing for the rest of my goddamn life.
I pushed that thought away, focusing instead on the sensor network details. The tech specs were on point. The emergency pod system was particularly brilliant. Completely redesigned for rapid underwater evacuation, with integrated tracking to ensure no one was left behind. The designer had thought of everything, right down to the acoustic deterrents that would keep marine life away from work zones without causing harm.
“The environmental barriers are biodegradable,” I said, breaking the silence. “Fully containing construction debris while naturally dissolving once the job’s done. No one else has anything close to this.”
Mike opened his eyes. “And that’s worth diving into underwater construction?”
I flinched at his pun, but didn’t comment on it. “Not alone, maybe. But considering what this system is capable of—this is our chance to do something right. Something that could really make a difference. You know it’s always the local community that suffers when a project starts. Companies pull in workers that aren’t skilled, they overwork them, they underpay them ... and they have no regard for their safety.”
It was Mike’s turn to flinch. He turned to look out the window for a minute, and I pulled in a deep breath. There was never going to be anything we could do to make up for what had happened, but we could try.
“I know, man. I get it. I just want to make sure you’re looking at the big picture. It’s not going to be easy.”
“Easy isn’t what we signed up for.”
Mike nodded slowly. “You’ve got that fucking right.”
Mike closed his eyes again, and I flipped a few pages forward on the tablet to review the project lead’s CV again.
Definitely smart as fuck. MIT in three years. He’d been working for Richard Sterling ever since. I was less stressed about the takeover than I was about making sure this engineer stuck around afterwards. I’d already ensured my lawyers had an offer ready for Charlie Winters in case he made noises about leaving after the announcement tomorrow.
