Every instinct wanted to keep it contained, not raise an alarm until I had specifics, but my hands shook a little anyway. If the rest of this wall line was similarly rotted, the safety of the whole building was in question.
I dialed Harper. She answered on the second ring, voice breathless but businesslike. “Hey, Chase. I’m?—”
“Harper, you need to get over to Room Block One. Right now. It’s serious.” My words were measured but came out more brittle than I liked.
A pause. “How serious?”
“The kind where I’m halting all work, and I need you here in person. Bring your phone and don’t say anything to the staff until you’ve seen it.”
She didn’t ask for details. Just a soft exhale, then, “On my way.” There was something grounding in her directness. If the world started to fall, she’d meet it standing.
I ended the call, stepped back into the corridor, and looked over the crowd of workers now standing with toolsdropped, boots shuffling on old boards. Every single person on this site had probably seen disaster, but there’s a special hush that comes when someone realizes the thing they’re working on might be unsalvageable.
In a single morning, the ground beneath our feet had shifted. Some days, the hardest part of the job wasn’t building something new. It was deciding whether there was anything left worth saving.
And somewhere beyond the dust and caution tape, Harper was on her way, and everything would hinge on the next few hours.
The old,flickering fluorescent lights in Sunset Siesta’s conference room always seemed calibrated to highlight exhaustion, not productivity. I sat sandwiched between a stack of structural prints and an even taller stack of bad news, trying to pretend the clock on the wall didn’t sound like a countdown to impact. Harper anchored the head of the table, back straight, voice steady. Jules sat across from me, typing steadily on her laptop. Joe sat on my other side with dirt-streaked hands and anxious eyes. Only the steady voice of the engineer on the speakerphone reminded me that, technically, this was still just another Tuesday afternoon at Sunset Siesta.
If your idea of Tuesday involved shoring up the heart of a sinking ship with nothing but coffee and adrenaline.
Harper had set up this emergency meeting after seeing the termite damage. From her blanched face, I probably hadn’t needed to give her the thorough explanation I did. The conference room was on the list of things to be remodeled in the next phase. For now, a weak thread of resort music bled through the door, something tropical andtoo cheerful by half. The old oak table was a sea of clutter—blueprints unrolled, marked in red and highlighter, half a dozen notebooks, and my laptop open to engineering standards I hadn’t had to quote since college.
“We opened up the north corridor wall behind 1115,” Joe said to the speakerphone, jaw set like a block of concrete. “Looks solid outside, but the studs behind… you could scrape the inside with your thumbnail. Termite tunnels everywhere, big as a pencil. Whole sill plate’s shot. Most of the joist pockets at the base are black, mushy.”
Harper absorbed it, lips thinning. She didn’t flinch—just nodded, eyes flicking down her notes and then over to me.
The engineer’s voice buzzed through the speaker, cool and detached. “Joe, I need you to get me detailed photos of every connection point—beam to joist, sill to foundation. Use a ruler for scale and include a coin for reference if possible.”
Joe nodded. “Chase already had me do that. I’ll send the files to you ASAP.”
“Good,” Elena replied in that calming, professional voice. “No additional demo until we understand the load transfer. Shoring goes in at six-foot intervals, each side. Do not touch any electrical until we clear the zone for safe access.”
I scribbled furiously, mentally mapping the next dozen moves. Every answer Elena gave doubled my mental workload, the kind of math you only do when something’s gone truly sideways.
Jules spoke up, “We need at least a rough shoring estimate by the end of the day, Chase. Labor hours, temporary supports, any specialty hardware—we’ve got maybe thirty grand left in the contingency and only half that isn’t already spoken for. I need a timeline hit, worst-casescenario, for the lender package. Does this impact the planned reopening of Room Block One?”
I eased out a heavy sigh. “Depends on how much retrofitting we end up needing to do. My gut instinct is yes. There will be a delay. But we won’t know for sure until we get Elena’s report.”
Joe raised a brow. “I can get the shoring started as soon as we get the green light. But if any more of that wall crumbles, it could mean the whole block needs to go cold until it’s rebuilt.”
Silence hung. Full, unblinking. The fluorescent buzz and the muted rattle of a passing cleaning cart in the hallway were the only things that dared interrupt.
The engineer’s voice was sharp. “Chase, your crew has eyes on the ceiling cavity too, yes?”
“Yes. We’ll send a camera up as soon as the first shoring’s in. If we see more beam loss, you’ll have photos within the hour.”
Jules piped up again, “Chase, is this isolated, or do you see signs in adjacent rooms?”
“None yet.” I’d been over every inch of the first floor in the hours since the discovery. “We’ll know more once we map the full line. But if the rot runs all the way through…”
I trailed off, not wanting to elaborate on the consequences. Costs would skyrocket, timelines would sink, and all our pretty projections would land in the shredder.
Harper met my gaze. “Chase, I’ll trust you to take point on this. All demo halts on Block One north until Elena has signed off. You’ll update us on the budget and timeline for Jules by the end of the day. Copy?”
I swallowed, impressed as hell with her despite the circumstances. “Understood. Already working on the draft. Will loop Joe and Jules in.”
Jules sounded tired, her usual poise on edge. “Anyadditional costs that’ll hit the loan, I need flagged immediately. If this impacts our occupancy rate for more than two weeks, it changes everything about our operating capital for next quarter.” She placed both palms against her eyes, then dropped them as if aware of what she was doing. “I don’t see how this doesn’t blow the budget completely apart, and I’m not sure the bank will give us more money.”
