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“Good. Do you think we’re going to have to shut down?”
Frank rubbed the top of his balding head. “I won’t know more until we have a chance to talk to the fire chief.”
“When will that be?”
“Soon, I hope.”
“Have you stopped the flow of oil into the refinery?”
“First thing we did. We enacted our emergency protocols. And everything went exactly as it should have. I’m going to send you some suggestions for commendation for some of our guys who went beyond the call of duty.”
“I’ll look for that,” Lance said. His cell phone rang and he glanced at it. “It’s Mitch.”
“I’ll go see if I can talk to the fire chief,” Frank said.
“We’ve had a fire at the main refinery,” Lance told Mitch.
“Is everyone okay? How bad is the damage?” Mitch asked.
Lance caught him up. “Do you think this will impact the senator’s plan to allow us more drilling?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it. I’m going to go to his office right now.”
“I’ll get this under control. I’m going to have a press conference later on to let everyone know we’re okay and still in business.”
“Sounds good. I’ll get back with you after I’ve spoken to the senator.”
Lance hung up with his brother and surveyed the mess at the refinery. Employees were clustered to one side, all of them waiting to see what the verdict would be. They were a 67,000-barrel-a-day refinery, and if they had to shut down, all of those people would be without work. And they wouldn’t make their quarterly revenues.
He dialed Kate’s number. She usually served as a hub during these kinds of emergencies, when he couldn’t be in the office.
Her phone went to voice mail and he realized that she was serious about leaving the company. “It’s Lance. I need your help. We’ve had a fire at our main refinery. Call me when you get this message.”
The receptionist at the Brody Oil and Gas office wasn’t experienced enough to handle all the calls that were coming in. But the secretaries who worked for his duty managers could. Lance usually relied on Kate to take care of liaising with them. Guess it was time to figure out how to work without Kate. He called the finance manager and asked him to send every secretary they had down to help out. He then composed a short memo on his BlackBerry and sent it to the entire company apprising them of the situation and telling them that no one was authorized to speak to the media.
Frank waved Lance over to where he was with the fire chief.
“Lance Brody, this is Chief Ingle,” Frank said.
“Thanks for getting the fire under control so quickly,” Lance said, shaking the fire chief’s hand.
“You’re welcome. It is our job.”
“I know that. But I’m grateful all the same. What are we looking at here?” Lance asked him.
“We thought it was started by an explosion, but we’ve been talking to the men closest to the location where the fire started and none of them reported hearing one,” Chief Ingle said.
“That’s odd. How do you think the fire started?” Lance asked.
“I’ve called for our fire-scene investigators to do a thorough examination of the area. But one of my men thought he saw cans of fire accelerant.”
“What kind?”
“We don’t have any details but I wanted you to know what we suspected. I’ve called the arson investigator and he’s sending his team out, as well.”
“Crap. I have to notify our insurance company. They will want to work with your arson team.”
Chief Ingle nodded. “They always do.”
Insurance companies were very well versed in arson investigations—they didn’t mess around with fires. Lance wanted someone who had Brody Oil and Gas’s interests in mind. “Is it okay if I hire my own security team to be part of the investigation?”
“We’d rather not have extra people on the site,” Chief Ingle said.
“Darius won’t get in the way. He’s the best at what he does.”
“Darius who?”
“Darius Franklin. He owns his own security firm.”
“Okay, but only him.”
Lance understood that. The chief didn’t want a bunch of men trampling over the fire scene.
“When can we go back into production?” Lance asked.
“I think we’ll need at least 24 hours before I’d feel comfortable saying you can go back on line. More, if the investigation proves to be complicated.”
Lance made a note of that. And when the chief moved on, he turned to Frank. “Tell all of our employees to gather in the parking lot in fifteen minutes. Then set up a number so they can call in and get a message about when to report back to work and give them that number.”
“I’m on it,” Frank said, walking away.
Lance dialed his best friend, Darius, and got his voice mail. Being as succinct as possible, he told Darius what had happened, that the fire chief suspected arson, and he asked Darius to come and help with the investigation. Now if he could just get Kate back, he’d have the best team any man could ask for in this situation. He reached for his phone.
Three (#ulink_3a79b71a-be50-5b17-a420-6fc7b38d57f5)
Kate put her phone on silence after the second call from Lance. She was tired of hurting and questioning herself and everything she’d done. She arrived at Sweet Nothings to find that Becca had made her an appointment with her hairstylist.
“I don’t know that a haircut is going to change anything,” Kate said.
“Don’t think of it as just a haircut. You need to change,” Becca said. “I’ve been thinking about this since you called and the only way you are going to be able to make these next few weeks bearable is to make Lance Brody realize what he’s missing.”
Kate took one look at herself in the mirror behind the counter and shrugged. “Not much.”
“Soon, he’ll see a whole new woman.”
“But I’ll still be me,” Kate said.
“Of course you will, silly. And Lance already likes you. This will just make him lust after you.”
“He’s engaged to be married, Becca.”
“So what? You’re not going to make him do anything. Just tease him a bit and maybe get your heart back.”
Kate liked the sound of that. She’d given Lance five years. And wasn’t it past time to get over him?
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Good.”
Becca gave her directions to the salon. As Kate drove over there, her cell phone rang again. It was Lance. She answered the call as she parked her car. “It’s Kate.”
“Where have you been?”
“Driving,” she said.
“There’s been a fire at our main refinery. I need you in the office to be my information hub.”
Kate was shocked. Brody Oil and Gas was one of the safest refineries in the business. “Was there an explosion?”
“They aren’t sure. I’m done looking over the fire scene at the refinery. When can you get to the office?”
She almost said tonight, but what was the point of that? This was an emergency situation but they didn’t really need her. Paula and Joan, two of the other secretaries at Brody Oil and Gas, could handle the phones in this situation.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said.
“Kate, I need you.”
Her heart almost skipped a beat.
“The company needs you. This is one of those times when we really want to have our best players on the field.”
Lance had played football and she had noticed early on that he fell back on sports analogies when he was stressed.
“You’ve got your best players,” she said. “I’m being traded, remember?”
“Damn it. We haven’t decided that yet.”
“Yes, we have. Or maybe I should say I have. I will call Paula and make sure she’s prepared to collect information and disseminate it. I made a procedure file for this type of emergency after the hurricane last year.”
Lance didn’t say anything. “I guess that’ll have to do. Leave your phone on so I can get in touch with you.”
“Why? I’m not—”
“Stop arguing with me, Kate. I don’t like it. What’s gotten into you?”
She looked at herself in the rearview mirror and realized this was the first time she’d ever said no to Lance. And he didn’t like it. Maybe the way to get his attention was actually easier than changing her hair and clothes. She realized that she’d been too accommodating, and that was part of the reason he’d taken her for granted.
“I don’t know, Lance. I just decided it was time for a change. Don’t make this into anything other than that.”
“It feels like…”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Will you be in the office tomorrow?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
“Good,” Lance said.
“I’m sorry about the refinery,” she said, feeling bad because of the way he sounded. “Were there injuries?”
“Four men are at the hospital now.”
“I’ll have Paula send flowers to them and food baskets to their families.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” She felt a little guilty about not going in and taking care of the details herself, but Lance and she both needed to get used to other people working for him because Kate couldn’t continue to be his Girl Friday and be in love with him. That was the path to pain and destruction for her. And she was tired of living for the few brief moments when she and Lance were in the office together.
“Goodbye, Lance,” she said, hanging up the phone. She sat in the car for another minute but the heat was getting to her. Or at least that was what she told herself. She didn’t want to think that the idea of being without Lance was causing her to feel light-headed.
Lance spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening at the main refinery. Darius had arrived late and had agreed to stay and work with the fire investigators. Since he wasn’t an arson investigator per se, all Darius could really do was narrow down the list of suspects and conduct investigations into the backgrounds of those who might have had probable cause to start the fire.
Lance left the refinery and drove back toward Houston deciding that he was ready for a new day. This one had been too… crazy, he thought.
When he’d been a boy, he’d longed for a busy day so he wouldn’t have time to go home or to think about the home he had waiting for him. But that was long ago, he thought. Now he lived alone and liked it that way.
Well, he lived alone for now. Soon he’d be bringing a bride to his mansion in Somerset and he wasn’t sure he was ready to try suburban living with a wife yet. But he and Mitch had agreed he was the one who should marry Lexi.
Damn, he thought, rubbing the back of his neck. Tension seemed to take up residence there when things weren’t going well.
His cell phone rang and he checked the caller ID before answering it.
“Hello, Mitch.”
“Hey, big bro. How are things at the refinery?”
“A mess, but I have Darius working with the fire investigators to try to make sense of it. How’s DC?”
Mitch let out a long breath. “It could be worse. I handled most of it with Senator Cavanaugh’s office. Let them know the proactive things that Brody Oil and Gas are doing to minimize damage to the community and the environment. I think that helped to soothe his fears over backing expanding oil production.”
“Did you tell him that with additional refineries we could rotate operations so the loss of this one for a day wouldn’t impact oil prices?” Lance asked.
“Yes, I did. I’m watching the markets as they open in Japan. I think we will see US crude prices jump.”
“I know we will. With the economy being what it is, that’s the last thing we need right now.”
“We can’t control the actions of investors,” Mitch said.
