AllFreeNovel
Share Us
JD and I went downstairs to my dad’s office and I started making phone calls, trying to get a handle on things. As people heard the news, they rushed to my desk and soon my desk was surrounded by a crowd of executives three-deep, everyone talking at once. JD stayed right by my side, silently protective.
Miles called, asking if I wanted him to come in. “Thanks,” I croaked, “but no. Stay put. You’re where you need to be, right now. Focus on getting well.”
I talked to the bank. They were apologetic, but they wouldn’t explain why, after forty years, they’d suddenly decided to stop lending to us, or why they’d announced it publicly. I called all the other banks, asking and then begging, but they’d been spooked by our bank dropping us. No one would lend us money. And without money, we couldn’t keep things running until we were paid for our current projects. I wanted to scream in frustration: we were so close: in just a few weeks, we’d finish the next stage of the dam in Poland, get paid and our bank account would be back in the black. But we wouldn’t last that long.
“Why would they do it?” demanded JD at last. “It doesn’t make any sense!” I could see the frustration on his face. He knew he didn’t understand business stuff and he probably thought he was asking a dumb question. But he was right, it didn’t make sense.
Unless…
I turned to our top financial guy. “Find out if anyone’s been buying shares in our bank. A lot of shares.”
He ran off. He was back less than five minutes later. A huge chunk of the bank had been bought just a few days ago by a hedge fund. A hedge fund run by Sebastian van der Meer.
“Christ.” I put my head in my hands. “He took control of the bank and forced them to drop us.”
“How long till we’re bankrupt?” asked JD quietly.
By now, I knew the figures off by heart and the math was simple. “Four days.”
There was a chorus of cursing and then everyone started talking at once. Panic filled the room, squeezing out all the air until I could barely breathe. I stared down at the polished surface of my dad’s desk. He’d spent forty years building this company and I’d destroyed it in just a few weeks. Thousands of people were going to lose their jobs. Couples and young families who’d sunk every penny they had into a deposit for one of our apartments were going to be screwed over. The hospital would never be built.
Everyone was yelling, a thousand different questions but they all boiled down to the same thing: Lorna, what are we going to do? And I had no idea. I wasn’t my dad. I wasn’t a leader—
“I can’t do this,” I muttered.
People stared at me, frowning. I slowly got up and started pushing through them to the door.
“Lorna?” one of them asked.
“What—Where are you—” demanded another.
I shook my head and moved faster, panting and desperate.
“Lorna, you can’t—”
I hit full-blown panic. I barged my way to the door, stumbled out into the hall—
“Lorna!” yelled JD.
…and ran.
39
JD
I took the stairs to the penthouse three at a time. Burst through the door, hoping to see Lorna sobbing in Paige’s arms. But Paige hadn’t seen her. I checked the whole penthouse, just to be sure. Lorna wasn’t there.
Gabriel, who was on day shift, looked uneasy. “You check the roof?”
“The roof?” I frowned at him, confused.
“You said she was pretty upset.”
My stomach lurched. Oh God. Cal was on a neighboring rooftop, keeping watch with his rifle. “Cal!” I yelled into the radio. “Cal, has Lorna gone up on the roof?”
“No one’s been on the roof all morning,” Cal reported.
I slumped in relief. But then where the hell was she? She was scared and panicking. Where would she go?
I rubbed at my stubble, thinking. I’m not some psychologist with a couch and a room full of books. But if you work in small teams for long enough, you get a feel for what makes people tick.
I went all the way down to the lobby and then down to the parking garage. Then I went down to the very lowest level of that. I hunted around in the gloom until I found one of the enormous, circular pillars that held the building up.
And there, sitting in a tight bundle with her back pressed against it, was Lorna. I crouched down next to her and she looked up, her eyes red from crying. “How did you find me?” she croaked.
“Folks get upset, they reach for what comforts them.” I slapped the pillar.
She sniffed. Hiccoughed. “For someone who claims they’re a big dumb cowboy, you’re pretty smart, you know that?”
I eased myself down next to her.
“Thousands of people are going to lose their jobs because of me,” she said. “Thousands.”
