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“Yeah. That wasn’t why I called.” I could almost feel Drew’s relief through the phone. “We’d all be better if you were here, but I promised you I wouldn’t bother you about it.” This was the first Christmas he’d ever missed. Things weren’t the same without him.Did he feel the loss too?
“Shouldn’t you be at Smokey’s?”
“We’re headed out soon.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “You know what? I am going to say it. There’s still time to make it here by tomorrow—”
“I knew better than to fall for this shit. Did Dad put you up to this?” Drew’s anger reared its ugly head. I couldn’t figure out why he was so hell-bent on staying away. The company was important, but him working an extra two days in New York seemed extreme, even for him.
“No. I can’t log in to the accounts directly anymore, and I need access to the information. None of the numbers have been updated in EXODUS,” I said before the conversation escalated into something I preferred it not.
“I did some maintenance yesterday, but everything should be up and running. Let me take a look,” he said as a keyboard clacked in the background. The tapping grew more intense. “The servers haven’t been communicating for some reason.”
“Would they just stop on their own?”
“It’s possible I guess, but I did set an alarm to trigger if that were to happen so I could quickly fix it. Something’s not right here.”
“The alert would go off under any circumstances, right?”
“Well yeah, unless somebody bypassed it,” he concluded. More rapid keystrokes sounded. “I can’t get in to the accounts directly either. What‘s going on?”
“When’s the last time you tried?” I grilled, as frustration and anger built up inside me. Someone was obviously attempting, rather successfully, to keep us in the dark.
“Before now? I usually check every morning, but I guess it’s been a couple days.”
I could picture him scratching his head, giving me that sheepish look he got when he knew he messed up.
“A couple days? Damn, Drew, I need those figures,” I said, shooting to my feet. “That’s where the answers lie.”
Silence spread between us to the point I thought we’d been disconnected.
“Want me to check Dad’s laptop?” he asked hesitantly.
“How are you going to do that when it’s here and you’re wherever?”
He cleared his throat. “If you can turn it on and make sure it’s on the Internet I can remote in with no problem.”
I frowned. This was beyond deceptive and not how our family did things, but Dad hadn’t helped matters. If he’d just been more forthcoming, I wouldn’t have had to consider this.
“There might not be anything on there,” Drew continued when I didn’t respond.
“There will be.” Nothing escaped our father when it came to the company. He had his fingers on the pulse of every facet, which made the entire situation even more mind-boggling. “He had to have seen this coming,” I said, more to myself than Drew.
“Do you think hewantedto sell to SPE?”
“You’re asking questions I don’t have answers to.”
“If one of us had been in charge instead of Mulaney, this wouldn’t have happened.” There was a vicious edge to his tone I didn’t like one bit.
I resisted the urge to break something. “That’s not true. She’s done as much for Carter Energy as anyone, and she deserved to be interim CEO.”
Drew snorted. “Whatever you say.”
I took my wallet out of my back pocket and toyed with it for a moment before I laid it on the nightstand. Looking at the photo of the four of us from a few years ago made me realize just how frail Mama had become. No wonder Dad wanted to step back. This was his wife who was ill. I wanted to shake Drew. He should be here, but there was no point in trying to reason with him. Something wasn’t right, and he was lashing out even more than normal. “I’ll text you when I’ve got his laptop connected.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I don’t have another choice.”
I slidinto the driver’s seat of Grandma’s truck and reached for my back pocket. “I must have left my wallet upstairs,” I said. “Be right back.”
