by Claire Adams
"Alright. Then, where is he?" the man with light hair challenged. Brett was silent.
"It's not his house, is it? How can it be when he listed all his properties?" he asked. Good question. As far as I knew, which was what Cameron himself had told me, this was all supposed to be temporary. Why would you sell all your property if you didn’t mean to come back? It wasn't like he couldn't get more but—why did I even bother? I didn't understand a thing the man did, but finally, I could see the consequences his actions were having on the people he left behind.
"You're part of this, Hamm. What kind of stockholder meeting happens without the majority holder present?"
"I've been in contact with Cameron. There's no need for alarm."
"We're not scared for him," one of the men scoffed. "We want to know what next. Grayson's gone and apparently so is his replacement."
"He isn't gone."
"Well he isn't here," the man said. They argued like that for a while, back and forth about Cameron. They all knew that Cameron had made impromptu sales of his property assets and then dropped off the face of the earth. Where he was seemed to be a mystery to them though, which I didn't want to say was good or bad. Everything at the moment was bad. The consequences of Cameron's bad moves had come to a head. This was only the beginning. If he stayed out there too long, this would only get worse.
Eventually, they would stop waiting and do something about it. I wondered whether he would make them angry enough to get rid of him. A dark part of me wanted that, since Cameron was letting his personal life get in the way of his professional one, and that alone should have earned him a ticket out. All he had to do was come here and sell, but no. If he didn't care about the hundreds of people below him, didn't he at least care that he was fucking things up for his fellow stockholders?
"He's not here, Hamm, so we're looking at you."
"You have nothing to worry about," Brett said calmly, reassuring the angry men. They started talking timelines, how long they were willing to wait before they moved forward, with or without him. The Cameron issue had been their main concern. Once that had been resolved, they hadn’t had much else to discuss.
The room emptied out. I stayed where I was ‘til everyone but Brett and I had left. I exhaled and buried my face in my hands. Holy hell. It was worse than I thought. I heard Brett finally stand up.
"Do you have a minute?" he asked me. I nodded and followed him out of the room. He led me into his office and waited for me to sit across his desk before he did.
"Are they always like that?" I asked finally.
"No. The circumstances this time were a little tricky." That is one way to put it, I thought.
"What now?"
"We don't have that many options, Natalie. Everything leads back to Cameron. Whether he decides to sell or decides to take his father's place, he has to be here to do it."
"You don't really think he's going to sell, do you?"
"I don't know what to think anymore. I've known Cameron since he was a kid, but everything that’s happened lately hasn’t been like him. He’s never run away before. He’s in a bad place, and he wants time alone, but I always thought his sense of duty was stronger than this."
It might have been, but whatever anchor he had had was gone. My parents are probably the only reason why I went to all the parties and events, pretended to like and respect all those people. They're gone, and I don't have to be part of it anymore. His actions when I remembered those words made sense but didn’t justify them.
"If he ever felt a sense of duty, it was to his parents, and he doesn’t have them anymore."
"I can give him that, but this isn't a surprise to him. He's been training for this his whole life. His father told him clearly what he expected from him the day he wasn't at the head of this company anymore. Cameron knows what he has to do, he simply isn't doing it, and nobody here can afford to let him get away with that anymore. It's only going to get worse the more he makes those people wait."
"I think he's telling us what has to happen, Mr. Hamm. Even silence is an answer."
"Not the right one."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Hamm. I can understand why it's important that he comes back, but I won't pretend that I get chasing him like a child to take responsibility of something he knows very well is his to take care of. At this point, wouldn't it make sense to let him go? Let him do whatever he's doing up there in the mountains in peace instead of putting everything on hold for when he feels like gracing us with his presence again?"
"If that was an option, we would take it," he said sagely.
I wanted to throw my hands in the air and give up. What were these codes and expectations the people around here operated on? Why did it make more sense to chase a grown man around instead of cutting our losses?
"Mr. Hamm, I think Cameron is showing us just how much he cares about Porter Holdings and the futures of everyone who works here. I don't think it's a jump to suppose his clear lack of passion and willingness would affect the way he ran things even if he did take his rightful place in charge."
He sighed and leaned back in his seat, obviously exhausted even though it was hardly ten in the morning. He was over it. So done with Cameron's ridiculous games. I remembered the conversation we had had a few weeks ago about how he wanted to retire soon.
He was doing what Cameron had asked him: taking the wheel while he was gone, but like everything Cameron had done lately, it didn’t seem that he cared very much what that meant for the older man. He hadn't signed up for this. Angry stockholders calling him names because Cameron wanted to play in the snow. A position he had probably never wanted at Porter Holdings despite how readily he had taken it.
"I'm only doing what his father would want me to do, Natalie," he said quietly. "There are a lot of things they said to each other that I never heard. Cameron knows why his father wants him here, but without him and his mother, he's having trouble returning to the world he believes is vapid and corrupt."
I almost rolled my eyes. Cameron had gone on about that stuff like a broken record when we had had lunch. How out of touch was he? Did he realize it was the fact that he was part of that vapid and corrupt world that he could even afford figuratively and literally to sell his multiple homes and move into the mountains on a whim?
The amount of money and assets that had fallen into his lap after his parents had passed was enough for him to never have to work again if he didn't want to. He thought money and power were wrong, but he wouldn't be Cameron Porter without them. If he hated it so much, why didn't he have more of a problem benefitting from all that access and money? I didn't know whether I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt anymore. I was getting very tired of the headache Cameron Porter was giving everyone around him.
"This can't go on forever."
"You're right. That's why I wanted to talk to you." Goddammit, not again.
"Mr. Hamm, I don't—"
"Please hear me out on this, Natalie. We're the only two people who have any hope of getting through to him." Yeah? Well, I wanted off the Cameron Porter babysitting team. What had I gotten him to agree to besides lunch that one time? And even then, I hadn't been able to get him to stay; he had gone and announced that he was going off the grid to find himself.
"It hasn't worked so far. He doesn't listen to me. He doesn't care."
"He's had time now. He wanted to go out into the mountains and be alone for a while, and he's gotten it. That means he's had time to think."
I jumped to the conclusion he was trying to lead me to and shook my head. "Mr. Hamm, you can't. I can't."
"I know where he's staying. The address of his cabin. I need you to go to him, Natalie."
"Why?" I asked, exasperated. "I'm sorry, Brett, but usually when you give someone a chance, and they don't take it, you give it to someone who will," I said, dropping all formality. What he was asking and had asked me since this whole saga had begun had been miles removed from what I was here at Porter Holdings to even do. I had gotten rop
ed into this as a favor I had promised to Mr. Porter, and now I was suddenly one of the only two people who could possibly get through to Cameron. We weren’t even friends. I didn’t like him, and I knew he felt nothing for me. Even professionally I didn’t think I had a dog in this fight.
Brett remained calm, looking at me from across the desk. "Whatever he's going to do, we need an answer. It may not be the one we want, but we still need to get one."
"I don't know what else I can even say to him, Mr. Hamm."
"Do your best to convince him. We need an answer, yes or no; we can't just hover in between them. The stockholders are going to make sure that we can’t."
"What can they do?" I asked. I knew, but almost nothing was impossible if you had enough money. Cameron was the majority stockholder, as much as he was stressing all of them out. That meant he was at the top of the food chain, and it would be considerably hard to knock him off his throne. Hard, but not impossible.
"Force a buyout," he said grimly. "Take him out of the equation completely."
"That's what he wants."
"If it is, then he has to come here and tell us that himself." I couldn't say anything to that. Here I was again somehow, commissioned to do the impossible. "Our time is going to be limited. I don't expect them to give us longer than a month." It sounded like a long time in theory, but it would go by fast. I had never hated my job before, but after the past couple weeks, I could say that I did. Not the work itself but all the sudden Cameron-centric extracurriculars I had to do. Hate might have been a strong word, but I was tired. Nobody could tell me why we were treating a grown man with kid gloves, and now I had to go to the fucking mountains to coddle him in person.
"When did he head out to the mountains?"
"Friday."
"It's only been a few days then. I don't think that's long enough if I'm supposed to be able to get him to listen to me." Maybe if I bought enough time, he would surprise us and show up again on his own. Hypothermia was no joke. Maybe all he’d need was a few days of frozen mountain air to make him come to his senses. He had done nothing so far to make relating to him easy or even enjoyable. If he did this, I’d be grateful forever. Brett pressed his lips into a line, thinking.
"Too long and he'll start to enjoy it." Would he? I had never lived at an elevation that high before but neither had Cameron. The snowfall here had been light so far, but up there, it wouldn’t be. I still knew next to nothing about the guy, but I did know that he was no survivalist. Nobody enjoyed frozen pipes and sub-zero temperatures. If we gave him enough time to suffer up there, I was betting he’d come back down by himself.
"If it doesn't drive him crazy first," I pointed out. "Friday. A week. Enough time so he feels like he's been left alone but not enough to get too comfortable."
Brett shrugged. "Since you're the one making the trip I don't suppose I can make you go earlier than that." No, he couldn't. His boy Cameron wasn't the only one who didn't like being part of this plan. If I had to come up with something to make him come back, I needed time too.
Chapter Eleven
Cameron
I opened the door and walked out onto the porch. The air was cold, numbing my face. There was a small group of deer weaving through the trees along the perimeter of the property, close to the road. The sun had come up a few hours earlier, and everything was silent. I had gotten so used to the sounds of the city that I never heard them anymore, but this was the real deal. I looked down into my cup of coffee and tipped it out, melting the snow on the ground.
It was burned. I walked back inside and did the same with the rest of the liquid that was still in the percolator, putting it down the sink. It tasted like kerosene. I hadn't really gotten the hang of the stove-top Pyrex percolator yet. I had gone with it instead of getting a coffee maker, but now I was struggling to remember why. I rinsed the cup out then washed the rest of the dishes I had used for breakfast.
The cabin could have been a lot more stripped down, but it was still an adjustment. When you walked in through the front door, you walked into the open kitchen and living area. The bedroom was lofted above the kitchen. All I had up there were my bed and clothes. Furniture was sparse, just a couch and armchair in the living area, with a coffee table that I pushed out of the way often to be closer to the fire anyway. The bathroom had a toilet and shower, no tub. A door near the kitchen opened out to the deck, which was a little smaller than the porch and had stairs leading down to the ground. The cabin had been built on a high point of the property. Behind the house, the ground sloped down into a gorge.
The first time I lit a fire in the fireplace’s wood stove, I set off the smoke alarm. I hadn't lit a fire for anything other than a joint before that in my life. I had started it with split wood pieces and cardboard from a cereal box, and it had lasted exactly twenty minutes. Last night, I had to get up three times to keep the fire going; I was exhausted. I could have used some of that coffee, but I couldn't fucking make that either.
I filled a pan full of water and put it on the stove to heat up. Instant coffee would just have to do the job, again. I hadn't just packed up and left. Alright, I had, but it hadn't been a spur of the moment decision, and before I had, I had taken a couple steps to prepare for what I was getting myself into. Not enough preparation though, it seemed. I looked over at the coffee table by the couch. It was stacked with books I had gotten about wilderness living. Outdoor survival, off-grid living, heating, cooking, tracking and hiking, all that stuff. Even some national park and forest books.
It was all interesting stuff, but now I wasn't just the guy Googling how to keep wood dry through winter. I didn't have my phone anymore, which was liberating but inconvenient when I actually wanted to look something up, and none of it was a fantasy anymore. I was the guy trying to figure out how to keep his wood dry through winter. It was real. It was my world now. I got up, and there was nobody around for miles. Trees and snow as far as the eye could see. If I didn’t feel like freezing my ass off, I had to light a fire, and that meant getting firewood. If I wanted to be able to use my car at all, it meant shoveling snow.
I could admit that I hadn't been ready, but I had also realized how self-reliant I could be. There were things that made life in the city comfortable, convenient, like trash pick-up and gas stations. As much of a challenge the last few days had been, I was happy to take it on. Didn’t kidnapping victims end up loving their kidnappers? It was like that but with the snow and ice in the middle of nowhere. Up here, I had something to focus my energy on. Something that took me out, literally of the life I had been living and put me in one where survival was active, not passive. It was good feeling useful. I hated feeling helpless after hearing the news about my parents. I had something now, even though it was kicking my ass. I was getting up each day for a reason and was doing things on my terms.
My water bubbled, and I turned it off. Pouring it in a mug, I dumped a spoonful of instant coffee into it and choked the liquid down. Saturday afternoon, the day after I had gotten out here, I drove out to the last little town I had passed before coming onto the mountain trail. I needed some supplies, food mostly, and things that I'd forgotten, like additional tools, extra gloves, and some kitchen stuff. The cabin had a small refrigeration unit built into the counter that ran on gas, so that was handy, and the water was piped in from a spring.
I hadn't been expecting a fucking resort coming up here, so it worked. It was enough, but I was still only a few days in. Plenty of time to bail, I thought absently. Brett and the rest of them were probably just waiting for that. Waiting for me to crack and go running back to them. Waiting ‘til I went stir crazy or decided it was too hard living without cable TV and Uber.
I finished my coffee and cleaned up, getting ready to head out again.
The temperature dropped below freezing out here. What did you do about that? Obviously, just stay inside. That was a no-brainer, right? But all the insulation in the world wouldn’t keep you warm in a cabin that wasn't heated. I had looked at ga
s heating options but had decided to keep what I had. The fire was usually enough, once I got it big enough and it lasted longer than half an hour. I needed wood though.
I had not been prepared for what a nightmare getting to harvest wood was going to be. Friday evening after settling in a couple hours, I had driven out on my truck and found a couple dead, fallen trees, which I ended up collecting. It had taken me ‘til nightfall to get them, and the next day heading into the town, I had learned my lesson and gotten myself a chainsaw. The road past my cabin was steep and even narrower than it was leading up to it, but the property wasn't going to give me all the wood I needed, so I had to deal with it.
Several times a day, something happened that reminded me my timing could not have been worse. That trip to town, I had gotten some tarps, one for my car and another to cover the woodpile because the snow was only going to get heavier. Everything was easier without snow, but easy didn't matter. I wasn't complaining. If I was concentrating on getting out alive, I wasn't concentrating on the disaster of the past couple weeks. I stored my wood in stacks on the porch under a tarp, away from the snow. I had been going out in my truck to build my stockpile every day; once the snow started coming down in feet instead of inches, that would be impossible.
It would come in time, I thought, throwing the tarp off my car and shaking the snow off of it. Time, but that was something I didn't have a lot of. I got the engine warming up then went back to the cabin, bringing back the chainsaw in case I got a big log. Most people used the warmer months to stockpile for winter, and all I had was the next couple weeks if I was lucky. It was going to be a long winter, and I was up here alone. I started the engine and pulled out onto the road.
Chapter Twelve
Natalie
"Sorry for making you wait." I looked up from my phone hearing Kasey. She had her purse over her shoulder and was coming up to me. The client she had been working on was finally done.