by A. J. Thomas
Bruce Lancaster, Nate remembered, recognizing the younger of the two CPG employees. As much as Nate didn’t want to admit it, the guy was good-looking. His weathered features had probably been called chiseled when he was younger, and his short black hair was going silver near his temples. But the brooding glare he’d focused on Sean made his attractive face a hell of a lot less charming than it had been when Nate had met him the first time. He’d taken the man’s deposition along with the depositions of everyone else who’d been assigned to the boat when Sean got hurt. He couldn’t imagine why Harrison and Poole thought they’d need a witness present for this meeting, but he wasn’t going to let it faze him or make him jump to conclusions.
A long row of chairs lined the opposite side of the table, but the receptionist was quickly shifting several of them to the side of the room to make space for Sean’s wheelchair.
“You must be Nathan Delany.” The man sitting closest to the head of the table rose and hurried over to greet Nate. “Richard Harrison, glad to finally meet you in person. I’ve been a friend of your daddy’s for a long time. I’ve got to say, everyone in our office was surprised to learn you were flying solo on this one.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said, ignoring the comments about his father. “Have you had a chance to meet Mr. Wilkinson in person yet?”
“I’m afraid I’ve not had the pleasure.” He only hesitated for a moment before he offered Sean his hand. “This is my partner, Frank Poole, and Confederated Petroleum’s in-house counsel, Troy Gilman. Of course you both know Mr. Lancaster, and CPG’s Chief Research Officer, Tyler Gallagher.”
The sudden tension in the air was thick and tangible. Sean had swallowed a couple of pills before they’d left Hawk’s tattoo studio, and he’d seemed to relax enough on the drive into the downtown business district that Nate began to wonder if he’d been telling the truth about just being in pain when he’d tensed up at the shop. But the way Sean’s shoulders were trembling, the way his hands went straight to the wheel rims, left no question in Nate’s mind—the reason Sean was panicking had nothing to do with the settlement meeting and everything to do with Bruce Lancaster.
When he’d talked to the navigation crew about Sean, they’d been only too happy to describe the affair Sean had carried on with their boss, cursing them both with so much profanity that the clerk Nate had hired to record the depositions had stopped them to remind them their statements would be entered into evidence as a matter of public record. They’d described Sean as being a greedy, manipulative little freak who’d blatantly seduced Bruce Lancaster within his first week aboard as an intern. They’d insisted Bruce Lancaster was a respectable man with a wife and three kids, but Sean had pursued him regardless. Cory Alden had been kinder, acknowledging that the two were involved but hinting that Bruce was a hard man to say no to.
Either way, Nate had come to the conclusion that the relationship between them had been purely physical and totally consensual. But after the way Sean had reacted to learning that Bruce was trying to blame the accident on him, Nate had been forced to rethink the level of emotional attachment involved. And now, with Sean folding in on himself in one of the quietest panic attacks Nate had ever seen, he realized he might have been wrong about both aspects of their relationship.
He felt ill as his brain checked off elements of consent in sexual assault and rape cases. He’d never practiced criminal law, but he’d sat through a full year of it, including weeks of case law about the evolution of consent. In cases where an obvious power differential existed between both parties, like between an employer and employee or a teacher and student, any sexual behavior was considered harassment at best. If the crew and Alden were all telling the truth, Sean had begun sleeping with his forty-nine-year-old boss when he was a nineteen-year-old intern. And Bruce had been in charge of the Republic Sea, essentially in charge of every aspect of Sean’s life while on the water.
He tried to step in front of Sean, to keep him from Bruce’s line of sight, but it was hopeless.
“Sean.” Bruce leaned to the side so he could see around Nate and greeted Sean with a pained smile and a nod.
“What are you doing here?” Sean asked, his voice somewhere between a growl and a whimper.
Bruce shrugged and rolled his office chair away from the table and rose to his feet.
He was taller than Nate, and he would have towered over Sean even if he weren’t stuck in a wheelchair.
“It was a chance to see you, to see how you’re doing. Maybe a chance to help you clean up your mess.”
His tone made Nate bristle. He sounded like an annoyed parent who had to deal with his kid getting caught shoplifting.
“We’re both here to make sure that my company does the best it can by you, Mr. Wilkinson,” Gallagher cut in, glaring at Bruce. “I’d been hoping to meet you before the accident, ever since I got the first reports about your project, but fate seems to have had other ideas.”
Sean didn’t say a word. Gallagher glanced around the table, obviously trying to assess the awkward silence.
“Why don’t we all sit—” Harrison began, then glanced at Sean’s wheel chair. “Why don’t we get started?”
Nate set his case files down next to the empty spot at the table the receptionist had cleared of chairs. Sean hesitated but eventually pushed himself to the table. He set the hand brake and pulled his hands into his lap, tangling his fingers in the black cotton Coldplay T-shirt he was wearing. When he’d mangled the fabric until the band logo was obscured, he reached for his sketchbook but froze.
Nate leaned in, closer than he probably should have. “I know you’re uncomfortable, and you’re still hurting. If this’ll help,” he said, tapping the wire binding on the sketchbook, “go for it.”
Sean didn’t acknowledge him, but he opened up the sketchbook, set it in his lap, and pulled out a pencil.
“Are you kidding me?” Bruce scoffed. He was the last one to take his seat, and he sat forward, almost like he was eager. “You’re going to work on those stupid doodles instead of paying attention?”
“I process better when I multitask,” Sean muttered quickly, without looking up from his drawing. The response sounded rehearsed, and Nate suspected this was a discussion the two of them had often had before.
“You’re not even going to begin to take responsibility for what you’ve done,” Bruce announced. “You’re going to hide in that damn book and ignore us while we deal with this shit.”
“Gentlemen,” Nate said, grimacing, “I don’t think Mr. Lancaster has anything to do with these negotiations. While he’ll obviously be called as a witness if we fail to reach an agreement, it seems he’s doing more harm than good at the moment.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bruce snapped. “Sean worked for me for years. Lord knows he made a mistake that day, but the company’s not going to abandon him. Gallagher asked me to come so Sean could see that we’re all on the same side, that we want to help him.”
“We do want to help,” Gallagher insisted. “The damn lawyers have made us take a hands-off approach to this, but we want to sort this out. The last thing we want is for you to leave CPG on bad terms.”
Sean seethed beside him. “You’re accusing me of being responsible for this.”
“No one’s saying that this was your fault,” Gallagher began.
“But CPG will not be held responsible for Mr. Wilkinson’s mistakes,” Gilman interrupted sharply. “One could argue that no one was more familiar with the fail-safes in place on the Sea than Mr. Wilkinson, but instead of relying on them, he chose to tackle a dangerous problem and put himself and the ship in unreasonable danger.”
Gallagher glared at the attorney, his expression icy.
“I didn’t make a mistake. I designed the fail-safe to release the hose and cables from the pump assembly on the ship if the pressure in the wellhead dropped—if the hose on top of the rig ruptured or blew off. The integrity of the hose coupling was never compromised. If the thrusters hadn’t
failed, if the ship had stayed stationary, my pump system would have worked perfectly, just like it had for the year leading up to the accident.”
“The pump system Mr. Lancaster designed worked perfectly,” Gilman said. “But everyone—”
“He didn’t,” Sean interrupted. “Bruce didn’t design it, I did. The only part Bruce played in creating that pump assembly was to get CPG to approve putting it aboard their ship, and to help me put the pieces together. I’ve got a half-dozen professors who watched me run simulations every night for months trying to program in all the geologic variables. I’ve got the original 3-D printed models for the components that I made at UT Galveston. It’s not CPG’s, it’s not Bruce Lancaster’s—it’s mine. But this shit isn’t supposed to be about that, is it? You included me signing it away as a condition in the settlement offer. That’s….” Sean shook his head and focused on his sketchbook again. “That feels kinda like blackmail, doesn’t it?”
Nate nodded.
“It’s hardly an attempt to take credit for your work, Mr. Wilkinson,” Gilman said, suddenly smiling. “All CPG employees have an employment contract stating that any and all inventions or processes developed in the course of their employment are the property of CPG. We only included the clause in the settlement agreement because you were a student when you contributed to the pump system’s development.”
Sean looked thoughtful for a minute. “A student… thus not an employee. The only thing I did in the course of my employment was to operate the damn thing for three days.”
“I have to agree,” Nate said, more amused than he could admit out loud. “It sounds like you’re trying to impose a contract on my client that he never agreed to, to defraud him out of a potentially lucrative patent.”
“We would never!” Gilman looked more angry than offended.
“So glad to hear it,” Nate grinned. “So we’ll leave the whole issue on the back burner for now. After my client has been compensated for his injuries, we can revisit what’s going to happen to his invention.”
Gilman looked like he wanted to snarl at Nate. “As I was saying, then—everyone out there knows this work comes with certain risks. We know your intention was to save the ship, but acting on your own and ignoring the orders of your supervisor hardly entitles you to claim they’re responsible after the fact.”
“About that,” Nate said. “We’re updating our discovery disclosures with some new documents we’ll be introducing into evidence. I faxed them to you this morning. Have you had a chance to read them?”
“It took the better part of an hour for our fax machine to print them,” Harrison said with an exasperated smile. “They’re transit records. Lots of transit records. How do you think they have any bearing on this case?”
“They’re records from port authority offices from here to Tampa, with detailed information of where the Republic Sea was located on various dates. I only included the relevant records, so it shouldn’t take you long to read them. You’ll want to cross reference the dates against the so-called maintenance records that CPG maintained. When I contacted the Corpus Christi shipyard to try and clear up the whole thing, I ended up with several depositions confirming that the folks there never saw the Republic Sea on the dates the maintenance was performed. I’ve also got depositions from members of the crew indicating that it was common practice to forge maintenance records so they could stay under way.”
“Forge maintenance records?” Gallagher looked offended.
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Bruce snapped. “You made a mistake, Sean, but making shit up to deflect attention away from it isn’t going to do you any good.”
“The only mistake I made was listening to you, Bruce.”
“Literally,” Nate added. “Or have you not reviewed the video footage from the rig control room?”
Harrison cursed under his breath, and Poole grew pale.
Gallagher glared at Bruce, then at Harrison and Poole in turn.
“The only mistake my client made, gentlemen, was trusting CPG to provide a safe working environment and trusting Mr. Lancaster to be capable of making competent decisions regarding the safety of his crew.”
“You’re doing this to get back at me, aren’t you?” Bruce asked Sean, as if they were the only ones in the room.
“Gentlemen, my client is sore and tired. I knew trying to do two meetings after his physical therapy session today was going to take a lot out of him. No matter how determined he is to see this through, I’m afraid he’s in no fit state to be subjected to this asshole,” he said, pointing at Bruce.
Sean’s head shot up, his eyes wide and a hint of a smile on his face.
“I’m not going to make him sit here waiting while the lot of you decide this case might be worth the time it’d take y’all to at least glance at the evidence. We’re going to have to reschedule,” Nate said, keeping his tone as polite as possible.
“We’re not going to reschedule, Delany,” Gilman snapped. “We’ve already rescheduled this meeting six times, and Mr. Gallagher is a busy man. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you and your client are stalling so you can make a claim of bad faith when we don’t agree to an astronomical settlement.”
Nate grinned. He separated out the case files he’d brought for himself and the copies he’d brought to disclose as pretrial evidence. He tossed the copies into the center of the table. “My client, Gilman, was nearly sawed in half because your employer—” He shot a quick glare at Gallagher. “—was too greedy to take the ship he was assigned to out of commission long enough to get regular maintenance performed. You can’t seriously be demanding that he attempt to time his recovery so it matches your schedule. That’d be a smidge unreasonable.”
Harrison and Poole both reached for the folders, their expressions decidedly less friendly. Nate hesitated, trying not to laugh. He doubted CPG had been stupid enough to hire outside attorneys to represent them and then not told them the truth, but they looked genuinely caught off guard. Even the old man from CPG looked thoughtful. The only one who looked furious, though, was Bruce Lancaster.
“Everything’s there,” Nate said to Harrison, nodding to the files. “Including a thumb drive with video footage from the rig control room during the accident.”
“All right, maybe we all need to calm down a moment,” Poole suggested. “We’re not here to hash out who’s liable and who’s not, we’re here to discuss a fair settlement to help make Mr. Wilkinson whole again. Son, wouldn’t you rather get this resolved today? I’m sure we can persuade Mr. Lancaster to exercise a bit more restraint.”
“No. I’m not going to do this. Not with him here.” Sean shook his head quickly and rolled backward from the table. “I can’t. I’ll wait by the elevator.”
Nate held up his hands in a gesture of surrender while Sean rushed out of the conference room. “So, sometime next week? Of course, if y’all intend to treat my client with the same disregard at every meeting”—he shot a sideways glare at Bruce, just in case they missed the point—“I see no reason to bother. We’ll proceed to trial in December. A trial where these documents will become a matter of public record. Where every detail of how the Republic Sea operated, and how Mr. Lancaster interacted with his subordinates, will become a matter of public record,” he said, keeping his gaze riveted on Bruce.
Bruce clenched his hands into tight fists and glared at him, but he didn’t say a word. He stood up so quickly his chair rolled back into the wall, then strode out, stomping after Sean.
Nate moved to follow them, but Harrison’s hand on his elbow stopped him.
“How about we plan on two weeks from today?” Harrison suggested. “It seems we’re not all on the same page, and I’d like a chance to review these port records personally before we try to hash this out. I trust you received our files?”
Nate leaned over to see out the door. He could see Sean by the elevator, but he was turned to the side, talking to someone who was just out of Nate’s line of sight.
“Is this intentional?” he asked, jerking his arm out of Harrison’s grasp. “My father always spoke highly of you, Mr. Harrison, so I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. But if Lancaster attempts to coerce or intimidate my client, I will be filing a report with the US Attorney’s office.”
Harrison grinned. “Son, this is a reputable law firm, not a bad gangster movie.”
“Read the depositions,” Nate growled, pointing to the files again. “Ignore the insults and the vocabulary and consider the facts, including Wilkinson’s age, his status as an intern, his status as Lancaster’s direct subordinate, and Lancaster’s position aboard the ship and with the company. I would argue that the facts raise major questions of coercion and Wilkinson’s ability to consent to anything.”
“Consent?” Harrison just looked confused. “Are you trying to suggest Mr. Wilkinson wasn’t old enough to sign an employment contract?”
“No.” He tried to think of a diplomatic way to explain why he was angry, but there wasn’t one. “I’m suggesting you invited Sean here so a man who is arguably his rapist could coerce him into accepting your terms.”
Gallagher stood up so quickly his chair rolled back into the wall, but he didn’t say anything.
“If you subject my client to this kind of intimidation again, I will refer you to the US Attorney’s office for criminal prosecution, and I will make damn sure every sordid detail of this fiasco makes the evening news,” Nate added before turning toward the door.
“And expose yourself to liability for defamation?” Gilman chuckled.
Nate cocked a single eyebrow at him. “It’s not defamation if it’s the truth.”
He found Sean alone by the elevator, his sketchbook open on his lap and his pencil moving across the page in a blur. There was no sign of Bruce Lancaster.
“You okay?” he asked, jabbing the call button.
“Are we done?”
“Here, yes. But we need to talk.”
Sean didn’t say anything as they entered the elevator, or as they crossed the lobby. He seemed to be waiting until they were outside in the noise and chaos of the downtown streets, because as soon as they were back on the sidewalk, he paused and turned to Nate with a sigh. Nate glanced between Sean and the Jeep they’d parked down the street. Sean didn’t seem inclined to head that direction.