by A. J. Thomas
“Wilkinson, are you all right?” Gallagher asked, nudging his shoulder.
Sean flinched away from the touch. He took a deep breath and wrapped his arms around himself, trying to pass the shaking off as a chill. He looked around at the equipment, gutted and strewn across the dock. Was this entire mess nothing but a gigantic prop? Cory had called him, terrified of going anywhere near the port, and he hadn’t listened. He’d dragged Nate here, and all he’d accomplished was putting him in danger.
“Mr. Wilkinson?” Gallagher suddenly looked thoughtful and serious.
Sean thought about that day in the shop when Cory had tried to talk him into patenting the pump system together. Cory had tried to warn him that CPG would stop at nothing to eliminate any challenge to their patent application, but he hadn’t listened. Nate and Cory were at the mercy of whoever CPG had hired, and after the turmoil of the last twenty-four hours, thinking about Nate getting hurt again left him feeling hollow and cold.
Sean stopped himself abruptly, recognizing that he was panicking and not thinking rationally. Cory had spoken to him on Nate’s phone, which he’d assumed meant whoever was holding Cory and Nate had to have taken it. There was no way in hell that Nate would have handed his cell over without being coerced. Which meant that Nate was either hurt, incapacitated, or dead.
He needed to find out what the hell was going on.
“Wilkinson, do you need me to call you a doctor?” Gallagher asked. “You don’t look okay.”
“No!” Sean said quickly, shaking his head. “No, I’m not okay! Did you do this?” He waved his hand at the mess. The CPG employees and port authority officers around them began to stare. He glanced between the uniformed officers and Gallagher. “All of it?”
“Hang on now, slow down,” Gallagher said. “What’s going on? And where’s the gent who came here with you?”
“What did Cory Alden do?” he demanded, shoving Gallagher away. “What does he have that made him a threat?”
“Alden?” Gallagher looked confused. “He’s resigned, as far as I know. What’s this about?”
“Stay the hell away from me!” Sean shouted, grabbing his cane.
Sean couldn’t run, no matter how much he wanted to, but he covered the distance to Nate’s car faster than he would have thought possible.
Nate had already gotten hurt once because of him. And the only reason he’d been out at the docks was because he’d been helping Sean. He wasn’t going to sit there while Nate suffered again because of him, but he wasn’t going to let CPG get away with this, either.
Nate’s keys were on the hood, just like Cory had said they’d be. Sean unlocked the car and tossed his cane into the passenger seat, climbed in, and slammed the car door. As he pulled out of the parking lot, trying to figure out who he should call, how he could save Nate, and how he could nail CPG for this, he barely noticed the ruckus his abrupt departure seemed to have caused.
He dialed Nate’s father with shaking fingers, cursed when the call went to voicemail, and then left a frantic message detailing what had happened. He was about to call the police when his phone buzzed again. It wasn’t a phone call this time, but a text message with a picture of Nate, unconscious and bleeding, along with a curt Ten minutes.
Cory had warned him that if he called the police, Nate would die. Cory had never been anything but kind to him, and he’d told Nate how to track down the conflicting transit records that would prove CPG forged the Sea’s maintenance history. He’d given them the video he shot in the rig control room. The only thing Cory had ever complained about was how the company was treating Sean, and helping him had been enough to put Cory’s life in danger.
Getting across Galveston took too damn long. He was already sore when he started driving, and his leg was aching by the time he pulled up to the curb half a block from Nate’s place. He considered pulling up closer, but if someone from CPG was waiting for him, they’d be able to hear and see Nate’s car from the living room. Sean wanted a chance to figure out what the hell was going on.
Help had to be a priority first, though. Since the Galveston police wouldn’t know what to make of the situation and would probably charge right in, Sean dug through his wallet for the business card the detective from Houston had given him. Instead of the detective herself answering, someone else picked up. He tried to give a rushed account of what was happening, and even though the officer seemed to understand the urgency, he still got put on hold.
“Fucking hell!” he shouted, ending the call.
The text had said he only had ten minutes. He could be past that already, and instead of dealing with shit, the police were wasting his time.
Nate’s cinder-block home was set back among palms and hedges. The front curtains were drawn, but they were sheer enough that anyone inside the living room could see through them.
Sean made his way to the house, staying close to the fence and ducking around the hedges to try to get a glimpse inside the house through one of the side windows. Finally he worked his way around to the backyard, where Nate’s efforts to maintain the landscaping seemed to have ended. Each of his neighbors had high wooden fences, and all that remained of what had once probably been green sod were brown patches of grass and sand. He cursed as the sand shifted beneath his right foot and the rubber feet of his cane, almost throwing him off balance.
He caught himself and made it to the small concrete patio that took up a quarter of the yard, extending from the sliding glass doors that opened into Nate’s kitchen.
Instead of going straight to the door, he lingered near the kitchen window, peering inside the dark house. It took a moment for his eyes to see anything in the gloom. Nate was sitting at the kitchen table, a nasty gash on his forehead and blood trickling down the side of his face. Despite the injury, he looked more pissed off than anything, which Sean counted as a positive sign.
Cory, dressed in a pair of loose blue jeans and a company shirt, was standing by the front window, peeking out from the side of the curtains. He had a small pistol in his hands, but the gun was held low, as if Cory was totally relaxed.
“Shit…,” Sean whispered, his pulse spiking as he ducked below the edge of the window again. Cory wasn’t a hostage, he was waiting for Sean. With a gun.
What the hell was he supposed to do against a gun? Thanks to five months of physical therapy, most of his body was in great shape. He was strong, but that wasn’t the same as bulletproof. Even if he managed to surprise Cory somehow, he wasn’t going to be able to do anything to stop him from pulling the trigger. He had his phone and keys, neither of which would do him any good in a fight against someone physically whole and armed.
He ducked back to the window of Nate’s bedroom and pulled out his phone, dialing Nate’s number.
“Sean,” Cory answered, his tone frightened once again. “God, you’re late! Where are you? They’re going to hurt him, Sean!”
“Christ, Cory, it takes me ten minutes to cross a fucking parking lot, and it’s been over half a year since I’ve gotten behind the wheel of a car,” Sean reminded him, trying to buy time and get a feel for how crazy Cory actually was. “I’m on my way, but I need more time, or maybe we can figure something out on the phone? If you let me talk to whoever is doing this, we can work something out.”
The noise Cory made might have been a whimper, but Sean suspected it was a laugh. “Figure something out?”
“Yes. Let me talk to him, Cory. What did CPG offer?”
“I don’t know!” Cory snapped. “You need to get over here!”
A loud engine rumbled by. Sean didn’t think fast enough, didn’t move quickly enough to cover the microphone beneath his lips. There was a chance the engine noise was loud enough inside the house that Cory wouldn’t notice it on the phone. Sean held his breath and scrambled toward the back door again.
He heard a huff from the phone. “You lying little shit!”
The gunshot was impossibly loud, the air around the house reverberating with the sound. Se
an tugged at the sliding glass door, allowed himself a moment of relief when the door slid open, and then looked for Nate and Cory.
Cory had pulled Nate away from the table, one hand twisted in his hair and the other holding the gun to his head. Nate met Sean’s gaze and glanced sideways to the front door just as Cory noticed him. Cory moved the gun away from the base of Nate’s skull and pointed it toward Sean himself.
As soon as the gun left his head, Nate began to struggle. “Don’t do this!” he shouted. “Sean, he’s—”
Another crack echoed through the house, not as loud as the gunshot. Pain exploded against the side of Sean’s skull, radiating down the back of his neck and through his jaw as he fell forward. In front of him, Cory smirked and held the gun against Nate’s temple again.
For a long moment, there was nothing but darkness and the sound of voices, muted as if he was listening to them from under water. Then there was pain. His head throbbed, and it hurt to open his eyes. He was on the floor, and above him two men were arguing. Making out the words took more effort than it should have.
“That really wasn’t necessary,” Cory said, his tone furious.
“I know.” The voice above him was familiar, but out of place.
Sean forced his eyes open and managed to focus on a pair of brown work boots. He clenched his hands together, trying to force his body to move again.
“I told you I’d handle it,” Cory insisted. “If he’s unconscious, he can’t tell us anything!”
“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to knock that little shit on his ass?” Jeff Hendricks asked.
“You should have stayed on the ship to find out how much Wilkinson gave them.”
“So you could cut me out of this like you did to Bruce?” Jeff asked, chuckling. “You two couldn’t have pulled any of this off without me, and there is no chance in hell that I’m going to let you take off with that control module and leave me here to drive a fucking boat.”
Sean was pretty sure Nate was sitting down again, but he couldn’t lift his head far enough to see where Cory and Jeff were.
“There’s no chance either of us are going to be able to sell it if Wilkinson gave them another copy of the code and schematics, moron!”
“He didn’t,” Jeff insisted, nudging Sean’s head to the side with his foot. “And now he won’t. Honestly, I still can’t believe this prick did everything Bruce claimed. He doesn’t look like any kind of genius.”
“What, exactly, am I supposed to look like?” Sean managed, rolling onto his back.
“Like some prissy little fairy with glasses?” Jeff suggested immediately. “Or even like a normal guy? Although the delinquent look paid off for us. No one at CPG really believed you designed that little doodad, you know. Not until you showed up tonight. Everybody figured that Bruce built it, but he felt so bad for you getting hurt that he decided he’d give you the credit for it. When the truth about you two came out, it just drove the idea home. Hey, what did you say to Gallagher tonight? Because after two minutes of talking to you, the rumors completely changed. The company boys stopped whispering about Bruce being some kind of lovestruck sap and started whispering… well, something closer to the truth.”
Sean didn’t know why he laughed, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He shifted his arms out, sprawling on the tile floor and laughing at the severe-looking man standing over him.
“What the hell is so funny?”
“Clay,” he managed, still laughing. “I don’t know what’s true anymore, but I correctly identified the clay we used in the greensand. From the machine shop. The stuff Bruce told you to put into the thruster engine.”
Jeff knelt down over him, his expression angry but controlled. “Figured that one out, did you?”
“Cory and Bruce were on the rig,” Sean continued. “Cory made damn sure I knew they were there. With the time to failure being so damn short, it couldn’t have been them. You know Cory probably made that cell phone video so they could blame the engine failure on you, right? So they could say they weren’t anywhere near the engine compartment when someone put that shit into the oil reservoir.”
“You want to know what’s true, Wilkinson?” Jeff growled. “Bruce never gave a shit about you. He never even liked you. When he realized how much your new pump system could sell for, he’d have forced the crew into mass orgies if it kept you happy and determined to come back to the ship. He dropped hints to three other big oil companies before you got hurt. Afterward, there was no way to stop Confederated from finding out your little toy existed. It was such a pity that you survived to fuck everything up.”
“That sucks for you. All that effort, and you’re going to be disappointed,” Sean said, still laughing. “Whether Bruce and Cory took the equipment or not, the design belongs to CPG.”
Jeff stood up abruptly, glaring across the breakfast bar at Cory. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“I gave it away,” Sean said, letting his voice get softer. If Jeff thought he was barely conscious, he might be able to do something. “I gave it to CPG as part of the settlement.”
“He’s lying,” Cory insisted. “He hasn’t signed the settlement, and he made it very clear he was never giving it to them. They’ll try to submit the patent application regardless, but until then, Halliburton will still pay for a prototype. Once he’s dead, Bruce and I are the only ones in the world who can rebuild it, so CPG is out of luck.”
“I’m afraid you’re the one who’s out of luck. Sean seems to have met his match in Confederated’s CRO,” Nate said, his tone icy and professional. “Sean might not have given him a copy of the code, but he broke down the design clearly enough that Gallagher will be able to reproduce it.”
“I was there—he couldn’t have done all that in a couple of hours,” Jeff said, standing up.
“Not if he was working with Lancaster or Alden, no. But him and Gallagher….” Nate shook his head. “They’re operating on an entirely different level.”
“It doesn’t matter if Sean gave them the basic system design, I doubt he had a copy of the source code for the control module handy. After I’m done with the two you of, I’ll make sure they never piece it back together again. Then, since Bruce is in jail, it’s all mine.”
“Ours,” Jeff corrected him.
Nate chuckled and groaned. “I never thought I’d say this, but you should have consulted with an attorney before you decided to resort to murder. Even if you were to kill Sean right now, his ownership interests wouldn’t just evaporate—it doesn’t work that way. His intellectual property would be included as an asset of his estate, and it would pass down to his next of kin through the probate process. His mother would profit from it, and maybe his foster father if Sean ever bothered to make a will, but not you. Never you.”
“His rights don’t matter if he’s dead. Nothing is documented, and the only thing CPG can verify that he produced is a pile of spare parts. When I take the design to Halliburton, I don’t have to mention Sean at all.”
“I promise you, CPG is going to mention him. They won’t need a working prototype to prove that one existed. Thanks to this lawsuit, the design is a matter of public record. The schematics have been entered into evidence in Sean’s case, along with photographs from the ship after the accident, just like every other bit of documentation I got from CPG. You might be able to kill me, and kill Sean to stop him from repairing the pump system, but you can’t walk into the Clerk and Recorder’s office, demand a case file you don’t have anything to do with, and then shred the damn thing. That’s just idiotic. You really should have consulted with a professional before committing to this plan. The only way you could ever make any money off Sean’s invention is if he applied for a patent and then signed the rights over to you.”
Above him, Jeff snarled. “God, why are all of you fuckers such a pain in the ass?”
Cory shoved Nate into the counter, extended the pistol toward Jeff, and fired.
This time the boom echoed around the
m, making Sean’s ears ring. He rolled over and scrambled toward the cabinets, pulling himself up to reach for Nate. But Nate was up and moving, rushing around the breakfast bar toward him.
“Hold it!” Cory shouted, pointing the gun at them.
Behind him, Jeff was leaning against the kitchen sink, staring at the hole in his stomach. “You bastard,” he gasped, slumping against the sink and sliding down to the kitchen floor. A thick streak of blood smeared the white cabinet door behind him.
“Sean, don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Cory said, as if he were trying to force Sean to do some menial chore. “Come out here.”
Nate wrapped his hands around Sean’s waist, hoisting him to his feet and shifting so he was standing between Cory and Sean. Sean grabbed Nate’s arm, trying to tug him back, but Nate wouldn’t move.
“A contract,” Nate said quickly. “I can draw up a contract. Sean can sign over his rights to the control-system patent.”
Cory narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to the side. “Nice try,” he said with a sad smile.
“It’ll work! You can just walk away, and it’s yours!”
“Why do you even care? He’s not going to stay with you when this is over. He’ll be gone as soon as CPG’s check clears.”
Nate shrugged. “I don’t care. I love him. Whether he wants to be with me or not, I love him. I will do whatever I can to see him happy, and if that means finishing out his case and walking away….” He shrugged again. “So be it.”
“Nate, I—”
“Don’t,” Cory snapped. “It’s just too bad there’s no room in this situation for your altruism. I think we all recognize there’s no way I can let you live. Despite Jeff’s self-important delusions, I’m not an idiot. And neither are you. You all knew there was no way you were going to walk out of this alive.”
A bulky figure crossed the yard in front of the living room window, followed by two more. The police sirens were far away, but maybe a neighbor had come over to investigate the gunshots.
“No, the only way I walk out of this situation is after I call the police and tell them the horrible scene I stumbled in on after Sean texted me begging me for help.” Cory held up Sean’s phone with a pointed grin.