“Are you pouting because you prefer when I send them over to you in a crowded bar or restaurant? I know bringing them here and having them wait in your bedroom doesn’t exactly afford you the same thrill, but it’s the best I could do. Taylor, you need to indulge in a few vices, clear your head, and then get back on this project.”
He agreed, but the only person he wanted to clear his head with was Rose, and the reality of getting back on the pipeline project might not turn out entirely how his father was envisioning it.
“Well, I’ll leave you with the girls,” he said, rising from the couch.
“No, take them with you,” said Taylor. “I need to be alone. I need to think.”
Porter frowned, but didn’t fight him. Once he’d collected Jasmine and Cassandra from the bedroom, he crossed to the door and gave Taylor one last look.
“I’m not leaving town until the project is underway,” he said, the words coming across as a warning.
Taylor shot his father a glaring look then returned his gaze to the window, listening to the door click shut.
Why was this the position he had to be in? Why did Rose have to be on the opposite side of the divide and working against him? And why did he feel intuitively that she was onto something huge, not to mention downright detrimental to the life he’d chosen? Natural gas pipelines were flowing all over this country. It was a way of life, something that couldn’t be changed. Starlight might not be innocent, but they weren’t the only guilty company. But since when was that acceptable logic? Taylor prided himself on being conscientious, and the thought of putting anyone at risk was unacceptable. Was he slowly turning into his father? Was his sense of ethics and morals gradually eroding as badly as the pipelines running through this country?
There had to be a way to build a pipeline safely. And the first step in that effort would be to carefully examine the protocol and materials that were in place.
If only time weren’t running out.
Chapter Six
“Where have you been?”
Carter filled the doorway of her motel room, his dark eyes probing her for an explanation.
She had barely scurried from the limo to her room, breathless with anxiety as she made sure her entrance went unnoticed, and had changed into her jeans and a tee shirt before Carter had knocked and opened the door.
“I had a meeting with the CEO of Starlight,” she said, feeling decent to be telling the truth. Her thoughts skirted over Taylor—his lips, the firm wall of his chest that she’d caressed, the way he felt inside her, the wild impulse they’d both succumbed to in the back of the limousine. “I got him to pause the project for the rest of the day.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, he’s going to review the possible hazards of the materials and reconsider.”
Carter snorted a skeptical laugh. “Possible hazards? It’s common knowledge Davey uses toxic materials.”
“To us it’s common knowledge. You know we’ve been fighting an uphill battle to prove as much. This is a good sign, Carter. Taylor Montgomery is open minded, but he won’t act based on my word. He needs to look into things.”
“And you trust him?”
“I don’t know.” Rose thought about it a long moment. She really wasn’t sure if she trusted him when it came to the pipeline, and yet she felt deeply conflicted, because in a strange way she completely trusted him as a man. But blind faith, joys of the flesh, wouldn’t be enough to cause her to give him the benefit of the doubt. She wrestled her sneakers on, explaining, “If the site’s vacant, there’s no better time for us to get some hard evidence that those materials are detrimental to the environment.”
“You can’t go alone,” said Carter, which gave her pause before she could reach the door.
“You think I need your help?” she challenged.
“And Layla’s. We’ll take the Jeep.”
“After the stunt you pulled this morning, there’s no way I’ll let you come along.”
“Oh, come off it, Rose.”
“Come off it?” she gaped.
“That’s right. I made a rash decision, but the fact of the matter is that it panned out. It bought us time.”
“Taylor bought us time,” she countered, putting her hands on her hips. “And you have Taylor to thank for the fact that you aren’t sitting in a jail cell right now.”
Carter cocked his head, narrowing his big brown eyes on her with a hint of suspicion.
“Just how exactly did you convince him to postpone?”
“I have my ways,” she asserted, keeping her response vague. “I’m the president of One World for a reason.”
“You started the company. That’s the reason.”
She glared at him.
“Layla and I mapped out where their materials are located along the twelve-mile trench.”
“I’ll take the map,” she said, pulling her purse over her shoulder now that she’d transferred her belongings from the designer clutch that Taylor had given her.
“You’ll take us, as well,” said Carter, whose gaze touched the sparkling clutch. “Just where, precisely, did you have this meeting?”
Ignoring the question, she barreled past him, saying, “If you’re coming, let’s go.”
Carter’s Jeep was parked just outside Layla’s room, and while Rose hopped in the passenger’s seat, Carter knocked on his girlfriend’s door, urging her to come quickly.
Rose eyed Layla as the woman wrapped her thick, dark hair into a ponytail, walking quickly to the vehicle then jumping in the back seat, while Carter climbed in behind the wheel and turned the engine.
“I think our best bet,” Layla began as they drove off into the hot afternoon, wind whipping through the vehicle, “is to park at our former site and walk due north by five hundred yards where I noticed seven unmarked barrels.”
“What do you think is in the barrels?” Carter asked, yelling over his shoulder so he’d be heard over the wind.
“Between their hazmat gear and track record, I’d say the same chemical cocktail that leached into the soil around the Davey-constructed pipeline in Arizona, namely benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene. But we won’t know for sure until we get a sample to the lab.”
“This is huge,” Carter said, directing his comment to Rose as if she didn’t already think so. “We’ve never intervened a build so early in the process as to catch a company with those kinds of toxins.”
“So let’s catch them,” she said, meeting his gaze. “No heroics, guys. No going against the plan.”
Layla snorted a laugh from the back seat. “Girl, you think we’re going to blow up a barrel of benzene? We’re not on a suicide mission.”
Rose didn’t appreciate her sarcasm, but Layla had a point. The toxic chemicals Davey was in the practice of using could easily blow up if it came into contact with an explosive.
“Just so long as we’re all on the same page,” she said, gazing through the windshield as they flew through an intersection and began heading into the rural and winding roads of Bellevue.
Layla leaned forward, draping her arms around the driver’s and passenger’s seat, as she spoke up over the wind. “That was one hell of a dress you were wearing.”
Alarmed, Rose glanced at her, but holding Layla’s gaze was too rattling.
“Dress?” asked Carter.
“Yeah,” she went on. “I stepped out of the shower and peaked out the window, and who do I see climbing out of the back of a limousine but our very own Rose Cole dressed to the nines and hustling to get into her motel room. What was that all about?”
When Rose didn’t respond, Carter reiterated the question.
“It was nothing,” she said firmly and a little annoyed that they were prying. “Let’s focus on what we need to do.”
“Sure,” said Layla, shifting back in her seat and scanning the trench that stretched out parallel to the dusty road they were traversing. “It’s up there on the right.”
“Okay,” said Carter. “We’l
l overshoot it then double back on foot.”
As they flew past the barrels, Rose eyed them carefully, counting seven and noting the skull and crossbones insignia on each one.
“This is a hell of a world we live in,” she said to herself, though Carter caught the sentiment, pressing his mouth into a determined line in response.
“They won’t get away with it, Rose,” he said. “No matter how long it takes, no matter how many of us are arrested in the process, we’re working towards making the world a safe place.”
She glanced at him and smirked in agreement. As much as she’d butted heads with Carter over the years, he truly was her biggest ally, and having him by her side meant the world to her.
Carter angled the Jeep off road then pulled to a stop along a dusty patch of terrain where the One World campsite had once been. When he killed the engine, Layla hopped out of the back and began sorting through their gear in the trunk, while Rose scanned the vacant Starlight trench through her binoculars.
“It certainly is vacant,” she said, thinking to herself that Taylor had kept his word. In so many ways, she wished she hadn’t been compelled to run off from the Escala earlier. Part of her would’ve loved to have stayed, forgotten her worries for an afternoon, gotten lost in the spell of his body, the intoxication of his effect on her, but saving Bellevue from certain death was far more important. What was this war brewing inside her, hating and also loving Taylor, if love was even a remote possibility?
“Let’s go,” said Layla, who had gathered a pack of plastic containers to put the samples in, as well as gloves and gas masks so none of them would have to breathe the toxins once they got the barrels open.
For eight minutes they walked in silence along the trench, Rose taking in the beautiful landscape and trying not to be riveted by the damage that would surely become of it should Starlight resume construction.
When they came upon the barrels, Layla passed Carter and Rose the gas masks and gloves, which they all put on as a precaution. Carter used a crowbar to pry the lid off of one of the barrels.
As soon as he set it on the ground, Rose peered into the barrel and saw that it was filled to the brim with a green liquid substance that she couldn’t identify.
Quickly, she took a plastic container from Layla and scooped the green liquid into it then secured the cap on tight, while Carter investigated a stack of pipes and scraped the metal cylinder with a knife, collecting the shavings into another container.
“Should we open another barrel?” asked Layla. “In case there are other chemicals.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” said Carter, who immediately began prying the lid off a second barrel.
When they all glanced down, it appeared to be the same green liquid, so Carter opened a few more barrels to discover the same chemical. Determined to be thorough, Layla collected more samples before the three of them fastened the lids back on, tucked their samples into Layla’s backpack, and started off down the trench.
“How long will the lab take?” Carter asked as they made their way to the Jeep.
“Five days or so,” said Layla.
“Unless we put a rush on it,” Rose added. “I have a contact in Seattle who can do it overnight, but it’ll cost us.”
“Can we afford it?” said Carter, but it wasn’t a question. Aside from Rose, he was the only member of One World who had a handle on their waning finances.
Taylor came to mind. The fact of the matter was that One World had depleted their funds and exhausted their lines of credit, but Rose had no reason to believe Taylor would do anything to assist her in shutting down his own pipeline.
“I’ll figure it out,” she said. “We won’t get billed until the lab is complete, so I say we get it over to Madison Alder and deal with payment later.”
“Hey!”
Rose glanced over her shoulder to see the man who’d yelled at them and found a construction worker jogging after them.
“Hey, stop!” he called out. “I saw what you did! You have no business here!”
Carter jumped behind the wheel and turned the key, as Rose and Layla hurried into the Jeep. Peeling out, the tires kicked up dust in the man’s face, but they made it, the Jeep bouncing over the rough terrain before the construction worker could stop them.
Chapter Seven
Rose stepped out of the shower, glad that Carter and Layla had volunteered themselves to drive the chemical samples into Madison Alder’s lab, Krylotech Industries in Seattle. The rest of the team was getting antsy, but Rose had done a decent job of updating and motivating them by saying the results of the lab would give One World a strong advantage of not only shutting down the Starlight Energy Pipeline in Bellevue, but perhaps put Montgomery’s company out of business entirely. In the meantime, she delegated specific tasks to each member. Ronnie and Samantha were heading over to the site to take pictures of the construction workers should they engage in any activity. Jess and Malcom were drawing up an amendment to the class-action motion their attorney would ultimately file. And Dahlia and Molly were focusing on making arrangements for One World’s next project, exposing a water treatment facility in Nevada, which was suspected of adding unregulated quantities of fluoride to public drinking water.
With the majority of her team engaged, she had some time to herself to wrap her head around the Starlight Energy Project and the unprecedented complication of having become involved with its CEO. What had she been thinking?
Layla had seen her get out of the limo. Carter had been suspicious of her mentioning she’d met with Taylor to negotiate. If she continued this secret affair, it wouldn’t stay secret for long. Her rational side knew she had to break it off, but deep down she didn’t want to, and her clever side kept justifying that if she continued to see Taylor she might be able to convince him to move the pipeline. But was that really what she was after?
Could there ever really be a compromise when her primary goal was to obliterate companies like Starlight? People like Taylor and his father would never quit. And she had to admit to herself that she wasn’t fighting as strongly and with as much resolve as she ordinarily would be had she not felt drawn to Taylor.
Rose began drying her hair, shifting the hot stream of her hair dryer through her brown locks and trying not to get annoyed that it was causing her to sweat. Then she stepped out of the steamy bathroom, pulled on a pair of cargo shorts and a tee shirt, and opened her laptop on the bed. As soon as her report filled the screen, thoughts of Taylor had her strangely distracted. What could’ve possibly happened to end his medical career and cause him to go into his father’s business, which seemed so at odds with the health and safety of the population at large?
She connected to the motel Wi-Fi and typed his name in a search engine, searching for the words career and accident. A wealth of webpages came up. The first one at the top of the list said “An End to a Promising Career” and featured a photo of Taylor in a white lab coat with his arms folded.
As she read the article, she learned Taylor had suffered a head injury at one of his father’s charity functions a number of years back. According to the report, he had been acting erratically, babbling and at times running around an outdoor pool where guests were mingling with cocktails. Some of the guests speculated to the newspaper that they believed Taylor had been on drugs, while others thought he possibly had way too much to drink. Whatever the case may have been, Taylor slipped at the edge of the pool, hitting his head before plummeting into the water and losing consciousness. When paramedics arrived and pulled him out of the pool they were able to revive him, but the weeks that followed proved Taylor had suffered a concussion that left him in a disoriented stupor. Determined to return to his position at the hospital, he had convinced the board he could resume, but it had been a terrible miscalculation. During a routine surgery to remove the ruptured appendix of a ten-year-old boy, Taylor had botched the operation, resulting in the child’s death. A malpractice lawsuit ensued, which he lost, as well as his otherwise stellar reputation
. Feeling a failure, he had resigned.
Rose glanced up from her laptop to rest her eyes. It didn’t make sense. Why would a well-respected doctor drink himself into an erratic state at a charity function? Even if Taylor had accidentally consumed too much alcohol, wouldn’t he be concerned enough to wall himself off in a private room and sober up? But he hadn’t. She also couldn’t wrap her head around the possibility that he could’ve been on drugs. He didn’t strike her as the sort to dabble recreationally, and even if he were, why would he do such a thing at a charity function with hundreds of guests present?
She startled when she heard a knock at the door. Checking the time, she noted it was five in the afternoon, far too soon for Carter and Layla to have gotten back since they’d all agreed the couple should stay at Madison’s lab until the results came in.
Padding quietly to the door, she asked, “Who is it?”
“Taylor.”
The mere sound of his deep voice through the door sent a rush of excitement through her, and she let him in at once.
Dressed in a thin, blue sweater and black slacks, he stepped inside, and Rose quickly glanced up and down the motel walkway to make sure no one had seen him. When she shut the door and turned, she found him looking at her laptop.
“I wasn’t trying to pry,” she said, flipping it closed.
“It’s public information,” he said, shrugging.
“Have you reached a decision?” she asked hopefully.
He studied her for a long moment, his gaze traveling the length of her then resting on her face, where he seemed to drink in the sight of her in a way that stirred her attraction to him.
“Starlight is moving forward,” he said in a tone that hinted at his regret. “Whether I call the order or my father does, it’s happening. I wanted you to hear it from me. I don’t want you to hate me.”
Absorbing the information, she knew she shouldn't be surprised, but she was, mainly because she had been starting to feel that his interest in her might be big enough to stop the pipeline. But that had been foolish.
KYLE: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 4) Page 76