Hanging by a Thread (Riley O'Brien & Co. #3), page 29
She cast a frantic look at the clock on the wall: 9:42 a.m. Her day had just blown up.
* * *
The final storyboards for the new television commercial looked good, and Cal gave an internal sigh of relief. They were scheduled to shoot the commercial in two weeks, and they were running out of time to make changes.
Before he could thank the team from the advertising agency, the door to the collaboration room opened. Teagan’s dark head popped around the door frame, her blue eyes wide behind her black-rimmed glasses. She beckoned to him before shutting the door, and he frowned in confusion.
Teagan never interrupted his meetings. In fact, she never interrupted anyone’s meetings because she hated for people to interrupt hers.
“Give me a second,” he said, addressing his request to all twenty people in the room.
He hurried to the door, making sure to close it behind him. He turned to face Teagan and was surprised to see Priest, Quinn, and Amelia in the hall with her.
“I’m kind of busy for an impromptu family reunion,” he quipped.
No one smiled at his joke. They just stared at him, their faces blank.
“Cal, have you talked to Bebe this morning?” Teagan asked.
The look on her face, combined with the desperation in her voice, made the bottom drop out of his stomach. “Not since she left for work. I’ve been in meetings. Why? What’s going on?”
Teagan turned to Priest, burying her face against his chest, and Quinn blew out a rough breath. His brother settled a big hand on Cal’s shoulder.
“A bomb went off in the lobby of GGB’s headquarters this morning right as people were coming in to work. Hundreds are injured or dead.” Quinn squeezed his shoulder. “Cal, no one has heard from Bebe. Her assistant said she didn’t come in this morning. She’s been trying to reach her. T has been calling Bebe’s cell phone, but she isn’t answering.”
A loud roaring noise in his ears drowned out the rest of what Quinn said. He could see his brother’s mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear anything.
Bebe. Bebe. Bebe.
Her name echoed with his every heartbeat.
“Cal.” Quinn shook him. “Cal. Listen to me. Even if she was there, she could be okay.” His fingers dug into him. “She could be okay.”
Adrenaline flooded Cal, and he jerked away from Quinn. “I need to be there.”
“Cal, no,” Amelia said gently. “The police have blocked off the streets. No one can get through. They don’t know if it’s a single attack or if there will be more. They’re trying to evacuate GGB’s building and the buildings nearby so they can search them. They don’t know anything right now. It could be terrorists. It could be a psycho employee. They just don’t know.”
“We’re on lockdown,” Quinn added. “Our building has been searched already because it’s a high-profile target. We’re clear. No one can get in, and we’re advising everyone to stay here for now.”
“Jesus,” he whispered. “This isn’t happening.”
He couldn’t feel his legs, and he leaned heavily against Quinn. His brother staggered a little under his weight, and Cal tried to straighten, but he couldn’t seem to stand on his own.
“Priest, help me,” Quinn requested, grunting a little as he wedged a shoulder under Cal’s armpit. “Damn it, Cal, keep it together.”
Priest hooked an arm around Cal’s waist, and they propped him against the wall. Cal stared into his brother-in-law’s eyes. They were filled with sadness, maybe even grief. Priest thought Bebe was gone.
“She’s fine,” he insisted fiercely. “She’s fine. I would know if she wasn’t. I would feel it. Wouldn’t I feel it?” He pressed his hand to his chest, over his heart. “She’s inside me. She’s part of me. I would know if she wasn’t okay.”
He couldn’t imagine a world without Bebe, and he didn’t want to think about how his life would be without her. Now that he knew what it was like to be with her, he refused to consider the possibility of losing her.
“Shit,” Quinn muttered.
“Maybe she wasn’t there,” Amelia speculated, her voice soothing. “Maybe she’s been trying to call, but the cell towers are overwhelmed.”
Teagan began to cry, big gulping sobs that made him want to throw up. “Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop crying! There’s no reason to cry. She’s fine.”
Priest roughly shoved his shoulder. “You’re n-n-n-not the only p-p-p-person here who loves Bebe.”
“Help me get him to his office,” Quinn directed. “He’s falling apart.”
“I’m not falling apart!” he yelled. “There’s no reason for me to fall apart! She’s fine.”
Quinn ignored him and grabbed his arm. Priest took the other one, and they half carried, half dragged him to the elevator. Suddenly they were in his office on the second floor. He was on his sofa, and his family surrounded him.
Tears burned his eyes. “She left earlier than usual. I was still in bed because we stayed up late. I don’t remember if I kissed her good-bye.” He swiped his hand across his watery eyes. “I’m in love with her. We wasted years when we could have been together.”
Amelia made soothing noises as she rubbed his back, and he sucked in a shaky breath. “I haven’t had enough time with her. I want more. I want a lifetime. She has to be okay.”
Quinn roughly scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’ve called in as many favors as I have, and the fire chief has promised me that his team is looking for Bebe. We’ll be the first to know when they find her.”
A loud knock sounded on the door, and Priest opened it to admit Quinn’s young assistant, Jeff. “GGB is the target,” he announced. “A bomb just went off in its Phoenix R and D facility. They were in the process of evacuating it. The news outlets are saying the casualties are massive.”
Teagan gasped. “This is horrible.”
Quinn pulled Jeff aside, and they spoke quietly for a few moments before the younger man left. “Cal, when did Bebe leave exactly?” his brother asked. “The bomb went off just after nine.”
“I don’t know. Around seven fifteen, I think. She said she had an early breakfast meeting.”
“Do you know where?” Teagan asked. “Was it at the office? At a restaurant? If it was at the office, she would have already been upstairs. The bomb was in the lobby, and supposedly most of the damage was on the lower floors.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. God. I don’t know. I didn’t bother to ask.” He glanced around his office, his gaze touching on the people he loved. “I feel like I should be doing something. What should I do? I can’t just sit here.”
“I feel the same way,” Teagan said. “I don’t know what to do. Quinn, do you think the fire chief would let Cal through the barricades?”
Quinn sighed. “I don’t know.” He grimaced. “From what I’ve heard, it’s like a war zone.”
Images of Bebe, injured, bloody, and helpless, flashed across Cal’s vision, and his chest tightened. He struggled for air, and Amelia pushed his head toward his knees.
“Breathe, Cal,” she crooned. “Just breathe. It’s going to be okay.”
As he sat there with his head hanging between his knees, his office line buzzed. He raised his head to look toward his desk.
“What the fuck?” Quinn muttered angrily. “I told Liza to hold your calls.”
Just then the receptionist’s voice floated over the intercom. “Guys? Bebe’s on the line.”
It took him a moment to comprehend what Liza had said, and when he did, relief made him light-headed. He vaulted to his feet, lunging toward his desk, and tripped over the round coffee table in front of the sofa.
As he crawled away from the table, Teagan snatched the phone from its cradle. “Bebe!” she cried. “Where are you? Where have you been? We were scared to death.”
He scrambled to his feet. Grabbing the phone from his sister, he pushed her out of the way.
“I’m at the deli down the street from Riley Plaza,” Bebe said. “I couldn’t get into your building because the doors were locked.”
The sound of her voice brought tears to his eyes, and he blinked them back. They clogged his throat, and he cleared it roughly.
“Baby, are you okay?”
“Oh, pahale,” she replied softly, “I’m better now that I’ve heard your voice. I wasn’t there when it happened.”
Thank you, Jesus.
“Stay where you are. I’m coming to get you.”
“I have my scooter. I’ll be there by the time you get downstairs. Just let me in.”
She immediately disconnected, and he slowly hung up the phone. When he turned around, his office was empty. That was his family—there when he needed them, out of sight when he didn’t.
Rushing out of his office, he found Teagan waiting in the hall. “Will you bring Bebe to my office when she gets here?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he agreed tersely as he passed her, understanding that Teagan and Bebe were closer than most sisters, and that Teagan needed to see Bebe almost as much as he did.
He jogged down the hall to the escalators that led to the first floor. By the time he got to the lobby, Bebe was out front. He quickly pushed open one of the side doors, remembering just in time to hold it with his foot so it wouldn’t close behind him. Since the building was on lockdown, his key card wouldn’t work.
She ran toward him, and when she got close enough, she threw herself at him. He caught her tightly against his body, burying his face in her hair, and took his first easy breath in more than an hour.
“I never want to go through that again,” he murmured, dropping kisses on top of her head. “Would you be willing to have a tracking device implanted in your body so I know where you are twenty-four/seven?”
She burrowed closer. “Like the ones they put in Lamborghinis?”
Her voice was muffled against his chest, but he heard her. “Exactly.”
She laughed, but it sounded like she was crying. “I’m not that valuable.”
“You are to me.”
Chapter 29
“Lars Endicott, CFO of Generation Global Biotechnology, is with us today to talk about how the company is faring since the bombings at its global headquarters in San Francisco, as well as its R and D facility in Phoenix and its manufacturing facilities in Oklahoma and Nevada. Lars, thank you for joining us.”
“Thank you for having me, Maria,” Lars replied, nodding at Maria Belasquez, the anchor of the leading financial news program.
“First of all, Lars, how are you holding up?”
“Umm, well, umm . . .” Lars stuttered. “I’m okay, I guess.”
Bebe winced at her boss’s less than eloquent answer. They had put off the financial media as long as they’d dared, and this was the first interview he’d done since the bombings. She and GGB’s vice president of corporate communications had prepped him for hours for this interview, and apparently they should have started with an answer to the basic question, “How are you?”
She and Lars had been in New York for more than three weeks trying to stop the financial hemorrhaging that GGB had suffered since the company had been attacked. They had flown out the night of the bombings and spent nearly every waking hour in meetings with large institutional investors, investment banks, and Wall Street analysts. Unfortunately, their efforts hadn’t made much of a difference.
“I can only imagine how difficult things have been for you and the rest of the GGB family,” Maria noted sympathetically. “Based on our research, the attacks on GGB were the worst any U.S.-based company has suffered in modern history.”
“Unfortunately, you’re right, Maria,” Lars agreed. “This kind of attack on an individual company is unprecedented.”
“What can you tell us about the attacks?”
“That’s a difficult question to answer. The bombings are part of an ongoing federal investigation, and we are not allowed to comment on them beyond what the FBI has already said.”
Maria nodded. “The FBI released a statement yesterday that Gordon Abernathy confessed to planning the attacks. They’re still looking for accomplices. Abernathy has not been forthcoming about what help he did or did not have. He obviously couldn’t have been in four places at once.”
She gave Lars a moment to respond, but he stayed silent, as Bebe had coached him.
“Abernathy recorded several video messages and posted them on the Internet soon after the bombs went off,” Maria continued. “He also emailed them to several news organizations. Here’s a clip now.”
The screen cut away to a video of Gordon Abernathy. With his sandy blond hair, unremarkable features, and wire-rimmed glasses, he looked just like the high school science teacher he was. He was also a murderer.
“My name is Gordon Abernathy. I want to tell you about my wife, Maggie. She was the love of my life. We were college sweethearts. She was a warm, generous, loving person, and Generation Global Biotechnology killed her.”
The screen cut back to Maria and Lars, whose face was grim. He had watched that video hundreds of times.
“According to the videos, Maggie Abernathy was part of a clinical drug trial for Neuransa, a new therapy GGB developed to treat Parkinson’s disease. Gordon Abernathy claims she had a fatal reaction to the drug.”
Lars rolled his lips inward. “Maria, I can’t talk about Gordon Abernathy. I can’t talk about the videos. I can’t talk about his wife. I’m sorry.”
Maria nodded. “What can you talk about?”
Bebe was surprised by Maria’s question. It was a “softball” question, and softballs were easy to hit out of the park.
Lars tilted his head, and the new position emphasized the bags under his eyes. Since they had arrived in New York, they’d averaged three hours of sleep every night. They both looked like crap.
“I can talk about the four hundred and three employees GGB lost. We feel every one of those losses. We employ tens of thousands of people around the globe, and every one of those people is important to GGB. We feel the loss as an employer. We feel it as colleagues and friends. And we feel it as humans because losing even one person is a tragedy.”
Bebe gave Lars a mental high-five. This interview was difficult for him, and he was doing a good job.
“I also want to tell you that this isn’t something we’re ever going to be able to forget. I think of GGB as a living, breathing organism, and these attacks wounded us. They didn’t wound us fatally, but we’re in pain, and we’re going to feel it for a long time. These attacks are going to scar us. They’re going to change the way we view ourselves and others. They’ve already changed us.” Lars swallowed noisily. “We’re never going to be the same company.”
Maria was very obviously shocked by Lars’s candor. “Lars, forgive me for saying so, but that doesn’t give investors a lot of comfort.”
Lars shrugged. “I’m not here to comfort investors. I’m here to tell them the truth. We have already relocated our corporate headquarters and R and D facility. We’ve revamped our security protocols so nothing like this will happen again. Our employees are doing their best to honor the people we lost by doing their jobs. We have six more manufacturing facilities spread across the globe, and plans are under way for them to pick up the slack from the two damaged facilities.”
Lars took a deep breath. “That’s the truth, but not the entire truth. The entire truth is that too many investors abandoned us, and now our stock is in the toilet. But we’re still honoring our commitments to the investors we have. We are still making money. We still have people who come in to work every day to do their jobs. We are still producing drugs that save people’s lives. We’re still making lives better. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do.”
Maria shook her head slowly. “What do you want to tell the financial community, Lars?”
Lars looked directly at the camera. “What are you thinking right now? Are you thinking, ‘I’m glad I didn’t lose money when GGB’s stock tanked,’ or are you thinking, ‘I’m sorry so many people lost their lives when GGB was attacked’?”
“Lars, thank you for being here with us today.”
“Thank you, Maria.”
The cameraman gave them the green light that the segment was complete, and Lars rose from his chair. After shaking hands with Maria, he made his way to Bebe.
“Well? How did I do?”
She patted his shoulder. “Better than I thought you would.”
He surprised her by hugging her to his side. “It was all because of you, Bebe. Those were your answers. I was just the mouthpiece.” He sighed loudly. “Do you mind if we walk back to the hotel? I need some air.”
“Fine with me.”
When she and Lars had arrived in New York City, it had been much colder than she’d expected. She hadn’t packed for such low temperatures, and she’d desperately needed a warm coat.
She’d mentioned it to Cal during a quick phone call, and early the next morning, the concierge had delivered a bright red Donna Karan coat, a pair of leather gloves, and a matching hat and scarf.
And Cal hadn’t stopped there. Over the past three weeks, he’d sent her bouquets of flowers, baskets of fresh fruit and nuts, and bakery boxes full of cupcakes and brownies. He was doing his best to take care of her from nearly three thousand miles away, and she was grateful for his support.
Like everyone on GGB’s executive team, she was reeling from the attacks, and nothing in her academic or professional career had prepared her to deal with a crisis of the magnitude that GGB had suffered.
When she thought about that terrible morning, she found it both ironic and miraculous that her chat with Akash had saved her life. Her unwanted fiancé and his demands had kept her out of harm’s way.
She hadn’t had an opportunity to tell Cal about Akash, but she planned to come clean as soon as she got back to San Francisco. She knew it was going to be an awkward, difficult conversation, and it wasn’t one she wanted to have when they were in different cities.
