CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Extreme Measures
The events of the last couple of days put me into a dreamy, weightless haze. Food tasted better. The air seemed fresher. Hell, I didn’t even mind the omnipresent heat of the Arizona sun as much. I got back into my work again and found that I rather enjoyed it. Even if there was a slight chance that any dragon I designed would end up in the killing heap at the “farm.”
I wondered how Redwood would execute his plan. He had a lot of options—going to the press, or the in-house counsel, or even the board. The hour or so I’d spent with him still felt like a dream. I reported bits and pieces of it back to Summer, but kept remembering these little details—an offhand comment he’d made, or a funny little machine I’d spotted in the corner of his greatroom—and they never seemed to end.
To her credit, Summer put up with my incessant fangirling. Only once or twice did I catch her in a half eye-roll when I’d say, “Did I tell you what Simon Redwood said about this?”
Of course, I didn’t dare tell anyone at work what I’d done. It wouldn’t take an above-average IQ to connect the dots when he brought the hammer down. I didn’t want to go down in Build-A-Dragon’s history as the guy who tattled to Simon Redwood. So when Wong popped his head over the wall between their offices, I tried to play it cool.
“Noah Parker,” he said, with that infectious grin. “Did you hear the news?”
“What?” I gave him a fleeting glance from the custom I had up on my simulator.
“Simon Redwood is coming to the board meeting.”
“Get out! Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Thursday.”
Redwood wasn’t wasting any time. “Where did you hear this from?”
“Friends.”
Friends meant Wong’s network of Chinese connections in the company. I liked to give him trouble that he seemed to know every Asian person in Phoenix, but sometimes I wondered if that really might be the case.
“Wonder what he wants,” I breathed. And how Greaves will take the news.
Thursday morning, I left my condo earlier than usual to head to work, figuring that the press would make everything chaotic. Redwood’s presence brought them like flies to a picnic. He’d warned me not to contact him before he made his move, or to show any undue interest. Build-A-Dragon monitors everything, he’d said.
Traffic was heavy, but I managed to beat all the news vans downtown. In fact, I didn’t see a single one parked out in front of the building. That seemed a little off. I cracked open the door to the main floor lobby, figuring the crowds must be inside. Cool, dim emptiness awaited me instead. Where was everyone? Surely, I wasn’t the only Redwood fanatic working at the company he’d founded.
I spotted Virginia at the information desk and strolled over to her. “Did they move the press conference, or—” I trailed off when she looked up at me. Her eyes were moist and red-rimmed. A single tear traced a translucent streak in her normally perfect makeup. “Oh, what’s wrong?”
“I was supposed to meet him today,” she whispered.
“Meet who?”
She dropped her eyes to a wooden cube on top of her desk. It was about four inches to a side. Inside its thick wooden frame, a ball bearing danced in perpetual circles between two conical magnets. Balanced Infinity. That was the name of the child’s puzzle, and I recognized it because I’d memorized every one of Simon Redwood’s inventions.
A chill of uncertain dread crept down my spine as it all came together: the lack of media, the empty vans, the somber pretty redhead. Oh, no.
“What happened?” I croaked.
“There was a fire at his house.”
I wondered if she was having a stroke, or maybe I was having a stroke, because her words made no sense. “When?”
“Last night.” She sniffed and dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue. “They said it was the wiring or something.”
Bullshit. I’d been to Redwood’s house. That guy could have done the wiring on an F-15 if he wanted to. And if he did, it would fly better than the current F-15 did. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“Well . . . is he all right?”
She let out a little sob and shook her head. “They’re still searching, but the place burned to the ground.”
Oh my God, the house. There went the jetpack, and who knows how many other Simon Redwood inventions? Damn it all. What a waste.
This wasn’t a freak house fire. I knew damn well that someone got word of his plans and took action before he could make the fight public. The grim realization knocked the wind out of me. I leaned against the information desk, too shaken to move.
“It’s not fair.” I whispered.
Virginia said nothing, but sobbed softly, her slender little frame trembling. I sagged against the cold steel of her reception desk. My legs didn’t have the strength to find the elevator, even if I wanted to. Which I absolutely did not.
When Virginia’s phone rang, I sucked in a breath and turned tail for the parking garage. They can charge me a personal day. I don’t give a shit.
My childhood hero was gone, taking so many of his wonderful creations with him. Even worse, the best chance of righting all the wrongs at Build-A-Dragon had been cut away.
And I couldn’t help but think that it might be my fault.
% % %
I don’t remember giving my Tesla the destination, but it took me to my mom’s house anyway. She was at work, of course, it being mid-morning on a Thursday. But Connor was home. The door buzzed open even before I could ring the doorbell. He must have been watching the cameras, must have known I was coming. I’d have known it, too, in his shoes. Call it some kind of brotherly intuition.
I found him in the living room, sprawled out on a chair, still in his pajamas. The wheelchair sat beside him. A set of medical monitors glowed on a portable nearby. That was new. His face looked like I felt. Bewildered, exhausted, and angry at the world.
He already knows. “Hey,” I said.
He gestured at the projection screen, which had four news channels running at once. Three of them were on mute. The one with volume showed Casey Quinn, the beauty-queen anchorwoman for channel five, her face schooled to somberness. “On a sadder note, Phoenix lost a visionary inventor today. Simon Redwood is believed to have passed away tragically in a fire at his home.”
“Oh, damn.” I wasn’t sure I could stomach hearing about this again.
“You believe this shit?”
“I know, man. It’s messed up.”
Casey continued, “We’re being told from a source close to Redwood that old wiring sparked the three-alarm blaze, which left his mansion in absolute rubble.”
Connor muted her and shook his head. “That’s crap. Redwood never does anything less than perfect.”
“He could have run the NSA from that house.” I sensed the hand of Build-A-Dragon’s powerful PR department once again. Spinning the story. Turning the unpalatable tragedy into an understandable accident. The type of thing that could happen to anybody. But this wasn’t just anybody. This was the white knight who was going to turn it all around. More legend than man. Untouchable, or so I’d thought.
“So what happened?” Connor asked. “I thought you were going to try to talk to him.”
“Oh, I talked to him. Right after some of his dragons nearly ripped my face off.”
He sat up straighter. “You met Simon Redwood?”
I pointed at the screen, which showed news-drone footage of Redwood’s mansion before it had burned. “In that house.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. That’s where we hatched the plan.”
“What was he going to do?”
“He called a meeting with the board.” I shrugged. “I guess he was going to confront Greaves about the desert facility.”
“Christ. No wonder they had him killed,” Connor said.
Hearing that brought a chill to my guts. I’d dismissed the fire as a likely cover story without really thinking it through. Someone had killed him and set the blaze to cover their tracks. Someone with a lot to lose. Someone like Robert Greaves. Well, no, the rich and powerful didn’t get their own hands dirty. They had people for that. People like Ben Fulton’s faceless security goons.
“Of course, there is an alternative explanation,” Connor said.
I’d have given anything for a new narrative about what happened to my hero. “What would that be?”
“You went to his house, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. So?”
The corner of his lips twitched, as if he were fighting a smile. “Well, you’re a little clumsy sometimes, so it’s possible that . . .” he gestured as if for me to fill in the blanks. “You know.”
I gave him a flat look. “I did not start the fire that killed Simon Redwood.”
“Can we know that for absolute certainty, though?”
“Oh my God.” I laughed, because the sheer ridiculousness of it all was just too much.
“Seriously, man, what’s going to happen now?”
I shrugged. “I guess they’ll get away with it.”
He pointed at me. “You could say something.”
“Oh, because that went so well for Redwood.”
“Redwood called a public meeting. They saw him coming.”
He had a point. Redwood had a brilliant mind for invention, but human interaction wasn’t his strongest suit. Still, the guy had serious clout. “I’m just a cog in the machine.” An idea struck then. A crazy, foolish idea. “You may have stumbled on a good point, though.”
“Which is what?”
“Well, accidents do tend to happen around me.”
He pursed his lips, as if giving the idea serious consideration. “An accident at the right place and time could be most inconvenient for some people.”
“And the best part is, I can probably play dumb,” I said.
“Definitely.” Connor kept his voice casual. “I mean, for you, it’s not really an act.”