A Deeper Dimension (6 page)

As she pulled the curtain cord, she became aware of Alex standing right behind her and looking over her shoulder. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember how she knew that he was there, for he never touched her in any way. Some sixth sense warned her and she looked back over her shoulder at him.

“It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?” he said softly as he looked out over the city. “At night I can almost feel as if I’m on top of a mountain looking out over all of civilisation, just watching the lights winking and blinking all through the night.” He smiled a wry, twisted smile as he glanced down at her still and listening face. “Of course all I have to do is to look up around me at the walls of my apartment confining me and the illusion is lost. But sometimes I don’t look around me.”

Diana looked back over the city and imagined what it would feel like to be on a mountain. She said flatly, “I can’t picture it. I’ve never been on top of a mountain in my entire life. This has got to be the highest I’ve ever been, except for flying in a plane, and I’ve always taken afternoon flights.”

Alex shook his head. “Honey, have you missed out on a lot of living! There’s nothing like the feel of climbing your last, dirty, aching tired step to stand up and look over all you’ve climbed and attained. The view is best when you have to sweat for it.”

Diana laughed lightly and swung away from the window to go and sit on the comfortable sofa. She shook her head at him as she scoffed, “Men! They’re all alike. Why do men like to climb mountains so much? I think it has something to do with the macho image that all men think they have to project for all females!” She chuckled as she teased him.

He began to smile at her sexist remarks. “There are plenty of women mountain climbers, you know, and not every man likes that particular challenge. Besides, haven’t you climbed your own personal mountain, attained your own personal goal when you qualified for your degree? It’s the same thing.”

“Whoa!” She held up her hands as she stopped Alex’s flow of words. “You, sir, are getting entirely too symbolic for this conversation. No—all right, I take back the ‘sir’. But what I’d like to know is what happened to our light and meaningless conversation when I was being a chauvinistic and sexist pig? Now, that was fun.”

Alex was laughing at her as she spoke. “That’s what I like—a female chauvinist,” he chuckled. “Makes a nice change from the usual.”

As he turned to go to his room to change, the telephone rang. Stopping in midstride, he swivelled to walk back to the coffee table where the phone was and picked it up.

“Alex Mason,” he said shortly. Diana looked at the expression on his face as he listened and was alarmed to see his face change, grow harder, and his eyebrows came down into a thunderous frown.

“When?” he snapped. There was a short pause while he listened to the other person on the phone, then he replied, “I’ll be right there,” and hung up.

They looked at each other from across the room. She asked, “Trouble?” He nodded.

Chapter Three

Alex and Diana broke the speed limit in their haste to reach the office. On the way, he told her what little was told to him by Carrie, who had been the caller.

“Apparently the Philadelphia foundry was nearly burned down last night. Arson is the cause. If it hadn’t been such a bungling attempt, the bastards just might have made it.” Alex spoke through clenched teeth. His face appeared to be all angles, and his skin was drawn tightly over the bone. Blue fire glittered in his eyes as he made an attempt to control his rage.

Diana was stunned. “Why?” she whispered. “Who would hate you or Mason Steel so much as to want to destroy a whole foundry?”

“God, I wish I knew,” he muttered. They had just pulled up into the parking lot of Mason Steel, and he sat with his hands still gripping the steering wheel, the knuckle bones showing white. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

She repeated his words as if they bothered her: “‘Doesn’t make any sense.’ Why would something like that happen if it doesn’t make any sense? Why would the factory workers go on strike if it didn’t have any sensible basis?”

Sitting very still, Alex looked as if he’d been hit. “And why,” he concluded, “would Nelson’s people refuse to deal with what should appear to be a firm and reliable business?” His eyes narrowed. “Everything is so illogical until you put it all together. Then a very ugly pattern starts to emerge. It could all be on purpose. But that leads us back to—why?”

They both got out of the car, moving absentmindedly as each mulled over the problem in their minds. “It’s like an attempted murder,” she shivered. Alex put his arm around her shoulders as they both walked towards the building.

Alex was thinking very hard. “Murder,” he repeated, mulling over the word. “Murder has a motive. Most murders are committed by people who knew their victim. Most are committed in a fit of passion.”

“Something this deliberate has to have a motive,” she agreed. As he removed his arm to open the glass door, she preceded him, still talking. “Could revenge be the motive?”

Shaking his head, he replied, “I’ve done nothing to anyone aside from taking away a few customers from Derrick Payne, the other big steel manufacturer in this part of the country. God knows he has no reason to love me for it, but revenge? I’d say that’s a bit strong.”

“Strike revenge. How about fear?” she asked.

“Fear doesn’t make any sense. Who would fear me? I’m not spiteful or cruel, and have no secrets in my sordid past to conceal.”

“Okay, so we scratch fear. What about hate?”

“Hate is an interesting emotion,” he said thoughtfully. “There’s such a fine line between hate and love, each bearing intense emotion, each directed to someone who is close or has been in the past. Once you pass that line between love and hate, there’s no going back to the original emotion.”

By now they had reached the offices on the top floor. “It’s simple,” said Diana, going in through the door first again. “There’s no purpose to this madness. You and I are becoming paranoid. There is no diabolical hand in this mess-up, and Mason Steel is just having a bad week.”

“Now that’s the most far-fetched of all the ideas,” he sighed. “Murphy’s law is not this bizarre.”

“So, where do we start over?” she spread her hands in perplexity. She had suggested everything she could think of.

Alex shook his head and turned towards Carrie. She was seated behind her desk and turned an anxious face towards them. “Anything new come up?” he asked quietly.

Carrie looked down at her memo pad and spoke. “Mike Shubart called again to confirm that it was a professional arson attempt. If it hadn’t been for Mike going back last night to pick up a jacket that he’d forgotten, the whole thing would be ashes right now.” She shook her head. “Lady luck was with us last night.”

“I know, Carrie,” Alex replied. “I know. Have they figured up how much damage was done?”

“It was pretty minimal, except for a few electricity circuits. They were damaged pretty badly. Also the telephones in the whole place are out. The fire burned the main lines. Mike said that the insurance agent will be going over tonight in the early evening to inspect the damages. He wanted to know if you could come over for the night and be there for when the agent comes. He also thought you would like to see for yourself what was done.”

“He’s right, I would,” Alex affirmed. Blowing a soundless whistle for a moment as he thought, he came to a decision. “Find out if you can get me a flight to Philadelphia by late afternoon. If you can’t that soon, then we’ll have to charter a plane. Also, get Owen on the phone for me. I want to talk to him. Diana—would you cancel any appointments that I have this afternoon and tomorrow morning? Use the phone in the room across the hall. After you’ve finished that, come back in here. We’ve got some planning to do.”

With those orders dispatched, he pivoted on his heel and disappeared into the other room. Diana grabbed the appointments schedule and left Carrie beginning to dial her phone.

It took her several minutes to reach everyone on the schedule book. Afterwards, she went quickly back to the other offices. As she passed Carrie’s desk, Carrie called to her, “Tell him a plane is chartered for four-thirty this afternoon.”

Diana waved a hand and pushed the door open. Alex was still talking on the phone. “…I still think it’s too crazy. She couldn’t have that much feeling for somebody else,” he argued.

Diana went to her desk and set the appointments schedule down, and sat in her chair quietly waiting. She wondered who they were talking about. Alex listened for a few more minutes and then spoke again.

“Owen, she may be a bitch, but that doesn’t mean she would be so malicious as to try a stunt like arson!” he snapped. Pausing to listen again, his eyes strayed to Diana’s, but he was not seeing her. “All right, I’ll leave you to look into it. I’ll give you a call later.” He hung up.

“Does Owen think he’s got a possibility for who could have done it?” she asked. Alex’s eyes focused on her and he was silent for a moment.

“He seems to think so,” he replied shortly. “Personally, I don’t think Alicia feels anything for anyone but herself. I can’t see how she could care to do something so vengeful.”

Diana prudently said nothing, and after a little silence, Alex became brisk. “Did Carrie manage to get me a flight?” he asked.

“She chartered a plane for you for four-thirty,” she replied.

He looked at the clock. “Well, that doesn’t leave much time for us to get everything done, does it? Let’s get started with the price estimates.”

They worked quickly and efficiently, each already used to the other’s method of thinking, and each complimenting the other’s output. Alex’s mind worked so fast that Diana was tasked to the utmost of her ability, but she somehow managed to keep up with his pace, although realising that it was a pace that she could not sustain for long.

They did not break for lunch, but worked on through the afternoon until three-thirty. Then, flexing his cramped shoulder muscles, Alex called a halt.

“I need to go and throw a few
things in my overnight case,” he sighed. “You can leave whenever you finish plotting that chart for our accountants.”

Looking up, Diana asked, “Do you need a ride to the airport again?”

“Thanks, no. I’m going to drive my own car to the apartment and get a taxi to the airport,” he replied. “You have enough to do with that on your desk as it is. However, I might like to be picked up tomorrow whenever I get back. Could you do that?”

“Sure,” she affirmed. “Just call me tomorrow at my apartment or later on at work, and let me know when.”

“Sounds good. I’m going to take off now. I don’t think you’ll be able to reach me at the factory, because the lines are out, but I’ll call and leave my hotel number.”

She nodded; it was what she had expected. She only hoped that nothing would happen while he was at the foundry. Alex stood looking at her with a strange expression on his face, studying her with an odd intensity, while she sat with her head bent over the chart. He sighed heavily, and she looked up, but now he was gazing out of the window.

“I hate to go, to always be leaving,” he said in a low voice. She sat very still and listened. “Very soon, I’m going to be slowing down a little, taking things a little easier. For nine years I’ve been rushing around like a cat with his tail on fire, never stopping, never slowing, always pushing to meet
this
deadline and get ahead on
that
one. Diana,” he shook his head at her, “I’ve had it. This is how people get ulcers and high blood pressure and have heart attacks while they’re still young. Maybe I just had to prove something, prove that I could win against the odds, make my own fortune. Now, I’m just tired.” He put his hands up to the back of his neck and rubbed.

Diana put her hands on her desk and looked at them. Wasn’t that how they all were? Racing around, always proving something, always looking to the goals ahead and the achievements to be, never savouring the moment that is. Time, she thought, I’ve wasted so much time. She looked up at Alex and her vision was blurred.

Alex was horrified to see the unnatural glitter of tears in Diana’s eyes. He looked away and spoke lightly to give her time to get control of herself again, “When I get back from Philadelphia, we’re going to have a picnic somewhere in the woods, just you and I. We’ll forget that Mason Steel, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia even exist. All right?”

Sniffing a little, she threw her head back and laughed, albeit rather unsteadily. “All right,” she agreed.

Swiftly glancing at the clock on his desk, he went over to her and kissed her on the forehead, saying, “Be good. Call you tomorrow.”

“Yes.” She watched him leave.

Wanting to get her work done as soon as possible, she didn’t stop at all, oblivious of the dimming of the afternoon light. She didn’t hear the door open or the footsteps until Carrie spoke right by her shoulder.

“Coffee?” Carrie asked. Diana jumped, and Carrie laughed to see the expression on her face. Diana chuckled a little too.

“Sure, I’d appreciate it,” she acknowledged.

A few minutes later, Carrie was back in the room carrying two steaming cups. Handing one to Diana, she moved over to one of the armchairs, pulled it around and sank down into it.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Carrie sighed. She started to laugh. “When I started to work here, it took me three weeks of telling myself that soon things would slow down to normal, before I realised that this
is
the normal!”