Children of Dynasty (6 page)

As he apparently saw Tom’s eyes shift to her in the doorway, Arnold broke off.

Her face warmed as every eye turned to her.

John’s usually equable expression had been replaced by an edgy look. Throughout the rest of the meeting, she chafed at the fact that the subtext of every encounter here was that she was her father’s daughter.

Before John adjourned the gathering, he turned to Mariah. “Could I see you privately?” His voice was soft, but she felt sure everyone heard.

It seemed to take a long time for everyone to file out. Tom threw her a sympathetic look while Arnold appeared barely able to contain his glee. As soon as the door closed, her father rose, slid a hip onto the table, and looked down at her. “What’s this about you and Rory Campbell?”

“What about him?” The heat was back in her cheeks.

“You heard Arnold.”

“I did. Is this the seventh grade?” She hated that the Campbells still had the power to drive a wedge between her and her father.

“It’s a far cry from school days.” He looked chagrined. “I so hoped you and Arnold would get along. He’s our most promising young executive.”

“Considering that most of them are over fifty, he’s your only young manager. Except for me.”

“You are young yet,” John said. “This is the big league, Mariah, and Rory works for the competition.”

“I’m aware of where he works.” Her voice matched the tautness of his. Why was her usually reasonable father unreasonable over the Campbells? “Dad, you don’t act this way about Golden or any of the other competitors. Takei Takayashi has beat you up on bids over the years, and you two play golf at least once a month.”

“Campbell is different,” John insisted. “I saw the look on your face when you spoke of running into Rory at the party.” A muscle worked in the side of his cheek. “Are you seeing him again?”

Bitter laughter burst from her. “One thing I can assure you. I am not seeing Rory Campbell.”

Her father stared at her, the hard look in his gray eyes foreign. She met his gaze without flinching, for she’d told the truth. Finally, he softened. “All right, daughter.”

Leaving the conference room, she noted a baleful glare from Arnold, who was in the hall.

When she got to her office, the phone was ringing. She stepped across the green carpet of the executive floor and answered, “Mariah Grant.”

“Bad time?” Rory asked without identifying himself. Back in the old days, they’d called and just started in talking.

She nearly dropped the receiver. “What are you thinking to call me here?”

“Be kind.” He spoke softly, and she wondered if he was at DCI. “Here I sit, quaking in my boots because I mustered the nerve to dial your number.”

She couldn’t forget watching him escort another woman home. “Did you and Sylvia have a nice weekend?”

“Jealous?” He sounded hopeful.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she blustered, though she recalled too well her flush of outrage at the way the Senator’s daughter had advertised her claim on Rory with ostentatious little touches.

“Forget Sylvia.” His tone was urgent. “Have lunch with me.”

A pulse began to pound, low inside her. Despite assuring her father she wasn’t seeing Rory, she stretched the phone cord and closed her office door. Leaning against it, she imagined the two of them in a secluded restaurant booth.

A light on her telephone blinked. The call came from her father’s office.

“Come on, Mariah,” Rory said.

“Lyle Thomas told me all about you and Sylvia,” she returned. “He’s been catching me up on who’s who in the city.”

“Nobody dishes the dirt better than the D.A.’s own.”

“It wasn’t dirt. He’s promised to show me around, introduce me to people.”

“You’re going out with that guy?”

She wasn’t, but if he wanted to two-time her with Sylvia, let him think she had other things going. “I’ll see whomever I please.”

“How about seeing me?”

She checked her office clock. “I have to be over at Grant Plaza in a little while,” she evaded.

From her window, she could see the rising steel and concrete of the forty-story construction, already dominating the neighborhood north of the Moscone Convention Center. When it was complete, Grant Development would occupy the fortieth story penthouse.

“The elevations are going to be beautiful.” Rory spoke with the appreciation of a fellow builder, but where did he get his information?

“What do you know about Grant Plaza?”

“For Christ’s sake, there was a big article in the
Chronicle
six months ago. Didn’t your father send you a copy?”

She was silent, noting that Dad had apparently given up on calling her.

“I guess I can’t blame you for being wary of me, but I told you before, I’m not involved in corporate spying.” He sounded sincere.

She envisioned the little comma of shining hair that drooped over his forehead. The one that gave the polished man an air of innocence.

“Have lunch with me,” he asked again, quietly. “We’ll go someplace where lots of people will see us together.” He stated it like a vow, the way he’d once promised forever. Something in his voice made her want to believe.

She was tempted, but … “I’ve already been chewed out this morning for talking to you at the Marriott.”

“So, now it’s you who’s afraid of Daddy?”

The challenge she’d thrown him about dancing to his father’s tune sounded different on the receiving end. Maybe it wasn’t as easy as throwing convention aside, especially as she’d given her word she wasn’t seeing Davis Campbell’s son.

“This is insanity,” she told Rory. “I’ve got to go.”

Yet, when she put the phone back into its cradle, she kept her hand on it for a long time.

After a light lunch at her desk, Mariah set out for Grant Plaza. Though she walked briskly, when she turned the last corner and caught sight of the rising spire she stopped on the sidewalk. A man behind her nearly stepped on her heels and muttered something about her not using her brake lights.

Still, she stood gazing up at the partially completed edifice backlit by a crystal sky. The girders and floors were complete, the main electrical conduits in place, and the glass going in. Once the wind no longer swept its uninhibited way through the building, the interiors could be started.

When someone else bumped into her, she shook free of her reverie and hurried on to the site. There she grabbed a hardhat from the main trailer and headed out to find the supervisor.

A group of workers stared at her. A big man with a black beard, his hammer hanging from his belt, murmured, “Mariah Grant.” Her name passed from man to man.

Someone nudged her.

She jumped and turned to find Charley Barrett grinning down at her. “You’re a celebrity.”

“Hardly.” Mariah laughed. “You win the pot last night?”

“Hardly.”

“I take it you two know each other.” Cassie Holden, one of the city’s few female supervisors, fixed them with direct eyes in a sun-beaten face. The close-cropped gray curls peeking from beneath her hardhat said she’d paid her dues.

Charley turned to his boss. “Mariah and I grew up together. Partners in war …”

“He throws a mean clump of green onions,” Mariah agreed. “Sent more than one soldier on the opposite side in tears to tell his mother.”

“Partners in crime, too.” Charley chuckled. “Remember when we knocked out the big window at the dry cleaners with a bottle rocket? I never saw so much broken glass.” She’d escaped with him to Stern Grove, a city preserve near John’s house, and hidden out in the redwoods until after dark.

“Shhh.” She put a finger to her lips in mock embarrassment.

Cassie smiled as the three of them waited for the construction hoist. With a creak and groan, it arrived.

Inside the cage, a glazier with bunched muscles watched over several window panels covered in protective paper. He dipped his head to Cassie. “Special order of smaller panes for the top floor corners. The crane operator’s busy.”

“Go ahead, Andrew,” Cassie agreed.

Charley stuck out a wiry arm and stopped the metal gate. “You can drop me at twenty-seven.”

Mariah stepped forward, but he put out a hand. “Weight limit.” Flashing a smile through the wire mesh, he pushed the button to ascend. “My place tonight. Pizza.”

“Okay.” She’d tell him the latest episode in the saga of her and Rory. Rather than thinking her foolish as she had feared, Charley had listened to the stories of the DCI party and the Marriott with sympathy.

While the hoist rose smoothly up the outside of the building, Mariah craned her neck to follow it. Nothing she imagined could begin to touch the majesty of building a skyscraper.

Above, the car started to slow near the twenty-seventh floor when a sudden sharp crack sounded like a rifle shot. In the same instant, the purring whine came to a halt.

“What’s that?” Mariah squinted up into the midday sun.

The elevator began its descent slowly, but within a second, she realized it was accelerating. A high-pitched whine began, and the frame started an ominous rattle.

“Run!” Cassie ordered.

Mariah tore her gaze from the falling cage and tried to move, but the air seemed to turn to a thick liquid that she swam through. Through the din, she detected the shrill note of screaming. A nearby aluminum shed, set up as a break room, offered the only shelter, but the door was on the opposite side. Out of time, she dove for the space beneath where the shed was propped on cinder blocks.

The loaded hoist smashed into the ground level steel plate. Despite the wire mesh enclosure, shrapnel flew. Although Mariah rolled herself into the small space under the shed, something struck over her left eye.

For what felt like a long time, a cacophonous rain of chunks and splinters hit the ground around her. Her heart raced, so hard she felt sick.

An unnatural silence fell. She listened for the workers’ shouts and imagined everyone staring open-mouthed at the wreckage. In disbelief, she raised her hand and traced a sticky warm wetness on her face. Though the vision in her left eye was blurred, she made out a litter of twisted metal and glass at the base of the building.

Blood spattered the steel frame ten feet in the air.

Rory sat at his drafting table, reviewing a computer plot of an elevation. Normally, he loved envisioning a building he’d conceived, but this afternoon he’d lost focus. As he’d told Mariah, it had taken all his nerve to phone her. Like a fool, he’d thought if he were willing to ignore his father’s wishes, she’d do the same.

His office door opened. “Did you hear?” His secretary babbled.

“Slow down and tell me.” He braced for war news or a report of a terror attack.

Her round face pink, she twisted her hands in her floral print skirt. “The hoist at Grant Plaza fell … killed some people.”

“Good Lord.” Mariah had said …

Leaving his suit coat behind the door, Rory ran through reception and stuck his hand into a six-inch gap to reopen a crowded elevator. The passengers stared owl-eyed. When the car stopped in the lobby, he shoved out through the revolving doors and onto the street.

He ran, heedless that his dress shoes weren’t Nikes. Sweat broke out, and his shirt clung to his back. He ducked around a vending cart selling hotdogs, passed a line of elementary school children on a field trip, and dodged businessmen carrying briefcases. When he turned a corner and saw Grant Plaza on the skyline, he stared at his goal, only to be jerked back to reality by a bicycle courier’s angry shout.

After six blocks, he rushed up to the site and found yellow police tape around it. Without slowing, he lifted the plastic strip and went under. Somebody yelled, but no one stopped his getting to the main construction trailer.

Rory yanked open the door and found a group of hard-hatted men in a heated discussion. One with a black beard was saying, “Zaragoza went up to weld just before, but nobody’s seen him.”

“I saw him on the ground after,” said a blond youth. “Must have come down the stairs.”

The group dynamic perceived an outsider, and they fell silent. A dozen pairs of eyes focused on Rory’s disheveled state.

“Help you, sir?” asked the fellow sitting at a battered desk.