Judgement By Fire

Judgement By Fire

First Edition: © Glenys O’Connell, 2009

Second Edition: © Glenys O’Connell, 2013

Cover Art By:
Tugboat Design
www.tugboatdesign.net

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations,
institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the
product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The
resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely
coincidental.

This book an undated version of the first issue in 2009.

Novels

Saving Maggie
(Crimson Romance)

Resort to Murder (The Wild Rose Press)

Marrying Money (Coming April 2013)

Winters & Somers (Coming March 2013)

Children's
Books:

The Pebble People Save the Day (Pebble
People Productions UK)

The Pebble People and the Lost Hero
(Coming Soon)

The Pebble People Make a Garden (Pebble
People Productions UK)

Rosie & the Spaceship
(StorySomething)

If Lennie Didn't Do it, Who Did? (Coming
Soon)

Non-Fiction
Books

Naked Writing: The No Frills Way to Write
Your Book

PTSD: The Essential Guide (Need2Know
Books UK)

Depression: The Essential Guide (Need2Know
Books UK)

CultureWise Ireland

Plays

Ciara's Coming Home

(winner of awards in the All Ireland
One-Act Plays Festival 2003 &

Winner of the Award for Drama in the 2011
Oireachtas Gaeilge Cheanada).

The Clock

“Damn it,
Warren, surely you can come up with something better than this?” Jon Rush,
president of one of Canada’s largest independent business conglomerates, glared
at the man who faced him across the cluttered mahogany desktop.

“I pay you for
facts, not fairy tales. You’ve taken a whole series of unrelated events and
turned them into some kind of soap opera plot!” Jon ran his fingers through his
thick blond hair in a characteristic gesture of frustration.

It was the
gesture the heavyset black man across the desk had been waiting for. Warren
Dillon, chief of security for Rush Co., was one of the few men who knew Jon
Rush well enough not to be intimidated in the face of his anger. Their
friendship went back a long way, back to the dark days of their tour of duty in
the burning deserts of the Persian Gulf, where the privileged son of a Canadian
industrialist and the angry young black youth from the Southside slums of
Chicago had forged a lasting friendship.

Coolly, Dillon
watched as Jon Rush slammed down the thick red file folder causing a small
blizzard of papers to break loose from their untidy stacks on the desk. Then he
let out a heavy sigh and, leaning forward in his leather-covered chair, began
speaking slowly and quietly, punctuating his words with a stabbing forefinger.

“Jon, your
problem is you just won’t believe anyone would betray Rush Co. from the inside.
Didn’t you learn anything in the Gulf? You’ve said it yourself - everyone has
their price.” He paused for a moment, waiting for Jon’s face to react as the
words sank in, and then continued in the same deep, intense tone.

“Even you have
to admit that Rush Co. is in trouble. We’ve gone from being the golden-haired
boy of the stock market to a walking crisis center in just a few months.  Do
you really believe that’s just bad luck? Well, do you? Or would you rather own
up to jackass management?”

“What the…?”
Jon erupted, but Dillon barreled on inexorably right over his boss’s outburst.

“Okay, the
computer glitch that screwed up last month’s orders and stopped delivery to
some of our biggest customers in the construction division? Sure, that could
have been a bug on the line. But the major fire at our plant in Sarnia - was
that really a freak lightning strike? The ruptured pipeline in Oshawa, the one
that could have killed God knows how many people and wiped this company out?
Was that just another accident? How many of these ‘Acts of God’ are you going
to take before you’ll at least consider something else?”

Jon sank back
in his chair; his blue eyes bleak on the security chief’s face. If there was
one man in this world Jon Rush trusted, it was Warren Dillon - with his life,
if need be. He had done exactly that in the past. And yet...

“Okay, let's
get this straight. What you’re saying is that someone in this organization -
someone very high up with access to the necessary data - is
deliberately
trying to destroy this company?” Jon Rush spoke with a calm that belied the red
flush of anger across his tanned cheekbones. “Warren, we’re talking about
people I’ve known for years, many of them are people who worked for my father!”

Dillon was
clearly unmoved. He pointed his forefinger at his boss. “Look, Jon, I might
have dismissed these incidents as accidents, too, or at worst I’d have thought
them the work of outsiders if sabotage had been proven. But how do you explain
the unidentified calls that cancelled orders for the material we needed
urgently for the Parry Sound hotel construction project when we were so far
behind we were already facing contract penalties? 

“And how come
Glencoe Oil was able to outbid us on those western options? Explain that. That
was after an unsubstantiated rumor started a labor stoppage at our Tiverton
field and dropped our shares two points?”

Jon held up
his hand as if to stop the reiteration of the troubles that had dogged the
corporation’s major interests for the past six months. Like it or not, common
sense told him that Dillon was right. Any one of these seemingly random events
alone could have been just bad luck or lousy planning. But taken together, what
did they mean? Jon’s mind veered away from the possibilities his security chief
was now baldly outlining.

But again
Dillon broke relentlessly into his thoughts. “Just tell me you’ll think about
the recommendations in this file, Jon. We’re talking about some discreet
surveillance. That’s all. If we find nothing, then, okay, I’m wrong and there’s
no harm done.”

“Really? No
harm done?” said Jon sarcastically. His big fist landed heavily on the desk.
“Do you honestly think we can keep a thing like this secret? How will our
people react to the suspicion, to not knowing if colleagues they’ve worked with
for years can be trusted? To knowing that each and every person’s loyalty is
being questioned? I’m asking you how, Dillon? You know, my father built this
company on loyalty and trust, the kinds of things your ‘discreet surveillance’
would destroy!”

Dillon’s eyes
rolled in the direction of the white stuccoed ceiling with its recessed
lighting.

Jon ignored
the irreverent gesture and continued. “Just how long do you think we can do
that before we start to destroy ourselves?” He was leaning forward now, his
broad shoulders straining the cloth of his fine gray woolen suit jacket.

“And how long
before we’re destroyed anyway?” Dillon shot back. “Jon, do you think your
father would have sat back while someone betrayed the trust he’d placed in
them? He fought like hell to push Rush Co. to the top - he wouldn’t have
watched it crumble to avoid hurting someone’s feelings!”

Dillon knew
from the sudden tightening of his friend’s face that his reference to the dead
founder’s name and reputation had hit a nerve where previous logic had failed
to penetrate. He decided to play his trump card. As Jon glared in angry
silence, Dillon pulled a folded newspaper from the polished leather attaché
case that stood open at his feet.

It was the business section of
that day’s
Globe and Mail
, the self-styled national newspaper of Canada.
He calculated that Jon had not yet had time to read the paper. Dillon’s face
was grim as he carefully pushed the strategically opened section across the
desk and waited for a reaction.

He didn’t have
to wait long. Dillon knew by the livid white line around Jon’s tightly drawn
lips that his boss was already absorbing the import of the article with its
provocative headline:

Rush
Co. To Build Millionaires’ Health Spa in

Remote West River
Hamlet?

The headline
was insolently rhetorical and Jon’s muttered expletives told Dillon his earlier
guess had been correct and this was no company press release designed to
titillate potential investors and intrigue the public. Dillon threw a beefy arm
over the rich brown leather of the chair back, straining the elegant cut of his
dark pin-striped suit jacket, and ruminated on the newspaper contents and their
implications as his boss furiously went line by line through the damning news
article.

The newspaper
report had an authoritative tone to it, Dillon realized. It quoted “unnamed
sources” at the company and carried far too many details of Rush Co.’s hotel
division’s most recent and most delicate expansion plans - details the company
hadn’t made public.

On the brink
of launching a major grab for a large slice of the increasingly lucrative
luxury health and fitness market, the company had been searching for a very
specific setting to create a luxuriously special ambience for a very rich and
very discerning international clientele. One of the favored locations was a
l9th century “castle” built by an eccentric Victorian millionaire on the shores
of Lake Ontario in a remote eastern part of the Canadian province of Ontario.

It had the
advantages of unspoiled beauty and 300 acres of woodland and gardens to provide
privacy – as well as being little more than a three hour drive from the
provincial capital and national business center of Toronto and slightly less
than that from the national capital of Ottawa.

But no
decision had been made yet, as the company’s special projects branch was still
investigating the potential of several sites. Yet the newspaper article had now
revealed these close-kept expansion plans to the company’s competitors – a
serious disadvantage in a market where competition was cutthroat.

Before such
plans were announced, especially those involving a specific site, companies
first tried to cover every base, such as health, safety, community, and
economic perspectives. This saved everyone from nasty surprises and presented a
complete and attractive package to the public at the right time, as well as
allowing the company to take their competitors by surprise and show they were
way ahead of the game.

*
* *

Unless, of
course, such plans were announced prematurely. Then the public was treated to
the spectacle of a corporate giant caught with its pants down.
Like Rush Co.
and the West River Project
.

 Jon didn’t
like the feeling of his company’s exposure one little bit. Damn! Pressing the
intercom, he asked Stephen Rush, vice-president for Avalon Hospitality Inc.,
the conglomerate’s hotel division, and Jon’s own cousin, to step into his
office.

Without
pausing for social niceties, he tossed the newspaper article across the desk at
his cousin the moment he walked in the door.

“I didn’t know
we’d made a decision yet on West River,” Jon ground out, his anger barely in
check as he waited for the vice-president’s reaction.

Stephen’s brow
furrowed as he read the article, then he slammed the paper down on the desk. “I
know nothing about this,” he declared, “but by God, if it was leaked from
anyone on my staff, then heads will roll as soon as I find out who they are.”

Jon’s face was
still rigid with anger as he turned to his security chief. “I think we need to
get this sorted out, Warren. Do it. Bring me proof, if you can. You’d better
also make alternative inquiries—on computer hackers, for example. If you’re
right, if someone in our top administration is trying to destroy us, I’ll have
his hide.”