The Firefighter's Match (6 page)

“But the show told us it was probably equipment failure. Your equipment? Is that why you’re staying so close and being so friendly? You keep saying how badly you feel about the whole thing.”

“JJ, it’s just not that simple. SpiderSilk was an experimental product, yes, but it had been tested to thousands of pounds of force so we don’t yet know what happened. My brother, Sam, approved the use because he believed he was giving
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a solid prototype.” The words tasted bitter and hollow in his mouth. It was Sam’s style to offer up convenient half-truths, not his.

Her eyes narrowed. “You are the worst kind of liar.”

She’d seen right through his doubts. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“But not all of it.” She stood up. “Really, I was hoping for better out of you. Or was all that on the dock just another sales job?”

Alex planted himself between JJ and the chapel door. “Hey, look, the truth—the
full
truth—is that I don’t know enough yet to be able to tell you for certain. Sam was using SpiderSilk, and that’s not a retail product yet. We didn’t give it to the show to use. They were supposed to be examining it for the next season once we were a hundred percent sure it was market ready. But it has been tested extensively. It shouldn’t have failed under the conditions
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used it. We’re not even sure the SpiderSilk is what failed. I can’t give you a definitive explanation right now, even though I know you want one. But I’m not here because of that. I’m here because I want to help you. And part of that means giving you the most accurate facts I can. Seems to me the last thing you need right now is wrong information.”

“Oh, and you’re an expert on what I need.” She turned and picked up her sweater off the pew.

“I’m not claiming to be an expert. I’m just trying to do what I can. Your focus is exactly where it should be—on Max’s treatment and his recovery process. Anything else can wait until we’ve had a chance to figure out exactly what happened.” He sighed. “It’s not as simple as bad ropes—we hadn’t trained any of the techs at
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on how to use SpiderSilk. They didn’t have the recommended belay devices. They undid the rigging so we can’t see what knots they used. So we honestly don’t know whether it was a failure of SpiderSilk that caused Max’s fall. At least not yet.”

“I don’t think Max much cares about that right now.” Her eyes filled with hurt. “How long have you known it could have been the...” She waved her hands in the air, reaching for the brand name Alex had always found so unforgettable.

“SpiderSilk?”

“Yes. How long have you known he fell using that? Have you known
this whole time?
” Her tone on those last three words just about broke Alex’s heart.

“I meant what I said—I don’t know anything for certain yet. All I know is that my brother gave
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permission to climb with SpiderSilk under certain conditions, complete with waivers that Max agreed to sign. But maybe I can know more soon. We managed to get some of the lines from
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so we can examine them. Our technician got in yesterday and he’s going over all the equipment—not just the SpiderSilk but everything Max was using when he fell.”

JJ shoved one arm through the sleeve of her sweater. It was July, but the hospital seemed to house a sterile chill in every room. “You didn’t answer my question. How long have you known?”

She glared at him, and Alex knew every aspect of how they treated each other from here on in would hinge on what he said next. “I’ve known it was a possibility since a little while after we got here.”

Something shut in her eyes. Alex’s skin prickled at the defensive posture that seemed to overtake her body. If a person could have inner armor, he’d just seen it lock down tight. Without a word—but with a message so clear it made a hollow hole in his chest—she left the room.

Chapter Six

“W
ait, now?” Sam barked over the phone. “You’re coming to Denver
now?
”

Alex handed his passport to the security officer. The thing was so bedraggled and covered in stamps it never ceased to cause stares.

“You know,” Alex said as he tossed his bag onto the conveyor belt and began emptying his pockets into a plastic bin. “You might want to be thankful my plane’s going to Denver and not Fiji. If you wanted to convince me I’m done with AG, you’re coming really close to succeeding.”

“We had a plan. We’d decided you were going to stay there. You were supposed to...” Alex didn’t hear anything else as he jabbed the power button on his phone with an angry grunt and tossed it into the screening bin, too. They’d had a plan? Alex hadn’t felt like they’d been running AG on the same plan for months. The team excitement, the rush of partnership—all that was gone. Picking his wallet and keys back up on the other side of the security screening, his eye caught the departure display above him listing a flight to Singapore. The urge to run surged up with a power that astonished him.

Just go. Leave it all behind. You’ve lost your way and you won’t find it in Denver. Go far. Far.

Distance called to him like the antidote to everything that was too close and too tight. For one irrational second, Alex thought about “forgetting” his phone in the little plastic bin and just walking away from everything.

But Max couldn’t walk away from anything now. This problem was too big to discard. And although it sounded wonderful, even Singapore’s misted mountains wouldn’t wipe the last look JJ had given him from his memory. No, that look burned at him every time he closed his eyes. He had promised to leave when she told him to go, and she had clearly told him to leave when she walked out of the chapel. It was better for everyone if he went back to the office in Denver and tried to see what could be done. He should have been glad to be getting out of ground zero for this disaster.

He wasn’t. Not in the least.

Instead, Alex slumped into an AG van at the Denver airport hours later feeling twice as exhausted as when he took off. He might as well have never left Chicago because JJ followed him everywhere. On the plane, he’d encountered a hundred reminders of her. That scarf was the color of her eyes, this magazine article had her tone of voice, a pair of children down the aisle made him wonder what Max and JJ had been like as youngsters. Alex’s gift for geographically stuffing miles between himself and problems had always worked—until now. Now the farther he ran, the closer she felt. It was making him nuts.

“Red Rocks.”

“Sir?” The driver turned to look at him, stumped by the request to visit Denver’s outdoor amphitheater.

“Take me to Red Rocks.”

It bothered Alex that he didn’t recognize the driver’s face—there was a time he’d known every AG employee by name. Not all the sales staff in all the stores, of course, but everyone out here at the national office.

“I don’t think there’s anything going on there today,” the driver said. “Don’t you want to go see Mr. Cushman—I mean, the
other
Mr. Cushman? Drop your bags at the office or your apartment or something?”

All of those places felt entirely too tight at the moment. Alex needed space. Sky. Sun. The spectacle of God’s palette. He peered at the driver’s name tag. “Rory?”

“Yes, Mr. Cushman?”

“I just need an hour at Red Rocks. Where do you like to eat?”

Rory, still baffled, rattled off two or three fast-food burger joints.

“Stop at the first one you see and I’ll buy lunch for both of us. You’ll get an hour’s paid lunch while you wait for me at Red Rocks. Work for you?”

Rory looked like he’d just been asked to disobey orders.

“An hour, Rory. Then you can deliver me to AG like you’ve been told.”

A guilty look flashed across the young man’s face. “They said you were kind of crazy.”

Kind of crazy? People used to call him a visionary. His passion for what AG did used to light up a room of sales managers. What was crazy was how things had spun out of control to the point they had. “Not today, just hungry.”

Rory put the van in gear. “Whatever you say, Mr. Cushman.”

* * *

The burger sat untouched on the top row of benches in the massive outdoor amphitheater. A few visitors joined Alex in the sweeping rows of benches, tourists snapping photos of the slabs of red rock that jutted into the sky and gave the theater its name. The occasional athlete ran up and down the steps—a killer workout Alex’s knees could no longer manage. It was hot, but Alex welcomed the sensation after so much time in the cool sterile hospital and airport atmosphere. For whatever reason, Red Rocks had always been where he went to think. Just far enough from the office to feel “away,” and just close enough to provide an easy escape. Sometimes he’d walk the rows of bench seats as if it were a labyrinth, considering problems as he mounted steps. He could always see a solution from the top, but today he just sat still, willing the space and light to bring him some kind of calm.

Where is my fault in this, Lord? What could I have done that would have Max Jones walking today? Is this the unavoidable fate of an AG that climbed too far too fast?
He’d never been the kind of guy to feel guilty—sometimes even about things he ought to regret—and this wave of doubt and remorse had him reeling. Every time he sat still waiting for answers, all he’d end up with was another pile of disturbing questions.

“Not hungry?”

Alex looked up, startled to hear the familiar Italian accent. “What are you doing here?” Doc was supposed to be doing equipment forensics in Illinois, not standing over him in Denver.

Doc sat down, immediately poking through the bag and pulling out a handful of French fries. “I brought the equipment here. Better tools, less nervous television people.” He narrowed one eye. “But more Samuel.” He bit into a fry. “Your brother is in a panic.”

Alex picked up the drink he’d left untouched, suddenly thirsty. “When isn’t Sam in a panic?”

“Ah, but this one, he deserves.”

Doc’s tone sent a shock of ice down Alex’s spine despite the strong sun. “Meaning?”

Fishing in his pocket, Doc pulled out a sheet of paper and unfolded it onto the bench between them. “SpiderSilk is at fault. Not entirely at fault, but at fault just the same.”

“Want to explain what that means?”

Doc leaned back on his elbows. “The situation was badly handled. SpiderSilk is much lighter and thinner than our other lines. The belay devices they used aren’t what we would have specified, and the fact that it was nighttime and raining made things worse. If you ask me, they never should have attempted the rappel down the wall under those conditions with any line, much less an untested prototype. And your Mr. Jones was not taking the time a smart climber would under the circumstances. Those things turned a small problem with the fiber into a big one.”

Alex’s throat went dry. “The fiber...”

“We test for lots of things, but we had not yet started testing for lots of things together.” Doc ran his hands down a series of equations Alex knew were tension test results, fiber composition diagrams and other such calculations. “As it turns out, the right combination of friction, moisture and carelessness can compromise this fiber if you put multiple surges of force on it.”

“Like a daredevil contestant wanting to make a spectacular landing for the television cameras.”

Doc nodded. “You know Samuel is not my favorite Cushman,” he began, quoting an old joke between him and Alex, “but in his defense, what
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did with the rigging isn’t anything close to what they told your brother they would be doing. It was a risky but reasonable scenario the way they first described it. Had it been up to me, I still would have said no, but...”

“But Sam should have known you can’t count on people like that to stick to plans. Wind, rain, night climb—all they could see was a riveting drama that would make great television. Of course the safer plan got thrown out when a more exciting opportunity presented itself. It was bound to happen. Why am I the only Cushman who could see that?”

“Because you are not Samuel. And Samuel is not you. Samuel finds the deal and makes the deal. You see the experience, the product, the person.” Doc had a bad habit of waxing philosophical at the wrong moment. He always blamed it on his Italian blood, but Alex thought it more a product of personality than genealogy.

“I don’t see much of anything right now but disaster.”

Doc looked at him, his dark eyebrows furrowing in analysis. Alex was none too fond of having that scrutiny turned to him. “It is a disaster,” Doc replied. “A man can no longer walk.” He paused, clearly waiting for something from Alex.

“Yes.” Alex agreed. “I know. That’s why I came back to Denver to solve this.”

“Ah, but
why
did you come back to Denver? I expected to find you in Dubai this morning, not Denver. The Alexander I know would be halfway around the world by now.”

“You need me here.”

Doc was one of those people who could spot an evasion from a mile off. It was an infuriating trait, but his eye for minute detail was what made him such a great product development researcher. He said nothing, only popped another fry into his mouth while he produced what Alex and Sam had come to call “Doc’s Eyes of Death.”

Alex stood up and paced the aisle between the rows of seats. “Okay, I don’t exactly know why I’m here. We’ve ruined a man’s life, Doc. Max Jones will never walk again, his family is an angry army of grief and blame and there’s nothing to be done for any of it. There’s no way to make this right, ever.”

“And you hate unsolvable problems. They are your favorite thing to run from—we all know that.”

If Doc was referring to the all-night conversation they’d had the night before he left on his “sabbatical,” Alex didn’t appreciate the reference. He was right about one thing—his relationship with Sam had become an unsolvable problem and he did want to leave it behind. Badly. “I know SpiderSilk was my baby, but this one is all Sam’s fault. I’m so angry at him I don’t know what I’ll do when I see him—but it won’t be productive, I’ll tell you that. I don’t want to be anywhere near him, but I don’t trust him to do damage control. I don’t trust him at all.”

Doc polished off the last of Alex’s fries without apology and crumpled the bag. “So you are here because you could run? Or because you couldn’t?”

“I have no idea.” Actually, he did. Only the burning glare of JJ Jones’s eyes wasn’t a reason. Not a sane one, anyway. She was like some kind of freakish magnet, a line tethering him to the disaster. “She blames me. Why does she blame me when she should blame Sam? Or her brother? Or
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Believe me, there’s plenty of blame to go around.”

“Jones’s sister? The one you took to the hospital?”

“JJ. I can’t get the way she looks at me out of my head. Like I just shot her in the stomach or something. I mean, I can’t really blame her for being upset, and the fact that I was there made me an easy target, but it gets to me in a way that just makes everything worse. Nothing—
nothing—
would be helped by getting personally involved here. It’s awful, what happened—I know that. But I think this may just be the thing that pulls AG under, and Doc, that scares the skin off me right now.”

“But you’ve been threatening to leave for months. We all thought you were leaving before this, actually. I know your brother did. What is it to you if AG goes under?”

He said it so casually. As if the dismantling of ten years of work—not to mention the evaporation of his own job—was as easy as tossing out the garbage. “You don’t mean that.”

Doc sighed—an old man’s sigh, reminding Alex that the Italian climber had a good twenty years on him. “Neither do you. I have always wondered what it would look like when you ran out of escape clauses. In this case, you have to turn around and stand your ground, and you don’t have any idea how to do that, do you?”

“There may be no ground for AG to stand on.”

Doc’s eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t talking about AG. I don’t think you were, either. Aren’t you smart enough to realize this isn’t about AG? It’s about you and Samuel. It’s about this Miss Jones and her brother and what your fighting with Samuel has done to them.” He shook his head. “Really, I am surprised you’re not at the North Pole.”

Alex didn’t have a response. He hated everything Doc was saying, detested the ring of truth the man’s words had. God had been after him for months to do something about his relationship with Sam, to get to the heart of why they fought the way they did and fix it, and Alex had refused. Stalled, excused, rationalized, whatever it took to sidestep the issue. Doc was right—this had become about so much more than faulty lines or shortcut prototypes. This was about the damage done by a partnership gone wrong and left to fester.

Alex let his head fall into his hands. “I know I need to hash this out with Sam—once and for all—but...not yet. I’m supposed to be in Illinois, Doc. I can’t shake it. Right now—” Alex peered up into his friend’s eyes “—I’m pretty sure staying with the problem means going back to Illinois. Does that make any sense?”

“Believe it or not, it does. And it doesn’t. But that is the kind of thing I expect from you.” He grabbed the crumpled bag. “I’ll drive you back to the airport.”

“Rory is here waiting.”

“No, he’s not. I sent him home when he called the office to say where you were. I had Cynthia fetch me your Go-Bag before I drove out here. Believe it or not, I came out here to convince you to stay out of Samuel’s way for now.”

Alex’s Go-Bag was a fully packed duffel with a week’s worth of clothes that he kept in a closet in his office for times when he chose to disappear overnight. His assistant Cynthia was charged with keeping it ready at all times. It irked Alex to no end that Doc knew about it, knew to ask Cynthia and knew he’d turn around and go back to Chicago.

Alex Cushman was supposed to be less predictable than that.