Page 24 of Working for the Heiress

He went still behind me. But it felt like a happy stillness, and not one of concern. "Tanner," he breathed.

"Who's Tanner?"

He was quiet for a beat. Then he sat up, and the cold air hit my back where his body had been, so I pulled his henley tighter around my shoulders and sat up too.

"Tanner Wolf was the pilot on my crew,” Conrad said. “In Raptor Creek. The night of the mudslide. He flew the rescue missions. I kept his bird in the air." He picked up the phone. Looked at the screen. "He checks in when there's weather. Old habit."

Conrad played the voicemail on speaker. The voice that came through was low and rough. "Holt. Saw the front that came through your area. Wanted to make sure you're in one piece. Call me back when you get a minute." A pause. A dog barking in the background. "Also — I got married. We’re having a … well, I guess it’s a party. Drew says she wants you there. So. Think about it.”

The voicemail ended.

Conrad set the phone down on the carpet and looked at it for a long time.

“What was all that about?” I blinked at him, noting the emotion running along his face. “That was a heck of a voicemail.”

The corner of his mouth hitched up the slightest bit. “Sounds like he met someone special.” He licked his lips and I nuzzled a bit closer. “He’s been alone for a long time.”

I watched him look at the phone and I understood that there was a whole layer of Conrad Holt I hadn't explored yet. Men he'd worked alongside. A night that had broken all of them. A life before Forge Creek that he'd sealed off and lived without for years.

"You should call him back," I said.

"I will."

"Conrad."

"Yeah."

"You said last night there were things you needed to tell me. About the crash. And Wolf, apparently.”

He looked at me. The gray light from the window caught the green in his eyes.

"Not yet," he said. "There's something I need to show you first."

He stood and pulled on his jeans and I watched the muscles in his back move and I wanted him again already, which was inconvenient given that we had a pesky crisis to manage before that was an option.

I dressed in yesterday's clothes. We crossed the asphalt to the office in the early morning cold, the sky washed clean by the storm, the mountains sharper than I'd ever seen them. The hangar was quiet. Nobody was here yet.

Conrad approached a row of lockers where the men stored their personal belongings. He grunted with effort and slid the metal out from the wall. Stooping, he pulled out a manila envelope that was thicker than the others and sealed with packing tape.

“I’ve spent years putting this together,” he said. “And I had no idea what I was going to do with it until now.” He handed it to me.

I opened it at the table by the window. Inside was a heap of hand written notes in his scrawl, receipts, invoices. The names Ashford Aviation and Blackstone Mining Corporation appeared on nearly every piece of paper. And then I saw something he’d underlined in red.

It was a memo where Ashford Aviation agreed to reduce the maintenance budget for the Blackstone fleet by eighteen percent over three years. The reduction targeted "non-critical replacement parts" and "discretionary maintenance intervals." It showed a back and forth between two parties: the Blackstone director … and my father. Robert Ashford.

My hands were steady. I noticed that. I expected them to shake and they didn't.

Conrad stood by the door, his face gray as he brought it all back to the surface. “The tail rotor … it was flagged for replacement four months before the crash. The parts never got ordered. The budget had been cut."

"My father cut corners and a plane went down.”

“And people died.”

I put the document down on the table. I looked at it. My father's name on a piece of paper that had, by a chain of decisions and omissions and cost savings that probably looked reasonable in a boardroom, killed people.

"The official report called it mechanical failure. Which is true, but the insurance papers don’t mention that it was avoidable.”

“And my father benefitted from the insurance payout…” I sat with that. The file room was cold. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead. Through the window I could see the mountains, pink at the peaks where the sun was starting to hit.