Page 43 of Oleander

“We can’t move forward, sir. Someone sabotaged the engine. We’re leaking oil everywhere and when we attempt to start, there’s a small fire. We’re stuck.”

“No,” he said shaking his head. “I don’t buy it. No!”

“Sir, we are dead in the water,” the engineer repeated.

Hollis sat back against the leather sofa, the bourbon in his hand sloshing over the lip of the glass, staining his trousers. He stared at the screens that were already claiming that Burton Drilling would declare bankruptcy the next day.

His own board members were on the screen, telling the world that Hollis Burton knew of all the issues with the platforms and still refused to shut them down. They publicly announced that he would be removed as CEO and they would cooperate with all agencies.

“Removed,” he whispered to himself. There was not one else to hear him. Everyone was gone. The lifeboats had been lowered and his crew was now headed toward the Coast Guard Cutter.

“You cannot remove me. I own this company. I built this company from the mess my father left me!” he howled. “Dorothy. That fucking bitch Dorothy and Voss. I’ll kill Dorothy all over again and I’ll make sure Voss is dead by my own hands.”

He opened the banking apps on his phone, one after another. FROZEN. FROZEN. FROZEN. FROZEN.

“This can’t be,” he said shaking his head. He was so distracted, so obsessed with his own ass, he didn’t hear the yacht being boarded by a dozen Coast Guard members, armed and ready to shoot.

He sat, ironically, frozen on the sofa. Luke, Cam, and Hex boarded with the others, helping to search for any discarded documents, although it didn’t really matter any longer. Hollis Burton was going to jail for a very long time.

“Hollis Burton, you are under arrest for fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, violations of the Clean Water Act and Oil Pollution Act. Furthermore, you are charged with Rendering Safety Systems Inaccurate, tampering with evidence, falsifying evidence, False Statements to Federal authorities, securities fraud, wire fraud…” The voice of the federal agent continued to drone on with possible charges and the group just smirked.

Luke looked down at the dolphins and waved at them, thanking them for their assistance. He heard a sound in his head and laughed.

“Yes, Alvin. You can take the flamingo home.”

“I sure hope Miss Dorothy can rest easy now,” said Hex. “She deserves to know that what she did will bring justice for those poor families.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Luke. “How about we go home. We’ve done what we came to do.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Eleven months later…

Hollis Burton stood at the defense table in a federal courtroom in New Orleans and discovered that LEGACY had been the least of his problems.

The United States had charged him in a superseding indictment so thick that the clerk carried it in a binder. It alleged obstruction of justice, conspiracy, witness tampering, destruction of records, securities fraud, wire fraud, false statements, environmental crimes, worker-safety violations, and a long procession of related offenses born from Platform Nine and the cover-up that followed.

Some counts overlapped. Some reached far beyond the disaster. Together, they described not one terrible decision but a system Hollis had built to prevent consequence from reaching him.

Every seat in the gallery was occupied. Families of the dead sat in the first four rows, separated from Burton’s lawyers by a polished rail that looked too delicate to contain what had brought them there.

Reporters filled the benches behind them. Luke, Cam, Eric, and Hex stood along the back wall, uncomfortable in jackets and unwilling to miss the moment.

Hollis had lost weight, though not enough to make him look frail. His silver hair remained disciplined. His suit was dark, hand-finished, and almost certainly the last expensive thing he still technically owned. He looked toward the gallery as if expecting one loyal face. No one met his eye.

Burton Drilling had entered bankruptcy six weeks after the Imperium was seized. Its credit collapsed first, then its insurance, then its ability to make payroll. The platforms were placed under emergency management while the profitable assets were sold. The corporate name remained only on court filings, abandoned offices, and hard hats stacked in evidence rooms.

The government’s opening lasted less than an hour. The prosecutor did not shout. She displayed a photograph of Platform Nine before the disaster, then another taken after dawn, when smoke buried the upper decks and rescue vessels moved beneath it like toys.

“This case is about choices,” she said. “The defendant was warned. He understood the danger. He chose production, concealment, and intimidation because he believed every human cost could be converted into a business expense.”

Hollis’s lead attorney rose and called the prosecution’s story a tragedy distorted by hindsight. Burton Drilling employed thousands. Offshore work was inherently dangerous. Decisions passed through engineers, managers, contractors, and regulators. Hollis, he said, had been a demanding executive, not a criminal mastermind.

From the back row, Cam whispered.

“That defense needs a towboat.” Hex told him to shut up without moving his lips.

The first former employee was Mara Keene, once Burton Drilling’s director of offshore integrity. She identified corrosion reports that had moved upward through the company for eighteen months. Each version grew shorter. Photographs disappeared. Risk classifications changed from critical to monitored. In the final executive summary, the failing valve assembly on Platform Nine became a routine maintenance concern.