May
Lucy's Age: 18
Geoffrey put his tablet down and rubbed his eyes. It was still before noon, but I'd realized a while ago that Geoffrey had a pretty inverted sleep schedule, so it was probably well past the time when he should be heading off to bed. I paused the slideshow on my tablet, which was currently mirroring onto his device, and asked if he wanted to stop.
"No, I only just arrived here half an hour ago. I appreciate all of the time and effort that you've put into pulling this presentation together. Quitting now and heading back home would be poor thanks indeed."
I shrugged. "The information will still be here tomorrow."
"I expect you're right there, but the real question is whether or not the opportunity will still be around then."
He had me there. I'd moved away from doing just background research and now my duties included a fair amount of investigation of actual companies. I'd found a very small company that created mounting kits that were a key component in putting up oil pipelines.
I'd also turned up some rumors indicating that the test drilling another small company had started to do in a previously unexplored section of Wyoming was going even better than their most optimistic assumptions.
The rumors were already pretty widely disseminated through the market, but based on the recent surge in the stocks for several refinery companies located in the general area, most of the market seemed to have decided that the most logical solution for the sudden oversupply of crude oil in the area would be for a new refinery to be put in.
It wasn't a bad conclusion all things considered, but I'd looked everywhere I could think, and all of the signs I'd turned up said that there was no way that anyone was going to manage to put a new refinery anywhere nearby. The entire area was swarming with environmentalists and there didn't seem to be a single piece of land within a hundred miles that was for sale, reasonably close to a road, and that looked like it would have a snowflake's chance of getting all of the relevant permits and approvals to even start a project of the scale needed for a new refinery.
I had, however, identified that the drilling company had a small corridor of land that they'd purchased under a shell company which could be used for a pipeline if they were willing to pony up the cash to install one.
All of the construction companies in that area of Montana that were large enough to take on a project of this size were all either privately held or trading at a definite premium as compared to where they'd been a couple of months ago.
That was my first sign that the smart money hadn't all just thrown itself at the refinery as being the only solution. I'd been nearly ready to quit until I found an interesting tidbit online. It was posted by an employee of one of the construction companies that had worked on the last major pipeline that had been built in Alaska.
The employee had been complaining about just how hard it was to get ahold of a tiny, but critical set of fasteners used in the initial stages of putting the sections of pipe together. A little more research turned up the fact that out of the four fastener manufacturers operating at the time of the posting, one had gone out of business, another had stopped manufacturing that particular fastener, and both of the other two were private companies.
One of the two private companies was a waste of time, but the last was an interesting proposition. All indications from the outside were that they had expanded much too quickly to meet the increase in the demand caused by two of their competitors leaving. They were running short on cash, and they'd lost a couple of key bids recently because the construction companies they'd been working with no longer had confidence that they'd be around long enough to complete the jobs in question.
After the quick and dirty finance course that Geoffrey had given me over the last few months, I'd known enough to realize that I needed to get him involved in this particular opportunity right away. All of which meant he was right. He needed to see this and he needed to see it right away if he was going to capitalize on it before someone else did.
I waited until Geoffrey had picked his tablet back up, and then started the slideshow back up. Half an hour later Geoffrey knew everything I knew about the target company and the overarching situation we were dealing with.
"That was very good, Lucy. I'll have to put in a call to the target's owner as soon as I make it back to my place. I guess that means I'm going to go without sleep for a few more hours."
I did some quick math in my head and the results weren't promising.
"Actually, if you wanted to you could just do the call from here. Your room is still empty and you've got your laptop. Once you're done with the call then you could just crash in your room. It would save you at least a couple hours of travel when you factor in the fact that you'll be checking your back trail on the way home. Not only that, it would mean that I would be nearby if something came up that you needed me to research or explain. It actually makes quite a bit of sense."
Geoffrey paused to consider the idea. A month ago he would have refused outright. Even now, after all of the time we'd spent together recently, I was pretty sure he would have vetoed the idea except for the fact that he really was exhausted.
"I don't want to put you or Mrs. Phelps out, Lucy. The two of you have had your own space for a really long time at this point."
It was a smokescreen, even I could see that, but the mere fact that he'd thought of it was a huge step up from where he'd been just after he'd gone all cold again. The old Geoffrey would never have thought about whether or not he was inconveniencing us, not even just in the context of needing an excuse not to stay around.
"You won't be putting us out. Mrs. Phelps mostly just stays in her room all day, and I can research as well from inside my room as I can from out here in the living room."
It was a lie, but I was pretty sure that Calum wouldn't mind me rescheduling our date. He seemed to get that I had commitments just like he had commitments, and if sometimes that meant that we didn't get to see each other, then at least we could spend a few minutes on the phone or texting every day.
Geoffrey looked at me for several seconds and then finally nodded. "You're right; my staying here today makes a lot of sense."
He stood up to go to his room, but there was an odd hitch to his movements. It reminded me a little of the way one of the assistant instructors back at my dojo had moved after having his ribs separated.
"What happened to you?"
Geoffrey tried for a casual smile. "Just a training injury. I pulled some muscles the other day. I'll probably be okay by tomorrow."
I'd seen Geoffrey take full-force kicks to the chest during our training sessions. I'd hit him hard enough to have broken a one-inch pine board and he'd never even flinched. There was no way I was going to buy the idea that a minor injury was the reason he was moving like that.
"I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you recover quickly; we're supposed to go on a run on Thursday."
This smile was much more relaxed. "I haven't forgotten. I'll come out and get you if I need anything, but I shouldn't need to interrupt you. These kinds of initial calls are usually pretty high-level."
I gave him a cheery wave as he disappeared into his room and then I retreated back into my bedroom and flopped down on the sea-foam green comforter. I texted Calum and got a response a few minutes later.
I'll miss you, but I understand that things come up. Hope you get a lot done, I'm excited to watch Castle with you next week. We've got a lot of episodes to catch up on.
I smiled and then dashed off another quick text.
You've got it. I can't wait to watch it too. I'll be thinking of you.
Venice's next check-in was nearly due, so I decided to ping her too.
Geoffrey is spending the day here. Seems like he's injured somehow. Things are progressing nicely though.
Venice's response arrived right on schedule, just like always.
Things are heating up lately. He took a sword to the chest, but he'll be okay. Glad to hear that he's relaxing a little.
My mouth practically hit the floor.
He got stabbed? I should get him to a hospital!
Calm down, Lucy. He'll be okay. Don't let on that you know how badly he's hurt or you'll blow everything.
She was right, there wasn't any way for me to get him to seek out some kind of medical care, at least not without clueing him into the fact that I knew a ton of stuff I wasn't supposed to know, but I still had a hard time calming down.
We were pretty sure that Geoffrey had decided not to invade my mind, although neither of us knew for sure why, but I wasn't confident enough in the mental exercises that Venice had shown me to think that it was a good idea to give Geoffrey any reasons to go poking around inside of my memories.
All of the logical arguments said that the best thing was for me to take Venice at her word and just assume that Geoffrey would be fine without any additional medical attention, but it was hard to force myself to just sit in my room and pretend like everything was okay.
I'd started out wanting to save Geoffrey for Venice's sake. That and a little bit out of gratitude for everything that he'd done for me over the years. More and more however, I was seeing the same kinds of qualities under the surface that made Venice love him.
I no longer had any doubts about whether or not Geoffrey was worth saving. Now it was just a question of whether or not we could pull it off in time or not.