Martha Kennerson - Always My Baby

“We all do,” she said confidently.

“What?” the brothers cried out.

China moved back to the table and gestured with her hands at all the documents that lay spread out over the conference table. “All of this information was provided by someone we know or came in contact with. What we have to do is go through every inch of this material and figure out who it could be. We’ll make a list—”

“A list?” Brice asked.

China leaned across the table and selected one of the statements that had been provided. She flipped through the pages. “Here.” She tapped the page with her index finger. “It says the whistle-blower was present doing an operations meeting in January with you, Morgan.” She looked up from the document, her eyes lasering in on his confused look. “That you were discussing the various ways to save money in the area of waste disposal. Did any such meeting occur?”

“Yes, but nothing came up about changing the way we handle gas cylinders,” Morgan assured her.

“Do you remember who all was in the room?” she inquired, dropping the document on the table.

“Everyone,” Morgan said.

“What do you mean?” China asked.

“It was our first meeting of the year.” Morgan placed his hands in his pockets. “There were over three hundred people in attendance.”

“Any senior-level management executives?” China questioned.

“Not really?” He shrugged and shook his head.

“Think, man,” Alexander ordered; his voice rose.

“I am!” Morgan responded, with an equal amount of force in his voice. He pulled his hands free and started rubbing them together as he started pacing the room. “Mom was there, along with my three lead foremen, Danny, Roger and the new guy, Big Usher.”

“Big Usher?” China asked, frowning.

“Yeah, he’s the new junior assistant. We hired him six months ago,” Morgan explained, stopping his movement.

“Just about the time the whistle-blower started providing information to the government,” China concluded.

“Usher’s a good kid...he’s not the whistle-blower. Besides, there’s nothing to blow,” Morgan reiterated.

“Who else was there?” China reached for a bottle of water.

“I can’t think of everyone. I don’t have your photographic memory, China.”

China laughed. “That’s for what I read, but you don’t need one. We can just pull the minutes from the meeting.” China picked up her phone and pulled down the recorder app, tapped it on and said, “Have the January operations notes pulled.” She sat the phone down. “This is the process we’ll have to follow with all of this information.”

“Mom’s contact really was efficient in pulling all this together,” Brice said.

Alexander raised his left eyebrow. “Are you really surprised?”

“Not at all.” Brice shook his head.

“What do we do after we get this list together?” Morgan asked.

“We go fishing,” Alexander replied. “Once we have our list of targets, we divide and conquer. Figure out who’s trying to sabotage us.”

“And?” Brice questioned, frowning. His eyes cut to Morgan, who stood with a menacing look on his face.

“Then you let me do my job,” China said, glaring at all three brothers. The last thing she needed was for them to take matters into their own hands. “In the meantime, I’ll work up our initial response to the complaint, which is basically a clear and precise denial. We have forty-five days to submit it. Hopefully we’ll figure out what’s really going on, too, sooner than later.”

“What if we don’t know what happened in forty-five days?” Morgan asked.

“We have a hundred and twenty days from the initial response to file our final one that will either substantiate our denial, as long as we provide solid evidence to back up our claim, or we can request an administrative oversight ruling.”

“An administrative oversight ruling...what the hell is that?” Alexander’s eyebrows stood at attention.

“It’s the EPA’s way of giving some companies an out without having to admit guilt to anything. It’s like saying we simply made a mistake. But...” China raised her right index finger. “Companies still must pay fines and clean-up expenses if necessary, and their reputations usually take a pretty big hit and...”

“And what?” Alexander asked.

“Someone usually has to resign,” China said, staring into Alexander’s eyes. She could see past the bluster of his anger to his vulnerability, and all she wanted to do was help him find his place of calm. In that moment, China’s body was reminding her that what was happening between them was much more than she’d ever expected.

“But everyone stays out of jail, right?” Brice asked, his whole face lit up.

“Right.” China smirked.

“There was no damn administrative oversight. It didn’t happen and I certainly didn’t steal from my own damn company,” Alexander insisted. She could almost see the anger radiating from his body.

“Of course not, but something happened, Alexander. We just have to prove what that was and that we’re innocent of any wrongdoing,” China explained.

“If we can.” Alexander ran his right hand through his hair.

“When we do, they’ll close the case and issue a letter clearing us,” China promised.

“If not?” Morgan questioned, pulling out his cell phone to silence the ringing.

“Things get a lot more complicated. The courts get involved,” China explained.

“What do we do about the media explosion that’s coming? Life is going to get really crazy...very quickly,” Morgan warned.

“It’s not like we’re not used to the attention,” Brice reminded him, offering a nonchalant shrug.

“True, but Mom usually nips it in the bud before things get out of hand. She won’t be able to stop this runaway train,” Alexander said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, the EPA thinks they’ve got us by the balls, so they’ll turn up the heat big-time.” Morgan cracked the knuckles of both his hands. “We have to give KJ and Travis a heads-up.”

Keylan James Kingsley, or KJ, was Victoria’s youngest son and a professional basketball player in the NBA. Travis Kingsley, the youngest child of Elizabeth, was a successful cattle rancher who preferred a private existence and had little to do with their family’s business.

“Travis is really going to love this,” Brice said mockingly.

“We’ll deal with that next week. Right now, let’s start going through all this material that Victoria bought...I mean, brought for us to review.” China’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on anyone as she started distributing the different stacks of paper.

“There go my dinner plans,” Morgan said, taking a seat at the conference table.

“Dinner? We’ll be lucky to get through all of this before the sun rises Monday morning,” Brice countered, picking up a stack of papers.

China took the seat offered by Alexander. His hands grazed her arms and a warm shiver ran down her spine. “Th-thank you.”

“Anytime,” he said, in a tone that garnered his brothers’ attention. He met their stares. “What?”

“Nothing,” both brothers said in unison, passing a look between them.

China kept her eyes on the documents in front of her. The last thing she needed was for the other Kingsley men to figure out something was different between her and Alexander.

“Let’s get to work, gentlemen,” China ordered.

* * *

Alexander sat at his desk reading over the list of names he’d been given to follow up on. After a painful two-day review of documents accusing him and their company of malicious malfeasance, Alexander didn’t feel any more confident in their plan to find the culprit behind the unsubstantiated accusations. He was reaching for his coffee cup when he heard his office door being opened. Alexander looked up to see his cousin Kristen almost bounce into the room.