Which served their purposes well.
If Embray had survived the stroke with his mental faculties intact, Dynamic Solutions would have been beyond the council’s reach, and Embray would have taken the assembly’s proposal public. However, if he died, with no heirs or next of kin, the company would pass into the public’s keeping in accordance with the dictates of his will. Embray’s death would have severely limited James Link’s role in the company’s stewardship. Link would have been one of many executives with limited power. His usefulness would have been critically handicapped.
The trick had been destroying the man’s mental faculties without killing him outright. It had been the only way to keep the company beneath their umbrella. If the CEO of Dynamic Solutions were incapacitated for any reason, the vice president of operations, in this case James Link, would step into the chief executive officer’s position until such time as the incapacitated officer recovered or died. So far the strategy they’d employed to ease Dynamic Solutions under the council’s control had proceeded without a hitch. Which was a blessing. The corporation had been a technological windfall.
“Nobody has questioned his condition?” Eric asked.
“Not once they’ve visited him,” Link said quietly, his eyes on the table.
Eric nodded in satisfaction. It had been Link’s request to give Embray the option of joining them, rather than simply removing him from the playing field. Still, they’d gone into the meeting prepared to act, and they’d done so immediately upon Embray’s appalled reaction to their invitation. The cocktail they’d injected into the roof of his mouth had been specifically designed to cause a massive stroke. He’d been comatose before his personal assistant had been summoned or the first medical professional had entered the room.
The fact that Embray had chronically high blood pressure, and was under a doctor’s care, had lent weight to the diagnosis of a stroke. So had the fact that there was no other explanation available. The chemical compound they’d used wouldn’t show up in a blood panel.
So far, nobody suspected a thing. And James Link had taken control of Dynamic Solutions with little fanfare.
Eric studied the tight face and empty eyes of his newest associate and sympathized. There was no question that Link’s betrayal of his childhood friend and teenage bandmate had come at tremendous personal cost. There was also no question he’d do it again, in a heartbeat, if necessary. While Link and Embray had been united in their environmental concerns, Link hadn’t shared Embray’s idealistic belief that the various factions of the human race would eventually pull together in the common interest of protecting Mother Earth.
Rather, Link believed, as did the council, that the human race would continue to squander the world’s resources until the planet hit the tipping point and spiraled down so fast it couldn’t recover. To prevent the annihilation of the planet, someone needed to act, and they needed to do so now—while there was still time to reverse the ill effects weighing down their cosmic home. When he couldn’t convince his best friend and boss of that, Link had successfully facilitated the removal of Embray from power and stepped in to guide the company himself.
* * *
Chapter Two
* * *
FIVE DAYS AFTER he’d died and been dragged—willy-nilly—back to life, an icy chill still held Rawls captive. So did a translucent, obnoxious, troll of a ghost. Gritting his teeth, he stared furiously at the rocky bank that plunged down a foot or two ahead, and the boisterous creek babbling along below.
Wolf—their badass Arapaho associate—certainly liked his trees and privacy. The new sanctuary their host had ferried them to was tucked into the Cascade mountain range and completely obscured by trees. At the back of the property, a stream wound through thick clusters of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, providing the privacy and cover to accommodate Rawls’s teeth grinding and frustrated silence.
“Five hundred and twenty-nine bottles of beer on the wall, five hundred and twenty-nine bottles of beer . . .” Pachico belted the verse out at the top of his lungs.
If the bastard had lungs . . .
The creek bed at this spot cut through rough terrain, so the path was narrower and studded by clusters of thick, heavy boulders. The force of the water rushing through the rocks was louder as well. Almost loud enough to drown out the annoying asshole haunting him.
“. . . take one down, pass it around, five hundred and twenty-eight bottles of beer on the wall. Five hundred and twenty-eight bottles of beer on the wall, five hundred and twenty-eight bottles of beer.”