Cade tried not to laugh, but a sound burst from his lips. Grant swung toward him.
“This is not funny,” he choked.
But it was, and they all knew it. The brothers began to laugh, and then they moved into a tight circle, clapped each other on the back and joined right hands as they had when they were boys.
“To the Deadeye Defenders,” they said solemnly. They grinned happily at each other, and then Cade sighed.
“Time to get started.”
Zach nodded. “Yeah. I’ll see you guys before I leave.”
He punched Grant lightly in the shoulder, snapped an imaginary right hook at Cade’s chin, blew a kiss to Kyra and made his way to his room to pack.
It was going on ten o’clock. If he was going to make that eleven o’clock flight to Boston…
Actually, it made more sense to fly straight out to California. He was halfway there already; besides, if he went to Boston, he’d only get tied up in a dozen things. And this mess the old man had created had to be dealt with now, not next week or next month.
With a sigh, he sank down on the edge of his bed and scanned the report again. Triad had been privately owned by a man named Tolland. It had never made any real money, although it had at least been able to keep its head above water. About three years ago, its puny profits had finally turned to losses.
Charles had bought the company some months ago. As for who was running it for him…Zach frowned. It was a woman named Eve Palmer, and she had to be doing a piss-poor job because Triad was in its death struggles.
Zach stuffed the report into his suitcase, locked it and reached for the phone. He’d call the office, ask for more detailed info to be delivered by courier to the airport.
While he was at it, he’d make a couple of other calls, including one to Howell telling him to pack something besides those damned dark blue suits and express them to L.A. as soon as he had his hotel arrangements squared away. And his portable computer—he’d need that, too. It was obvious, now that he’d read the report more carefully, that two days on the coast was optimistic.
But five days would surely do it. Triad was dying, and he had dealt with dying companies before, back in the early days when he’d made fast money by moving in and administering the coup de grace.
Zach picked up his suitcase, walked briskly to the door and stepped out into the hallway.
By this time next week, Triad Productions would be history.
IT WAS the kind of day that made people happy they lived in southern California. The sky was blue, the sun was bright, and the temperature hovered in the gentle seventies.
“Fantastic,” said the tourists outside Disneyland.
“Terrific,” said the roller bladers on Ocean Front Walk.
“Awesome,” agreed the surfers at Redondo Beach.
“Rats,” muttered Eve Palmer as she sat trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Her car had not moved a mile in the past twenty minutes. The only thing moving was her temper, and it was rising as rapidly as the temperature inside the car.
Whatever had happened to simple things, like windows you rolled up and down at will? Her old Chevy had had them; you could let in air with a crank of the wrist. But this car that Charles had insisted on buying for her did not. Eve had not wanted it. She didn’t need a silver car that looked like a Batmobile, she’d told him, but Charles had disagreed.
“The head of Triad must look prosperous,” he’d said, as he’d handed her the keys to a vintage Jaguar.
The car had, at first, won her over with its simple but elegant styling. But it was also a money-eating monster, as she’d discovered last week, when the windows, air-conditioning and engine had all begun to malfunction.
A white-coated technician named Hans, looking more like a surgeon than a mechanic, had poked and prodded at its innards. Finally, in hushed tones, he’d pronounced the patient ill but repairable—to the tune of three thousand dollars and three weeks in the shop.
Fortunately for Eve, he’d misinterpreted her sudden pallor.
“If doing without your automobile will be a hardship, Miss Palmer, we can provide you with a temporary replacement.”
Eve had opened her mouth, ready to tell him that the hardship would be coming up with three thousand bucks in this lifetime, but then she’d remembered the second thing that Charles had taught her.
“Never let ’em see you sweat,” he’d said.
So she’d smiled, shoved her oversize sunglasses off the bridge of her small, straight nose and up into her blond hair and said that it just wouldn’t do, not when she was about to begin filming Hollywood Wedding.
“With Dex Burton,” she’d added, because that was an axiom she’d figured out herself. You got publicity wherever you could, and the fact that she hadn’t yet signed Dex—and probably never would—was no one’s business but her own.
Hans had almost clicked his heels with respect.
“I suppose it sounds silly,” she’d said in a way that made it clear she didn’t think it silly at all, “but the car’s my lucky charm. The repairs will have to wait until we’re done shooting.”
Hans, who’d dealt with Hollywood’s finest for years, knew they were as superstitious as his Gypsy forebears. Still, he’d permitted himself an upraised eyebrow.
“Of course, Miss Palmer. But you understand that the car will not work dependably until repairs are made?”
“Certainly,” Eve had said and driven off jauntily, as if she’d always longed to pilot a motorized sauna.
Now here she sat, the AC barely wheezing, the windows only willing to open an inch, the engine giving an ominous shudder every few minutes. Her hair was damp, her silk suit was plastered to her skin—and that wasn’t the worst of it.
This was the last day of filming The Ghost Stallion, the hideous movie she’d inherited from her predecessor. She ought to be out on location, making certain nothing else went wrong. Instead, she was going to be trapped in her office while Zachary Landon, Charles’s son, peered into cabinets, counted paper clips and tsk-tsked over every dime she’d spent.
It had been shock enough to learn of Charles’s death, but to find out that his son was flying in to check up on her…
His accountant son, the one Charles had mentioned when Eve had tried to explain how East Coast bankers had almost destroyed Triad. She hadn’t been sure a man like Charles would understand, but he had.
“Some money men have no imagination at all,” he’d said.
Eve had sighed with relief. “Exactly. Filmmaking is a unique business, Mr. Landon. Mr. Tolland tried explaining that to the bank’s accountants, but——”
“Call me Charles, please. Yes, I can imagine what you went through with the bean counters. Hell, when I think that my own son is one of them…”
“An accountant?”
“Zachary,” Charles had said, his face darkening, “in with a bunch of effete Boston jackasses instead of taking his rightful place at my side. It’s enough to send my blood pressure through the top of the tube.”
Which was pretty much what it was doing to hers now, Eve thought as she edged the car forward.
Charles had understood instinctively that it would take time, money and a few breathtaking risks to save Triad. His accountant son would not.
“Damn,”