“We’re eccentric, but we’re not stupid. Our security is intense.”
When the elevator door opened, Marian Whitman stood waiting for him. Though it was almost eight o’clock on a Sunday night, her grooming was sleek perfection. Not a single blond hair dared to slip out of place. The only color on her face came from her perfectly painted ruby lips. Her mouth barely moved when she said, “I expected you to be alone, Nick. We have business to discuss.”
He didn’t want to talk about corporate deficits and poor investment decisions. “It can wait.”
“Your uncle is here. He’s in his office. I think this might be a good time to confront him, while there are no other distractions.”
But Nick longed for distraction. He wanted to sling his arm around Kelly’s slender waist and take her outside for a walk along the path outside the office park. He wanted to tease her and make her laugh while they looked up at the half-moon. The March air would be crisp and invigorating.
Kelly shook Marian’s hand as she introduced herself. “I don’t want to interrupt. I’ll be going.”
“Thank you,” Marian said, “for understanding. Nick? Come with me.”
Though she was the Chief Financial Officer and the undisputed queen of the corporate balance sheets, he was still the boss. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “First, I’m going to show Kelly the gold. Then, I’ll escort her downstairs to her car. If I’m lucky, she’ll agree to come for a walk with me along the creek and we’ll see a couple of chipmunks scampering away from the night-hawks. After that, Marian, I’ll come back here. Then, and only then, we can talk.”
Not waiting for a response, he directed Kelly through the glass doors into the reception area for Spencer Enterprises. Behind his back, he heard Marian give an angry snarl. If he looked over his shoulder, he might see steam shooting out of her ears.
Kelly cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t mind if we did this another time.”
“I would,” he muttered. “I spent the whole day dressed in a monkey suit, shaking hands and representing Spencer Enterprises. The last thing I want to do is spend my night mediating a rant between my uncle and Marian.”
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”
“Shakespeare?”
“Or somebody like that,” she said.
He placed his hand at the small of her back and guided her around the receptionist’s desk and into an open area with several windows on one side and cubicles for the accounting department on the other. “I suspect you’ve been around other people who thought they deserved to wear crowns.”
“My ex was a lawyer. Lots of bigheaded people in that profession want tiaras and crowns.”
As they strolled past the cubicles that were decorated with photos and personalized touches, the overhead lights—which were on motion sensors after the offices closed—came on automatically. Samuel had done an extensive upgrade on the electric and ventilation system in this building about five years ago. Though the decor featured saturated colors and lots of dark wood trim like an old-fashioned gentlemen’s club, the underlying design was state-of-the-art.
The back wall of the ninth floor had a large office in each corner. “We’re in front of Marian’s office,” he said. “On the opposite side, it’s Uncle Samuel.”
In the area between, Kelly paused to admire the gold-mining artifacts in two glass cases, including pans, winches and pickaxes. She studied the large oil painting above the oak wainscoting. The subject was a grizzled prospector leading a mule. She said, “That looks like a Remington.”
“It’s Remington’s style, but my great-grandfather commissioned the painting from one of his contemporaries. The prospector’s face is actually a portrait of Great-Grandpa Spencer himself. At one time, the ass had the face of his number-one competitor.”
“Why was it changed?”
“After my great-grandpa drove the ass out of business, the painting seemed mean.” He pushed open the door to a large conference room with a polished oak table, leather chairs and several other paintings hanging on the walls. “That little one with the bronco rider is a Remington.”
“I like the historical touches. It’s very Old West Colorado.”
“Not really my taste,” he confided as he crossed the room. “I like light and modern with clean lines. The office I usually work from is in the mountains.”
“I thought you lived in Valiant.”
“My brother wanted me to fill in while he was out of town for a week.” His clever brother had also dragged him into the issues with Uncle Samuel. “I’ve got a condo here, but I live in Breckenridge. Most of my work is in the ski resorts.”
At the back of the conference room, he paused beside a door that appeared to be dark oak. His knuckles flicked against the surface. “This entire section of wall and the door is heavy-duty steel.”
“The security you were talking about.” She came closer. “Is the gold in there?”
“This is only the first step.” He flipped open a nearly invisible wall panel to reveal a keypad. After punching in a five-number code, he opened the door to a brightly lit room. The walls were lined with utilitarian shelves and file cabinets. “This is our secure area where we keep confidential paperwork, contracts and mapping information. We call it the vault.”
“I’m surprised,” she said. “I would have thought this information would be computerized.”
“We’re working on it. Some of these documents date back to the 1800s. If they ever got lost, we’d have a hard time replacing them.” He took her by the shoulders and situated her in front of a floor-to-ceiling section of smoky gray glass that was about twelve feet long. “Ready?”
“Amaze me,” she said.
He hit a switch and a light came on behind the glass, turning it transparent. Behind a wall of reinforced steel bars, the Valiant gold shone with a radiance that rivaled the sun. The stacks of fifty kilobars took up about as much space as a medium-size coffee table. Nick had seen the gold hundreds of times. He’d held the kilobars and felt their weight in his hands. Still, being this close always gave him a thrill.
Kelly whispered, “Can I touch it?”
“Afraid not.”
She leaned forward, almost pressing her nose against the glass wall. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced the real color of gold before. It almost seems alive.”
He heard the excitement in her voice as she continued. “When I look at this, I can understand why gold has been coveted throughout history—from King Midas to the search for El Dorado.”
“And into the present day. Two months ago, an Ethiopian prince offered to purchase the Valiant gold.”
His family’s treasure was more than a showpiece; it was collateral. If Marian was right and the company was on the brink of disaster, they could sell the gold—a worst-case scenario.
