Three
The panic in his brother’s voice was getting annoying. “This could be a publicity nightmare, Alex. You need to get back to Denver and hold down the fort while I stay here on the set. I talked to the guard station an hour ago and he told me there was an Entertainment Today reporter sniffing around. The studio’s not containing it—for all I know they want it to leak to give the show more publicity. Some of these production assistants are too young not to fall for a reporter flashing a wad of cash for spilling the details.”
Alex leaned onto the cold hospital cafeteria table and rested his head in his hand. It didn’t feel like there was enough coffee in the world to get him through today. “Sam, they just airlifted a contestant to a trauma center. It won’t take long for people to figure out there’s been an accident.”
“I want to keep a lid on things for a few days at least. I just hope the WWW execs are good at this kind of damage control.” Since the beginning of their association with Wide Wild World, Sam had an annoying habit of counting himself among the studio types. It was one of the reasons Alex steered clear of any involvement in this promotional deal, compromising instead with a quick product delivery and a “vacation nearby.”
“Let them handle it, Sam. We’re just a vendor. I stepped in to help with JJ because I was nearby, but the heavy lifting on this belongs to them.”
There was a brief, uncomfortable pause before his brother said, “Not entirely.”
Alex squeezed his eyes shut. In the seven years he and his brother had built Adventure Gear into a serious player in the outdoor equipment market, nothing good had ever come after Sam’s use of the phrase “not entirely.” “What are you saying?”
“We don’t really know what happened yet.”
“Of course we don’t know. Max Jones isn’t even out of surgery. It’ll be hours before we know what’s going on. If then.” Alex’s stomach twisted as he remembered the look in JJ’s eyes as the doctor had explained the situation. There were so many unknowns at this point, and JJ didn’t strike him as the type to handle ambiguity well.
“I don’t mean with Jones. I mean with the fall.”
“That’s what those stunt production guys are for. It’s their job to solve those kinds of problems before they happen. And right now, it’s their job to figure out where they went wrong. I really think you need to keep out of this as much as you can, Sam. We don’t need to get mixed up in a situation like this.” That sounded pretty ironic coming from the guy who’d just escorted the victim’s sister to the bedside. Well, not bedside yet.
She’d looked terrible sitting on a stiff couch in the ill-named “trauma family lounge.” But when he’d tried again to comfort her while she waited for Max to come out of surgery, she’d barked at him to leave her alone. No matter what she said, Alex had no plans to leave until JJ’s mother showed up. This didn’t look like the kind of crisis anyone should face alone. He’d wait out an hour in this sad little cafeteria, then bring her some coffee and maybe try to get her to eat some breakfast.
“We’re mixed up in it already. Really, Alex, I think you should go back to Denver.”
There was a reason Alex called his brother Chicken Little when they were younger. The sky was always falling with Sam. And he usually wanted Alex to fix it. “They don’t need me back at headquarters. A man’s future is hanging in the balance here. I think WWW can handle any publicity woes.”
He heard Sam pull a door shut and his brother’s voice lowered to barely a whisper. “They’re calling it equipment failure.”
That sure sounded like studio types to him. “Come on, Sam, what did you think they were going to say? They can’t very well stand up and boast that one of their production assistants dropped Max. Where was the guy on the belay line when Max fell, anyway?”
“The producer just roasted me in her office. She says the guy on the belay line is saying it was gear failure. Our equipment. They’re saying it was our line and hardware that failed.”
This was exactly why Alex had never been keen on this promotional venture in the first place. It raised their visibility, but it also made them a target for finger-pointing if anything went wrong. Adventure Gear didn’t need the national exposure—they already had a good reputation among outdoor enthusiasts. The people who spent serious money on their gear knew AG products were top-notch. Alex never saw the point in high visibility to the reality television audience—he guessed ninety percent of them were couch potatoes who’d never seen the inside of a tent and never planned to. “They’re blowing smoke. You know it’s usually human error, and our stuff is better than that. And they aren’t even using our SpiderSilk lines until next season.”
“Not entirely.”
The tiny red alarm in the back of Alex’s mind that had started flashing hours ago suddenly bloomed into a full-blown wail. A surge of dread filled him so quickly he nearly lost the horrid coffee he’d just downed. Oh, no. The SpiderSilk prototype lines he’d delivered. They wouldn’t, would they? Alex stood up, not caring that he knocked the chair back to rattle on the floor in the empty cafeteria. “Sam. Sam, tell me you did not allow WWW to use the SpiderSilk. They were only supposed to look at it for next season—not use it now. Tell me they weren’t using the SpiderSilk. Tell me that right now.”
The silence hit him like a brick wall.
“Right here, right now, Sam. Tell me you didn’t give them some kind of permission to use the SpiderSilk. Tell me Max Jones didn’t fall from a rigging of the SpiderSilk.”
“You’d said they were through testing.”
Alex sank back to the table, stunned. Oh, Father God, what have I done by stepping back and letting Sam run things? I knew something like this would happen if I left. I knew it and ignored it because I was sick of Sam.
“I said they were through initial testing. That doesn’t mean we’re ready for a man to dangle from them. At night. In the rain. That’s a brand-new coating we were using. What were you thinking?”
“You said it was like nothing we’d ever made before. We tested them way beyond fourteen kilonewtons. You said they would revolutionize the industry.”
“Next year. When the UIAA approved them as ready. We tested for weight with traditional belay devices—not for rain or melting point.... They’re not ready.” Alex raked one hand through his hair, panic rising up his spine until it gripped his throat. “Sam, how could you do this? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? To Max? To us?”
“They were making noises like they’d go with someone else next season if we didn’t sweeten the deal. They didn’t want to wait until next year to showcase the SpiderSilk. They thought the unknown, the ‘test pilot’ element gave a great new twist. Hey, come on, the guy even knew he was using a prototype and signed a special release waiver and everything. And nobody said anything about a climb in the dark during bad weather.”
“And it never occurred to you to ask me if I thought the SpiderSilk was ready?” Alex was shouting into his phone.
“Hey, you’re the one who went AWOL and left me to run the company, remember?”
They’d had a million arguments like this in the past year. AG was second in market share, and Sam was gunning full out for the top spot. He’d always been a little too eager to cut corners
