“Someone want to tell me what the hell happened?” Justin swept a furious gaze across the faces surrounding them. He stopped on Warren. As the operator of the boom truck, Warren’s job included maintaining the equipment according to safety regulations.
“The cable snapped,” Tom offered into the silence.
“Obviously,” Justin bit out. Without looking away from Warren, whose face had turned as red as his hair, he asked, “When’s the last time you checked it?”
Before Warren could defend himself, Marley’s clipped voice resonated over the group. “I’ll take care of this.”
Justin’s gaze swung to hers. Her expression dared him to say more. Though it went against everything in him, he ground his molars together and deferred to her authority. Why the hell wasn’t she demanding answers?
“Fifteen minute break, guys,” Marley said. “Then we’ve got a lot of equipment to check and even more work to make up.”
As the others drifted away, Justin took a few steps back and dropped his butt onto a wooden sawhorse. Marley had to walk past the twisted wreckage of the rafter to reach her trailer. Her step faltered. Halted. She glanced back to where she’d been standing and he saw a shudder ripple across her shoulders. Then her chin lifted, her expression hardened, and she headed straight for the trailer.
Justin leaned forward to pick up her hardhat and rested it on his knee. She was so concerned that everyone saw her as the tough, in-charge boss, but she’d almost been killed. If it had been him, he’d want to know what happened with that cable.
He surged to his feet. Hell, it had been him, too.
While making his way over to the cable, something else struck him as odd. They’d all taken their break as she’d suggested. Weren’t any of them the least bit concerned about this incident? Was there more to the accident than met the eye?
Warren joined him a moment later.
“I meant to check the cable yesterday,” Warren admitted in a low, guilt-ridden voice.
The ends in his hand appeared frayed, not cut. The thought that someone would deliberately tamper with the cable chilled his blood, but information his brother had provided revealed this wasn’t the first accident to happen on this job site, and he couldn’t ignore the possibility. Question was, if it wasn’t an accident, who was out for who?
Chuck joined them. Warren looked like he might be sick, and over the next fifteen minutes, Justin became convinced it was nothing more than an accident. His lips twisted. How he hated that word. It could cover up so much. Carelessness. Stupidity. Ignorance.
Let it go, man. All you can do now is live with it.
And educate these guys so they didn’t end up like him.
Everyone returned to work, and by the time the busted wood had been cleared, things returned to normal.
Except Marley had yet to emerge from the trailer.
Chapter 4
Her damn knees still shook s
o bad she didn’t think she could stand. How could she go out there to do her job when she was a complete mess? Weakness was not an option right now.
The door creaked open.
Thankful her back faced the door, she said, “I’ll be right out.”
The moment she heard the creak and click, she released a sigh of relief. No one could see her like this. Men didn’t fall apart like a baby; there was no reason she should.
“Marley?”
She jumped almost as high as her pulse spiked. She shot to her feet and glared at Justin across the desk. “Don’t you ever listen?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
The soft-voiced concern threatened her tenuous composure. “I told you I was fine. I just had some things to work on in here.” Like her nerves.
His gaze dropped to the cleared surface of the desk.
“I don’t know who you think you are,” she said abruptly. “I mean, I only hired you because you did a good job that first day. But ever since then you’ve been walking around here like you own the place.”