Dreams of the Golden Age (Golden Age 2)

After crunching numbers, she and her staff discovered that Superior Construction wouldn’t gain anything by stopping West Corp from winning the city planning contract—because it was a shell company that didn’t have any assets invested in any development contracts. Which meant it had other reasons for stopping West Corp. Which again pointed to Danton Majors, but her lawyers still couldn’t draw that line directly. Why would Majors want to stymie West Corp? A multitude of possibilities existed, from simply publicly embarrassing the company to potentially crippling its future investment plans. West Corp was much more diversified than that, of course, and any one part of its operations failing wouldn’t cripple the company. Which made Celia think this was all a red herring. Distracting her from what? She needed to watch the magician’s other hand.

The law office that fronted the ownership of the company was the brick wall she kept coming up against, so that was the information she left casually lying out on the kitchen table. These were the strings controlling Superior Construction’s actions. Espionage might be able to follow the strings back to learn who—and why.

SIXTEEN

“SOMETHING fishy’s going on here but I can’t figure out what,” Celia said.

Anna came home to find her parents sitting at the dining table outside the kitchen. Suzanne was fixing dinner. Smelled like Mexican, warm and spicy. She was sautéing chunks of beef in a skillet at the stove—which was off, as usual. All the heat was coming from her hand, her power, and the meat sizzled and popped in its juices. It was something Anna had watched Grandma do her whole life, but now, suddenly, she saw it from an outsider’s perspective. And it was weird, the way she held the skillet flat on one hand while stirring with the other. Everybody’s grandma cooked, yeah, but not like that. And no other kid had to sing songs to herself all the time to keep her father from knowing what she was thinking.

What a messed-up family. And nobody even saw it.

Paperwork, file folders, and spreadsheets were fanned over the table, and Celia was bent over them, chewing on the end of a pencil. Arthur sat next to her, leaning back, hands resting folded on his lean chest, looking amused. He always looked amused. It was his mask, so that he never had to let on if he was horrified by what he read in the minds around him.

“Smells good,” Anna said to Suzanne.

“Thank you, Anna. Can you give me a hand? Get out the cheese and lettuce from the fridge?”

Anna dropped her bag by the wall and went to help.

“And how was school?” Arthur asked.

“Fine.”

“Of course it was,” he said wryly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. “It always is, and why not?”

She blushed. He knew something, he always knew something.

Her mother huffed at them both. She looked tired, Anna thought, and remembered their conversation from a week or so back. She was busy, of course she was busy. But there seemed to be more going on. Her short red hair, same bloody color as Anna’s, was disheveled, as if she’d been running her hands through it, and her face was pale and puffy. Suddenly, her mother didn’t look right at all. Just tired, she’d say if Anna asked what was wrong.

“What’s fishy?” Anna asked instead.

“Hmm?”

“You said something was fishy.”

“Oh. West Corp’s getting sued.”

Anna stopped and stared. “What?”

Celia shook her head. “Don’t worry, we get sued all the time. Usually it gets cleared up before ever going to court. But this suit was brought very publicly and very frivolously. I just have to figure out what the ulterior motive is.”

Suzanne directed Anna to chop lettuce and shred cheese for burrito toppings, and she did so, slowly, listening with interest to her mother’s arcane explanation. “Why sue?” she asked.

“Oh, lots of reasons. They assume West Corp has deep pockets, they want to embarrass the company, they want to embarrass me, they want to delay the planning committee vote, they want to distract us from something else entirely. All of the above.”

“How do you find out? How do you stop them?”

“Hmm, developing an interest in corporate politics?”

Heaven forbid. “Just asking.”

“We look to see if there’s anything suspicious in the public record, if there’s anything obvious they’ve done that attention would need distracting from. If they have any plans brewing that would be served by throwing roadblocks in front of West Corp. Trouble is, there’s not much on this company at all. Like they exist on paper and nowhere else. So I may have to turn to gossip and find out if anyone’s heard anything.”

Anna’s mind had started turning over a plan. She remembered what Eliot had said about someone trying to take over the city, not through terror and violence but through business and politics—the Executive. Maybe this thread was part of that web. Blocking West Corp certainly sounded like someone trying to influence the city’s workings. All Anna had to do was follow that thread. Maybe Espionage could take that on. Except that she still wasn’t talking to Teddy for ditching her in the face of danger. And she’d given up the whole vigilante thing because she was hopeless at it.