Hidden Agenda. Kara Lennox

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER THREE

      THE NEXT DAY, when Conner returned from lunch, he found a surprise sitting on his desk. Jillian had delivered a report based on the armload of trash he’d shoved at her only yesterday. The papers were sorted into file folders, neatly stacked on his chair, and a printed report—complete with graphs, charts and a spreadsheet—sat in the middle of his desk.

      He was torn when it came to having an assistant. On one hand, he needed someone to keep him organized. Paperwork, scheduling, computers, meetings—he wasn’t terribly good at any of it. But he hated having assistants underfoot. Give him a nice stand of oak trees and he could read them like a book. He could tell a tree’s health just by looking at the color and texture of the bark, the number of branches and how they grew, the gloss of the leaf.

      Stick him behind a desk and he was close to useless.

      His job performance as director of timber operations was only so-so. This company was only as good as the wood it harvested, and that harvest was only as good as the men and women out in the field finding the stands of trees, evaluating them, negotiating for the purchase and supervising the harvest. From his office he could give his buyers directions, look at photographs and approve purchases or not. But it drove him crazy not to have firsthand knowledge.

      And the paperwork—God, how he hated paperwork. All the hoops they had to jump through to keep this certification or that one, proving they adhered to green policies, that they had performed all the correct environmental impact studies. He’d had no idea how hard his predecessor’s job was when he’d accepted the promotion.

      It was easy to blame Chandra, but deep down, Conner had no one but himself to hold responsible. He was the one who’d been thinking with his privates, rather than his brain and his heart, when he’d agreed to the corner office. He’d have done anything to keep Chandra happy.

      In the end, though, his decision to settle down had backfired. Chandra had fallen in love with an adventurer and world traveler who brought home exotic presents—carved teak boxes, silks and Oriental rugs. She’d seen him as a modern-day Indiana Jones.

      But she’d grown weary of his constant travel and had begged her grandfather to promote him. Yes, because of Chandra, he had advanced in the company at lightning speed, bringing home ever-larger paychecks.

      But an executive who’d traded in his bullwhip for a smart phone didn’t interest her any longer. The divorce had been executed with surgical precision. Conner had lost his wife, his home, his dog, his savings, and he’d been left with a job he despised.

      He wouldn’t be here forever—that was his only consolation. But leaving Stan—a man as dear to him as his own grandfather—in the middle of this hideous controversy over Greg’s murder was unthinkable. With treatment, Stan might beat the cancer. But prison would kill him.

      Conner simply couldn’t abandon the sinking ship.

      He’d met with Stan’s lawyer, who at Stan’s request had allowed him to go over the evidence collected by the police. One anomaly stood out to Conner right away. Stan wasn’t strong enough to hoist two hundred pounds of deadweight into a car trunk. That was a point in Stan’s favor.

      But Conner still had no clue who might have murdered Greg and framed Stan. Any one of the directors, looking to move up, could be responsible. All of them had been interviewed by the police, including Conner. In fact, they’d looked at Conner pretty closely, since he was Greg’s immediate boss. But once they’d zeroed in on Stan, they’d abandoned all their other suspects.

      Conner forced his attention СКАЧАТЬ