Page 30 of Defended By Love

“And then?”

“The issue arose when I went back. Hart Link had done so well with their addition and increased capacity, I returned hoping to forge some sort of partnership with them. Since my role sends me out to work with different companies to try to improve their practices, I thought I should learn from the best. After all, they exceeded in every single way. It was somewhat on a whim that I decided to re-test the vitality of the local ecosystem.”

“Why’s that?”

Lauren places her hand on her belly. “I hate to say it, but when you’ve been doing a job like mine for as long as I have, when you smell roses, you start to wonder what kind of stink it’s covering up.”

If I could tattoo that over my heart, I would. Suspicious is practically my middle name. Sometimes it pans out and sometimes it doesn’t. But I’ve never regretted nosing into something.

If I were in Lauren’s shoes, I absolutely would have performed the tests again.

“And what did you find?”

“Nothing,” she says simply. I arc an eyebrow. “Literally nothing. It was a complete dead zone. For exactly half a kilometer around the island, there wasn’t a single sign of animal life.”

She says this with an elegiac gravity that sends a shiver up my back. As someone who has chosen a less lucrative career path because of how strongly I believe in my work, this hits me hard. Our oceans are the blood that run through our earth’s veins. I can’t even imagine what sort of devastation would ensue if life were to die off from inside them.

Half a kilometer of a dead zone might not sound like much. It is. Except that’s not the worry. In the past ten years, Zagreus Hart’s businesses have increased exponentially without showing any signs of stopping.

If anything, his economic growth in an ever-increasing number of domains seems like a juggernaut of inevitability. If it’s half a kilometer of death right now, what will it be in another ten years?

“Is that when you filed your report?”

“No. I didn’t let on. I sat through the whole meeting and smiled while some guy named Vaughn sipped green tea and bragged about how all his office furniture could be fast-composted in under a week, even though I knew his company had accidentally or purposely exterminated a staggering amount of ocean life.”

This woman is either my secret twin or soul mate.

“Never reveal your strategy to opposing counsel,” I mutter.

She nods. “Exactly. They let me come back a week later, where I surveyed the ocean again.”

“They allowed that?”

“They didn’t expressly forbid it.”

Maybe she’s my clone.

“And?”

“I got the original results back. Booming life, everywhere. Exceeded our ten-year targets for re-establishing marine ecosystems.”

“Did you consider that your second test was faulty?”

“I did. I went back and went over every point of data and verified every piece machinery I used. It all came back in order.”

I add some notes to my pages, mostly just repeating what she’s said to help me organize my own thoughts.

“You know Hart Link Incorporated could poke a million holes in your story,” I say finally. I hate it to say it since I believe her, but it’s true. The second test looks like an anomaly, a ridiculous one at that. Decreased life could be believed. Going from absolutely nothing to thriving? No. Not a chance.

“Yeah. I know.”

“And yet you still filed the report?”

“Clearly.”

I can see how it’ll all play out now: she’s going to get deposed and will get torn to shreds. Her credibility will be questioned, publicly and thoroughly. She’s going to have this loom over her head for the rest of her career.

But she did it anyways.

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