Page 50 of In The Trenches (Owens Protective Services)

“Come by tomorrow. We’ll see what we can do.”

Relief filled me as my shoulders sagged. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome…” He trailed off, not knowing my name.

“Beth.”

“Beth. I’m Adam.” He held out his hand, gripping my small hand in his larger one. Warmth flooded me as he watched me intently. For the first time in years, I felt something when I looked at him, but that wasn’t really a good thing. I wouldn’t be sticking around long enough to be attached to anyone.

19

CASH

“Mayor Kinsley,”I said, shaking his hand as he walked into our offices. He had a team of five people with him, not enough in my opinion, but that wasn’t for me to decide.

“Mr. Owens, I was told you’re leading operational control on this disaster.”

His tone was friendly enough, but there was a hint of disgust or hate in his voice. Probably because we had been tasked with controlling the situation. “Sir, we’ll do everything we can to get the city up and running again.”

“I heard you were there, that you allowed it to happen.”

“No, we were there, but we weren’t aware of Grady’s plans. When we realized something was off, we did everything in our power to stop his plans. Unfortunately, it was too late.”

“Yes, well, let’s make sure the citizens can function as close to normal as soon as possible.”

“That’s our goal, sir.”

I nodded to Eli, who was waiting by the conference room. He opened the door and walked inside, waiting for the rest of the group to join. After we were all seated around the table, I made introductions.

“I’m Cash Owens, owner of this company. I have Eli Brant, Red Warren, and Bradford Kavanaugh with me today to help navigate this situation.”

“Is your father Senator Walter Kavanaugh?” the mayor asked, leaning forward curiously.

Kavanaugh bit back the sarcastic retort that I knew was waiting on the tip of his tongue. This wasn’t the time or place to say what he thought of his old man. “Yes, sir.”

“Good man,” the mayor grinned.

Kavanaugh nodded, but said nothing further. It was clear the mayor was going to try and use Kavanaugh to further his own career. Little did he know that Brad didn’t even speak to his father.

“Mayor, let’s get this meeting started,” I said, trying to push the meeting along.

He stood, buttoning his jacket as he pointed around the room. “I’ve brought the city engineer, Mark Sampson with me, along with the police and fire chief, the medical director at the local hospital, and my public relations liaison.”

I nodded to them, taking my own seat. “Mark, tell us what you can.”

Mark cleared his throat, pulling out paper maps and unrolling them on the table. It was like we’d gone back forty years in time. “For those of you that don’t know, a graphite bomb is basically a metal canister filled with spools of graphite filament and an explosive device. When the explosive detonates, it breaks the filament into very fine pieces which are ejected from the canister in a gas-like plume. If the bomb had gone off over a power line, there would have been outages, but power would have been restored more quickly. However, because a substation was attacked, the power was instantly transferred to a brother substation,” he said, pointing to another substation on the map, “but it couldn’t take the overload of power and also failed. The power stations started falling like dominos, each one unable to hold the surge in transfer of power, which is why there’s a power outage on the entire west coast.”

“What time frame are we looking at to get power restored?” I asked.

Mark glanced at the mayor, blowing out a harsh breath. “Best guess is six weeks. It could be more or less. It’s hard to tell right now.”

I leaned back in my seat, shocked by how long it would take to get everything up and running again. “What can we do in the meantime to help people out?”

“What I’d like to do is go around the city to larger buildings that have backup generators. We can reverse the flow of power back into the city.”

“Will the city be fully functioning?” the mayor asked.

“No, it’ll power bare essentials. However, if we can start reversing the flow by grid, most sections of the city will have at least a little power. It’s all we can do at this point.”

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