Soft Focus (3 page)

“If she asks any questions, I'll answer them.”

“But
how
?”

“Dunno. Maybe I'll try a nice, bald-faced lie.”

Milo stared at him. “How can you make jokes at a time like this?”

“I wasn't joking. Like I said, I'll deal with Elizabeth Cabot. You concentrate on handling your family. We don't want any of them to get word of this, either.”

Milo blinked several times and then grunted. “Aunt Dolores would have hysterics. Uncle Ivo would probably collapse. God only knows what my cousins would do. Especially Angela.”

“You know damn well what Angela would do. She'd start demanding that Excalibur be sold or merged. She's been pushing for that since your aunt died.”

Milo's hand closed into a fist. His head came up. “Never. This is my company. Aunt Patricia left it to me because she knew I would take care of it for the family.”

Jack smiled slightly in spite of his foul mood. “That's the spirit, Milo. Don't worry, we'll recover Soft Focus.”

“But how are we going to do that?”

“Leave it to me.” Jack stopped in front of the elevators and punched the call button. “I'll get it back. But it will take some time. I'm going to have to turn everything else over to you for the next ten days or so.”

“Ten days? But the Veltran demonstration is scheduled for two weeks from today. We have to have the crystal back in the lab by then or everything goes right down the toilet.”

“As you just pointed out, we've got two weeks,” Jack said quietly. “You haven't had as much experience as I'd like yet,
but we don't have any choice. You're going to have to handle your family and the press and day-to-day operations here at Excalibur all by yourself while I'm gone. Think you can do it?”

“Of course I can do it. That's not the issue. The issue is the crystal.”

“I'm aware of that.”

The elevator doors finally opened. Mercifully, something was working right today. Jack got into the car and stabbed the button that would take him to the third floor. He looked out at Milo's haunted face and dredged up another dose of reassurance. “I'll find it, Milo.”

“How the hell are you going to do that?” Milo wailed.

Jack smiled humorlessly. “Thought I'd start by taking a vacation.”

The elevator doors finally closed, cutting off Milo's keening cry in mid-shriek.

Alone in the cab, Jack propped one shoulder against the paneled wall and gazed unseeingly at the lights on the control panel. The bottom line was that Milo was right. The loss of Soft Focus was a major catastrophe for Excalibur.

With its unique optical properties the hybrid colloidal crystal had the potential to play a critical role in the development of the next wave of computer development, a generation of systems founded on light-based technology. Optical computers worked by encoding information into light pulses. Soft Focus was designed to control and transmit light in highly specific ways on a microscopic level.

Patricia Ingersoll, a brilliant researcher with a host of patents, had developed the concept, but she had become ill and died before she could make it a reality in her labs. Tyler Page, an equally brilliant, but extremely eccentric member
of Excalibur's R & D team, had worked closely with her for years. Page had been certain that he could complete the work on the crystal.

When Jack had taken on the task of saving Excalibur, he had made the decision to base the entire future of the company on the development of Soft Focus. In retrospect, it was possible that he had made a monumental mistake, he thought as he got off the elevator. But it was not as if there had been anything else to go with. Without the crystal, there was no way to salvage Excalibur.

He had sought funding from all the usual sources and had been rejected by all of them, in spite of his personal track record. The bottom line was that no one was willing to back Excalibur now that Patricia Ingersoll was gone.

Late one night, while going through a pile of the company's old financial records with the assistance of a medicinal glass of scotch, Jack had made the discovery that once, several years ago, the Aurora Fund had backed an Excalibur project. From what he could discern, it looked as if the deal had been some kind of personal arrangement between Patricia Ingersoll and the Fund's previous manager, Sybil Cabot. The contract had been nothing more than a paragraph-long agreement. It would have meant little in court.

He had soon learned that Sybil had died two years before. She had left the Fund in the hands of her niece.

Without a lot of hope but seriously short of alternatives, he had contacted the Fund's new manager, Elizabeth Cabot, and proposed a renewed financial commitment. To his amazement, she had agreed to discuss it.

The morning he walked into her office, located on the first floor of the old mansion, he had known he was in very serious trouble. After an hour in Elizabeth's company, he had finally acknowledged to himself that he was going to
consign all his ironclad rules against mixing business and pleasure to hell.

She had gone for the Excalibur pitch. She had also accepted his invitation to dinner.

Two weeks later, he had discovered her connection to the Galloway deal and he had known that he was walking a tightrope.

He forced aside thoughts of the past as the elevator doors opened. He went down the carpeted hall to the executive suite. It was early, not yet eight o'clock. This floor was still quiet.

In his mind, he quickly made his list of priorities. The first item on the agenda was to ask his secretary to check with HR to get a phone number for Ryan Kendle's next of kin. Durand, the detective in charge of the murder investigation, had said he would take care of notifying the man's relatives. But as the CEO of Excalibur and Ryan Kendle's employer, Jack knew he had a responsibility in the matter. He did not look forward to the task.

According to Kendle's personnel file he had no family here in the Seattle area. He had been hired a few months ago to work as a lab technician. He had been a loner with no close friends at Excalibur. And now the man was dead.

Durand's working theory was that Kendle had been into the drug scene. He'd explained that the lab tech had been shot when a drug transaction apparently went sour sometime between midnight and dawn in a deserted parking lot in Pioneer Square.

Jack walked into the outer room of the executive suite. A wave of relief went through him when he saw that his secretary had come in early. Marion was on her feet behind her desk, making coffee.

She turned quickly, a strained expression on her round
face. Behind the lenses of her oversize glasses, her eyes were wide with anxiety. The coffee scoop clattered on the table.

“Mr. Fairfax.”

“I can't tell you how glad I am to see you, Marion. We've got a hell of a day ahead of us. Remind me of this when we do your next performance review.”

“Mr. Fairfax, there's something you should—”

“Later. The only way we're going to get through this morning is one step at a time.”

Jack slung his black windbreaker over a hook on the aging brass coatrack in the corner. When he had assumed the CEO position at Excalibur six months ago he had discovered that the company had taken the concept of dress-down Fridays to the outer limits. All the way to Thursday, in fact. Flannel shirts, jeans, and running shoes were the norm for most of the staff.

From the start, however, he had routinely come to work in a suit and tie, even on Fridays. He was an old-fashioned kind of guy in some ways. This morning, however, when the three
A
.
M
. phone call informing him of Excalibur's newest disaster had come, he had yanked on the first items of clothing he had found in his closet, a long-sleeved black pullover and a pair of jeans.

The call had not awakened him. At three this morning he had been sitting in the darkness in his living room, staring at the lights on Queen Anne Hill, a glass of scotch in his hand, contemplating the loss of Soft Focus. He had discovered only hours earlier that it had vanished from the lab vault.

He glanced at Marion as he went past her desk toward the door of his office. “I take it you've heard what happened in Lab Two B, Marion?”

“Yes, sir. The security guard told me when I arrived.”

“The media will be on the phone soon. The Vanguard of
Tomorrow bunch won't waste any time crowing about their latest strike against the evils of technology.” Jack paused, his hand on the doorknob. “Call Langley. I want to see him immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No one except Langley or me talks to the press. Got that?”

“I understand, sir.” Marion gazed at him with an odd expression. She lowered her voice. “But that's not what I wanted to tell you, sir. When I got here a few minutes ago, I found someone waiting in your office.”

“That homicide detective? Durand? Is he back?” Jack looked at Marion over his shoulder as he pushed open the door. “What's he want now? I've already instructed HR to give him a copy of everything we've got in Kendle's files.”

“No, sir.” Marion cleared her throat in a very pointed manner. “Not the detective.”

“Who the hell would have the nerve to go into my office without—” He stopped when he saw the woman who stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.

Damn
. He had been wrong earlier when he had concluded that disasters came in threes. Today his came in fours.

SHE HAD SWEATED OUT THIS CONFRONTATION
for most of the night. Now that the inevitable was upon her, she was surprised by her own reaction. She was cool.

True, she could feel the telltale tingling on the nape of her neck, but she always got that disturbing sensation when Jack was in the vicinity. And she was definitely a little tense. No, make that very tense. But she could handle some tension. She was accustomed to it after having attended six monthly meetings of the Excalibur board of directors.

The important thing was that she was in total command of herself. Her hands were not waving in the air. She was not shivering with anger. She had her back to him as she studied the view of the Excalibur parking lot and the broad expanse of Lake Washington in the distance.

Definitely cool.

She'd dressed for battle this morning. Her hair was pulled into a severe, sleek twist. She wore a silver-gray suit with a very fine stripe woven into the expensive fabric. The fitted jacket was padded a bit to give her shoulders a strong line. The cuffs of the trousers broke across the instep of a pair of
high-heeled leather pumps. Gold gleamed discreetly in her ears.

All she lacked was a riding crop to complete the image. It was a depressing thought.

“Good morning, Elizabeth. Always nice to have you drop in for a visit.”

Whatever happened, she would not lose her temper and start yelling at him.

She was cool.

That was good to know, because she was furious with him. And ever since the disaster in the Pacific Rim Club dining room, she had harbored the deep, abiding fear that one day she would again lose her self-control with Jack and make a fool of herself a second time.

She turned slowly away from the view of the mist-shrouded lake and the ghostly monoliths of the Seattle office towers that lay beyond.

She made certain that her coolest, coldest smile was firmly fixed in place. It was not easy. She wondered how long it would take before she could look at him without feeling that little rush of excitement that made her insides tighten and her breath catch in her throat. It had been six months now. The situation was not improving.

She sought refuge in the business that had brought her here today.

“Good morning,” she said crisply. “I understand you've got a problem here at Excalibur.”

“Nothing we can't handle.” He closed the door and motioned her to a chair. “Have a seat. I'll ask Marion to bring in some coffee.”

“Thank you.” She walked to the nearest padded leather chair and sat down. Very deliberately she twitched the fine
wool fabric of her hand-tailored trousers and crossed her legs.

She was cool and she was in control, all right, but she was breathing a little too fast and she could feel her own pulse. All she had done was walk across the office, but her body was reacting as though she were thirty-five minutes into her forty-five-minute daily workout routine.

She watched Jack go to his desk and sink down into the black leather chair. He leaned forward, punched a button, and spoke briefly to his secretary.

With a small sense of shock, Elizabeth noticed that his thick, dark hair was a little tousled looking, as if he had combed it with his fingers. Either that or someone else's fingers had recently been running through it. Very firmly she suppressed the twinge of dismay that thought induced.

Still, it was odd to see him looking so casual, she thought. On the handful of occasions they had been in each other's presence during the past few months, Jack had always been dressed in full executive battle dress: expensively cut suit, a crisp shirt, and a conservative tie.

This morning his black pullover and jeans made him look even more dangerous than usual, she thought. Probably because the snug-fitting clothes made it obvious that the power in his shoulders and the lean, graceful strength of his body were for real, not a product of good tailoring.

At some point during the course of those first, heady few weeks together, she had discovered that he worked out regularly, too. But instead of pursuing a standard physical fitness program at his athletic club, he studied one of the more obscure martial arts.

At the time she had taken his interest in the exotic exercise and philosophy as an indication of a deeply buried
romantic streak. Which only went to show what lust had done to the analytical side of her brain, she decided. It was perfectly clear now that Jack studied the ancient theories of strategy and defense because he was endowed with a ruthless, not a romantic, streak. The bastard was a born predator.

The door opened. Marion appeared with two cups of coffee. She glanced uneasily at Jack, as though seeking guidance. Then she plastered a smile on her face and handed one of the cups to Elizabeth.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said.

“You're welcome, Miss Cabot.” Marion put the second cup on Jack's desk and fled.

Elizabeth pretended not to notice. She was well aware that here at Excalibur she was viewed with great wariness. Everyone knew that she held the reins of the Aurora Fund and that the Fund controlled the fate of Excalibur.

She wouldn't be surprised if all of the employees had heard the tale of the disastrous scene in the Pacific Rim Club dining room, too. Gossip like that had a way of getting around town.

Jack took a deep swallow from his cup, lounged back in his chair, and looked at Elizabeth. “So you heard about our little problems already? I'm surprised the news reached you so quickly.”

She raised her brows. “Yes, I'm sure you are. How long did you intend to keep it quiet?”

He shrugged. “Just found out about it, myself, a few hours ago. Haven't even heard from the press yet.”

She frowned. “You're going to talk to the media about this?”

“Probably won't be able to avoid it.”

“I see. And just what, exactly, do you plan to tell the reporters when they do get here?”

“Not much to tell, is there?” Jack took another swallow of coffee and set down his cup. “We got hit by the same crowd that trashed the university and the Ecto-Design labs. The cleanup will take a few days, but Two B should be functioning at full capacity again by the middle of next week. In the meantime, we're strengthening our security measures.”

She stared at him, momentarily thrown off stride. “What in the world are you talking about?”

He gave her a politely inquiring look. “I beg your pardon, Miss Cabot. I assumed we were discussing the incident we had here at Excalibur early this morning.”

“What incident?”

“Last night one of our labs was hit by the Vanguard of Tomorrow group. You've heard of them?”

“Yes, of course.” His air of excessively civil patience made her want to toss her coffee cup at his head. She reminded herself of what had happened the last time she had given in to the temptation to throw stuff at Jack Fairfax. “A bunch of antitechnology nuts. How much damage was done?”

He shrugged. “The lab is a mess. We lost some expensive electronic equipment. Insurance should take care of most of it. Like I said, we'll have things back in operation in a few days.”

“I see.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “Excalibur seems to have hit a run of bad luck lately.”

Jack's brow climbed. “You know about Kendle, too?”

“Kendle?”

“The lab tech who got killed in Pioneer Square sometime early this morning. The cops say he was into the drug scene. Someone pulled a gun on him in a parking lot.”

“No, I hadn't heard about Mr. Kendle's death. I'm sorry.”

“So are we all, Miss Cabot.” Jack sat forward and clasped
his hands on his desk. “But rest assured neither Kendle's death nor the VT break-in will have any impact on the Soft Focus project. The Veltran presentation will take place on schedule. There was no need for you to come running all the way over here from Seattle to check on the status of your investment.”

He had gall, she thought, trying to make her sound like a coldhearted Scrooge. As if she were mean-spirited to worry about the sizable amount of cash he had tricked the Aurora Fund into pouring into Excalibur.

She met his eyes. “I appreciate your assurances, Jack. And I believe you when you say that your employee's death and the trashing of the lab will not affect the Soft Focus project.”

“Good. Now, then, if you're satisfied with the situation, I've got a full calendar today. I'm going to have to ask you to leave so that I can do my job.”

“But I'm not satisfied,” she said smoothly. “I merely said I understood that the murder and the break-in had no impact on the project. How could they?” She paused for a beat. “According to my information, Soft Focus has disappeared.”

She had to give him credit, she thought. He did not even flinch.

“Where the hell did you get that idea?” he asked.

She took her time recrossing her legs. “I had dinner with Hayden Shaw last night.”

“How nice for you.” Jack gave her a politely inquiring look. “His divorce is final, then?”

She stiffened. “I didn't ask. It was a business dinner.”

“Right. A business dinner. So Shaw is courting investors to help him get his new generation of fiber-optic networking devices off the ground, huh? I wondered when he'd finally get that project moving. It's been stalled for nearly a year.”

Hayden would have been stunned to know that word of his top-secret development plans had already reached his archrival, Elizabeth thought. She reminded herself to proceed with caution. Jack and Hayden had a history. She knew nothing about the origins of the feud between the two men, but she was well aware that it went far beyond the scope of any reasonable business competition.

“You're aware of the Frontrunner project?” she asked.

“Sure. Shaw's going to throw a lot of money down that rat hole before he's finished, but that's his problem, not mine.”

She ignored the amused disdain in his voice. “Hayden said he'd heard rumors that the only existing specimen of a newly developed material had been stolen from an Excalibur lab.”

Jack steepled his fingers. “I've got some free advice for you, Miss Cabot.”

“That's a very kind offer, especially in view of the fact that nothing else in our association has been even remotely inexpensive, let alone free,” she murmured. “However, I'm not in the market for advice.”

“That doesn't surprise me. But out of the goodness of my heart, I'm going to give it to you anyway.” Jack met her eyes. “Don't trust Hayden Shaw any farther than you can throw him.”

“Funny, he gave me some very similar advice concerning you.”

“I'll bet he did.”

She picked up her coffee again. “I suggest we get back to the subject of the rumors.”

“You know as well as I do that in this business rumors are as common as stock options in new start-up companies, and even less likely to pay off.”

“Are you telling me that the rumor Hayden heard has no basis in fact? Soft Focus is not in trouble?”

“I'm telling you that everything is under control here at Excalibur.”

In spite of all the promises that she had made to herself on the way here this morning, she lost her temper. “Damn it, Jack, don't lie to me. I've sunk several hundred thousand dollars of Aurora Fund cash into this venture. I've got a seat on your board.”

He winced. “You don't have to remind me about your position on my board.”

“I've got a right to know what's going on.”

He said nothing for a moment, just studied her intently, as if she were an interesting lab specimen. Then he shrugged. “What, exactly, did Shaw say?”

With an effort of will she regained her self-control. “I just told you, he said he'd heard that a new R & D specimen was stolen from your labs. We both know that the only secret Excalibur has is Soft Focus. Has the crystal disappeared, Jack? I want the truth. Yes or no?”

He gazed at her for a very long time, a dark, brooding expression in his honey and gold eyes. Her heart sank. He was going to lie to her, after all, she thought. What had ever made her think that he would tell her the truth? He had his list of priorities. If she was on it at all, her position was no doubt very near the bottom with a little notation next to her name: Ignore whenever possible; stonewall when cornered.

“True,” Jack said. “The crystal is gone, and so is Tyler Page.”

She stared at him, more stunned by the unexpected honesty than by the news that Soft Focus really had disappeared. She got her mouth closed and regrouped quickly.

“You weren't going to tell me, were you?” she asked.

“Not if I could avoid it.” He unclasped his hands and spread them slightly. “I had a plan, you see.”

“Yes, I'm sure you did. You always seem to have a plan, Jack. But it's a bit late to come up with one now, isn't it? Speaking as a member of the board, I think it would have been smarter to tighten your security
before
Soft Focus disappeared.”