Philip Wahl approached his Lauren Wahl, who was sitting glumly on a cot. “Where are the boys?” he asked.
Lauren looked up at her husband impassively. “They’re around here someplace,” she answered. “I don’t know where. Getting showered or something.”
“We should find them,” Wahl said. “I haven’t had anything to eat all day and we need to get in the food line.”
“You go look for them, Philip,” Lauren said. “I’m too tired to get up, and I’m too tired to stand in another line. You bring me back something to eat.” Wahl looked at his wife and, saying nothing more, walked out of the hall.
Georgina was resting on a cot nearby. Hoping to learn something about Adela, she approached Lauren. “When I was leaving the Ranch this morning I saw the house that you and your husband are building,” she told her. “From what I could see, it was all right. The clearing around it made a good firebreak."
Lauren frowned. “I have two houses to worry about and no one can tell me anything about either one. I’ve called the police four times already and they don’t know a thing. They should be out checking on the houses but they’re not. They won’t go out just to check on a house, they say, only for an emergency. Well, the firemen are out there.”
“The firemen are equipped for it,” Georgina said. Lauren ignored her comment and continued to lament her circumstances. After listening for a few more minutes, Georgina decided that Lauren was unlikely to provide any useful information about Adela. When she saw Nate and Gordon enter the hall, she excused herself and caught up with them.
“Look, I got new PJs,” Gordon squealed, proudly displaying the blue polyester pajamas that the Red Cross had given him.
“Neat, Gordon. They’re cute,” Georgina said. “It looks like we’re going to have a slumber party tonight. Won’t that be fun?”
“A very big slumber party,” Nate said. “Hey, Gordon, let’s show Georgina where we’ll be sleeping.” Georgina followed them to the back of the hall where it was relatively empty of people. Nate sat down on his cot and Georgina sat on the one assigned to Gordon. Gordon amused himself by wrapping himself in a sheet, playing ghost. Nate asked if she had heard anything about the deal. Georgina replied no, adding that she did not expect to hear anything more today. Her only goal at this point, she said, was to get through the night. She volunteered that the shelter reminded her of summer camp and not in a good way. Nate laughed at that. Then he turned more serious.
“I’ve been thinking about what happened,” he said. “If there’s anything suspicious about Rios’ death, could that hold things up, legally?”
“I suppose it could,” Georgina said.
“Can you find another buyer for my company?”
Is this guy completely clueless? Georgina thought. She hesitated a minute before replying, trying to find the right words. “You have to understand that Rios was a client of my bank,” she said at last. “I can’t work against the interests of Rios Capital by helping you find a way out of the deal.”
“But there is no deal,” Nate countered. “Nobody signed any papers, remember?”
“Strictly speaking that’s true,” Georgina acknowledged. “But you and I did shake on it.”
“That was when I thought I was getting the money right away,” Nate said. “My company might collapse while I’m waiting, and I’m not willing to let that happen.”
“I see your point,” Georgina replied. “But my boss is on his way out here and he’s going to expect me to present the deal to the new owner of Rios Capital, whoever that is.”
“When you know who the owner is, you can do that,” Nate said. “But I need to line up another option, a backup plan. I should have done it before. I jumped at the first offer I got because I let myself get too far behind on the finances. You know a lot more about this than I do. Just steer me in the right direction. Can you do that?”
Alarm bells should be going off right now, Georgina thought. But they weren’t. Maybe the day’s events had given her a different perspective on things, or maybe she was just too tired to think straight. She heard herself telling Nate that she couldn’t promise anything, but she would raise the issue with her boss to see what could be done.
Chapter Twelve