Page 14 of My One and Only (Blackhawk Security #10)

T he tapping of Jo’s fingers flying over her keyboard snagged Cam’s attention. She’d read something, purse her lips for a moment, then scribble something in a notebook. Keep scrolling, then write down something else. He wanted to ask her what she was doing but didn’t want to interrupt her concentration.

She leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head, and he forced himself to look away. That stretch pushed her breasts against the sweater she wore, and that was something he definitely didn’t want to see.

No. If he was honest with himself, he’d like to watch Jo stretch like that all day. But he wasn’t going to get involved with her. She wasn’t the kind of woman he usually dated -- someone he could have fun with, and no worrying about neediness or clinging. Jo was definitely not a ‘bang her and cross her off a list’ kind of woman. Jo was a friend. Had been for a very long time, even if they’d had no contact for the last fifteen years. And that wasn’t the way you treated a friend.

To add to the ‘no’ factor, she’d met Fiona. Jo had made an impression on his daughter, and the last thing he wanted was Fiona getting attached to a woman who’d leave when the problems at his company were solved.

Did he think Jo was a threat to Fiona? Of course not. He didn’t think Jo would hurt his daughter. But he didn’t want Fiona to get attached to any woman besides his mother. Was he over-protective? No. He simply didn’t want his precious daughter getting hurt. Didn’t want Fiona to get attached to Jo, only to be crushed when she left after this… situation was over.

He'd seen how devastated Fiona had been when Ashley walked away. The memory of his little girl standing at the living room window, watching for her mommy to come home, still made his heart ache.

A part of him snorted with derision. You know damn well Jo’s nothing like Ashley. She’s not going to hurt Fiona. But he and Fiona had been a unit for a long time. He didn’t want anyone elbowing her way into their unit. You don’t even like that Fiona is close to her grandmother.

That wasn’t true.

Was it?

Was he keeping his daughter away from his dates because he was selfish?

No. Of course not. He just didn’t want Fiona to get hurt. Didn’t want her to get attached to a woman, only to have her walk away. Just like Ashely had done.

But as he glanced at Jo, working at the other desk, he knew he was a liar. He didn’t want to share his daughter. The two of them had been a unit for a long time, and he wasn’t interested in changing that.

Even if it was what Fiona needed?

He shoved the thought away and grabbed some drawings of new floor plans. Studied them as he tried to block out the image of Fiona, staring up at Jo with a huge, delighted smile on her face.

A short knock on the door was a welcome excuse to stop thinking about Fiona and Jo. “Come in,” he called.

Don opened the door and stepped inside, closing it softly behind him. His partner grabbed one of the chairs from in front of Cam’s desk and dragged it to the other side. Slid into it and dropped a plain manila folder onto the desk in front of Cam.

“These are job applications we’ve gotten in the last week.” Don frowned. “Not sure if word’s gotten out that we’ve fired some people, or maybe it’s just that spring is coming and people are looking for construction jobs. Anyway, here they are.”

Cam nodded as he opened the folder. Before looking at the first application, he asked Don, “I assume you’ve read over these applications?”

“I have,” Don said.

“Any thoughts?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you take a look at them and see if you pick up what I’ve picked up.”

“Okay,” Cam said. He grabbed the first application and turned to Don. “You don’t have to sit there and watch me read,” he said. “I know you’ve got plenty of your own work. You were working late a few nights ago. Go ahead and get back to whatever you were doing. I’ll give you a call when I finish looking these over.”

Don frowned. “You sure? If I wait, I can answer any questions you have.”

Cam shook his head. Stopped abruptly. Since he’d had a couple cups of the coffee that Jo had made, his head felt much better. But it wasn’t ready to have him shaking it. “No sense taking up your time since you’ve already read the files. I’ll give you a shout when I’m finished and you can come back.” He grimaced. “I hate to make you go back and forth, but sitting at my desk is working. Not sure how my head would like it if I started wandering the halls.”

“No problem. I get it.” Don pushed away from Cam’s desk. “Give me a buzz when you’re ready to discuss them.”

“Will do. I’ll take notes as I go.”

“Great.” Don slapped his hand on Cam’s desk. “See you later.”

“Yeah. Later,” Cam said, pressing his fingers to the left side of his head.

As soon as Don left the office, Cam pulled a notebook out of a desk drawer and began reading the first application. He took notes as he read, then put that application aside and reached for the next one.

After he’d examined all the applications, he leaned back in his chair and stared at them, frowning. He glanced over at Jo and saw her scribbling something in her own notebook. Then she tapped a number into her phone and waited. She murmured something into the phone, listened for a moment, then said, “Thanks,” and hung up.

Once she was off the phone, he opened his mouth to ask her opinion. Closed it again. She was his bodyguard, not his business consultant. But Jo had a good head on her shoulders. She’d been one of the smartest kids in their high school class.

So he cleared his throat. Waited until Jo looked up at him, her brow furled with concern. “You need something, Cam?”

Drawing in a breath, he said, “Yeah. I do. Can I ask you for a favor?”

“Of course,” she said, swiveling her chair to face him. “What do you need?”

“These are job applications that Don wants me to look at. He’s the one in charge of hiring, but he asked me to look them over. I think the problems with our new construction have freaked him out and he wants to make sure we don’t make the same mistake with new hires. Can you tell me what you think of these applications?”

“Sure,” she said, standing up and walking to his desk. “You have specific questions, or do you want me to look at the applications and tell you what I think.”

“I’d like you to take a look at them. See if you see what I did.”

“Okay.” She tapped the manila folder. “They in here?”

“Yeah.” He handed her the folder. “Take a look.”

Jo carried the folder over to her desk, sat down and opened it. She read the first application. Set it aside and read the second one. Frowned and set it aside. There were six applications in the folder, and she read through all of them. Finally she swiveled in her chair to face him.

“All six of these people worked for the same company. Had the same foreman. Why are they all leaving at once? That was the first thing that I noticed.”

Cam nodded. “I noticed that, too.”

“I know you didn’t call the company. Do you think Don did?”

“No clue. He should have, but I have no idea if he actually did.”

Jo tapped the folder. “Does it seem unusual that six people from the same company would be fired at the same time? Or resigned at the same time?”

“Yeah, that’s what I noticed. Questioned.”

“You gonna call them?” Jo asked.

Cam stared down at the folder. “I don’t think so. They all reported to the same person. I’m gonna call him. Get his take.”

“He may not give you a straight answer,” she said. “If any of them were fired for cause, the guy in charge might not want to say anything. He could be worried about a lawsuit.”

“I think I can get around that,” Cam said. “We’ve had our own problems. If it sounds like the guy’s giving me the runaround, I’ll tell him what happened here. That might make him more comfortable telling me the truth.”

Jo nodded. “Good plan. Give him a call.”

Cam noted the name of the supervisor of two of the men and called him. “Johnson,” a gruff male voice said.

“Hi, Mr. Johnson,” Cam said. “This is Cameron Pierce at PK Builders. I have applications on my desk for two of your former employees.” He gave Johnson the names, then added, “As well as four other men that worked for your company. I’m wondering if you could give me some details about why your two men left your company. The rest of them, too, if you know. We’ve had some problems with our own workers, and I don’t want to get into the same kind of bad situation with new hires.”

There was a long beat of silence on the line. Finally, Johnson said, “We usually don’t give out information on why we let a worker go. But this situation…” His voice trailed off. “I don’t want to damage their abilities to get another job, but we had serious issues with a number of men. They were fired. Sloppy work. Materials that weren’t up to our specifications. And we’re pretty sure someone was getting kickbacks for the difference in price of materials with our specifications and the specs of the material that was actually used.”

Cam sucked in a breath. “Thanks for your honesty, Mr. Johnson. I really appreciate it.” He hesitated, then realized he needed to return the favor. “If you get applications from anyone who recently worked for PK Construction, please give me a call. We had a similar situation here, which is why we’re looking for new workers. Let me give you my phone number.”

Cam rattled it off, and he could hear the drag of a pen across paper as Johnson wrote it down. “Thanks, Pierce,” Johnson finally said. “Glad you called. Don’t take our bad apples, and we won’t take yours.”

“We won’t. Thanks again,” Cam said, then disconnected the call.

Jo swiveled to look at Cam. “Don was considering hiring people who were doing the same thing your employees were doing?”

Cam nodded once. “Yeah. To be honest, he probably didn’t call. I’m guessing he assumed that we’re heading into spring when construction really picks up, and the people who applied just wanted to move on.” He shrugged. “Happens every spring. Construction slows down for us in late fall, picks up again in March. We always get a lot of applications this time of year.”

“Good thing you called about those applications,” Jo said.

“Yeah.” His jaw twitched as if he’d clenched his teeth. “Now I have to tell Don we’re not hiring any of them.”

“Speaking of which,” Jo said. “I finally sent emails to the people I know from the Army, and I’ve gotten two responses already. A carpenter and an electrician. Both of them are interested in a job, if it comes with an apartment they can use. Neither of them live in Chicago.”

“These are good people?” Cam asked. “Did good work?”

“Yes and yes,” Jo said.

“Great. If you have their phone numbers, I’ll give them a call and talk to them.” He studied her, a tiny smile curving his lips. “Not only are you protecting me, but you’re bringing me new employees. Thanks, Jo.”

“Feels like a win-win,” she said. “You get reliable workers and my friends get jobs. Hard to argue with that.”

She scribbled something on a piece of paper, got up, walked to his desk and handed him the paper.

He glanced at it and looked up at her. “Your electrician is a woman?”

“Yeah, she is. Is that a problem?” She watched him for a long moment.

“Not at all. Just a little unusual.”

Jo shrugged. “The Army needed electricians. They trained her. She’s very good at what she does.”

“Thanks, Jo.”

“Hope you can convince them to come to Ogden. They’ll do good work for you.” A smile curved her mouth. “If they come to talk to you, take them to Francesca’s Mio Modo. That might be enough to convince them to sign up.”

Cam smiled. “You and I should go back there.”

Jo nodded. “Yeah, we could take Fiona.”

Cam’s smile fell away, and he grabbed his phone. “Let me talk to Don, then I’ll give your two people a call.”

He felt Jo’s gaze on him but picked up the phone and dialed Don’s extension. When his partner answered, he said, “Cam here. Can I ask you why you wanted me to take a look at these applications, Don?”

“You’ve read them over already?” he asked.

“I have.”

“What did you notice?” Don asked.

Cam clenched his fist, squeezed, then released it. Why had those men applied to PK Construction? Had they heard about the opportunities for making some side money at his company?

“All six of them left at the same time,” he began. “I thought that was odd, so I called the guy who was supervising two of them.” Cam took a deep breath.

“He told me that the two guys he supervised, as well as the other four, were doing the same kinds of things that our fired employees were doing. He was reluctant at first, and I didn't expect him to tell me what actually happened. But when I told him we’d had some problems with our men, he told me why his were fired. They were doing the same things as Simms and the rest of our guys were doing.”

“Wow,” Don said. “Really?”

“I guess it’s a fairly easy scam to pull,” Cam said, angry that his company had been scammed. “So all six of those guys are hard nos. I’m not taking on someone else’s problems.”

“Absolutely not,” Don said. He sucked in a deep breath. “I should have called their supervisor myself. Asked the same thing. And I’m embarrassed that I didn’t.” Cam heard him swallow. “I saw six journeymen construction guys and jumped. Should have known it was too good to be true.”

“Not necessarily, buddy. Why would you have thought the same scam was going on at another company?”

He glanced over at Jo and realized she was listening intently to his side of the phone call. Looking away from her, he interrupted Don’s apologies. “I’m not blaming you, Don, for God’s sake. But we’re not hiring these guys. We’ll have to keep on looking.”

“Yeah,” Don said. “I’ll keep digging.”

“I have a lead on an electrician and a carpenter. I’m gonna call them in a little bit. Talk to them and see if they’d be a good fit.”

“Yeah? That’s great. Where’d you get their names?”

“Jo worked with them several years ago,” he said, deliberately keeping his answer vague. “She vouched for them, but I want to talk to them myself. If they pass me, I’ll turn them over to you.”

“Thanks, Cam. That would be great. We need to get fully staffed again. We have a lot of houses that are waiting to be built.”

“Yeah, I know,” Cam said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Thanks, partner,” Don said.

“Anytime,” Cam replied, smiling. “Jo’s sent out a bunch of emails. She’s just waiting to hear back from them. With any luck, we could be back on track in a couple of weeks.”

“That’d be great,” Don said. “Fingers crossed,”

“Yeah, me too,” Cam answered as he disconnected the phone. He glanced at his phone. “It’s almost lunch time,” he said to Jo. “You want to grab something quick?”

She looked up at him. “What did you have in mind?”

“I keep cans of soup, frozen mac and cheese and sandwich stuff in my fridge,” he said. “We can eat right here, if you like.”

“Sound’s good,” Jo said. “I’d like to keep working on tracking down this truck. I’ve called about half of the collision shops in this area, and I’d like to get that finished before we have to leave.”

“Great. Let’s have lunch, then you can get back to work.”

She tilted her head and studied him. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll work while I eat. I’ll get through these names a lot faster that way.”