29. Out To Sabotage You
OUT TO SABOTAGE YOU
“ A re you fucking kidding me?” Elias said a month later.
“What?” Phoebe asked. She was putting the last of her toiletries in her bag and they were heading to the airport to catch the flight to JKF for Laken and Jamie’s wedding.
“Work,” he said. “And Kyle wouldn’t have just texted me if it wasn’t important.”
“So you know what it’s about?” she asked when he put the phone to his ear.
“No,” he said. Kyle picked up, but he started talking before his head brewmaster could utter a word. “What’s going on, Kyle?”
“It’s like a full moon here,” Kyle said.
His heart sank. That meant more than one thing.
Daily, something could go wrong and in some people’s eyes, there was always something.
But they were minor and other management dealt with it.
Being called minutes before he had to fly out of state for his sister’s wedding had to be huge.
“Don’t drag your feet telling me,” he said.
“The mash you’re doing for Fierce,” Kyle said.
“Yeah,” he said. He’d gone there hours ago and set it up to go. It would look odd if he wasn’t the one to set it up and brew locally for it to be transported to Fierce to mix with theirs.
That was what he was telling everyone.
The bigger secret was the fact he was doing it at home for Fierce but not letting anyone at the brewery know. He’d be bringing the dry ingredients to Fierce and staying while they got it ready for fermentation. He’d return again to make sure it was as it should be with constant reports from Ben.
His girlfriend’s brother who he trusted.
When he went over a month ago to meet at their brewery, it was dry ingredients only. Again, nothing any of his employees knew. He stayed until it was set the way he wanted and then Ben and Mason were testing it on several of their batches.
Maybe it was smart on his part to do this so privately.
He wasn’t sure why Mason suggested it but was glad it worked out the way it had.
Especially now. Kind of like a trap in his eyes, as Phoebe had said prior.
“The temperature gauge was off.”
“What the hell does that mean?” he asked.
Temperature was the most important process of the mash. It went through stages at different temperatures. Anything off could ruin it.
Which meant this whole batch was toast.
“It means I went to check on it just now and it was moving faster than it should have at a boil. It boiled faster and then was almost volatile. I grabbed a thermometer and checked. The gauge was almost five degrees lower.”
“How does that happen?” he asked, running his hands through his hair. “Wasn’t Skip watching it?”
He had men he trusted doing certain tasks. People he trained specifically.
Kyle’s job was to watch everything when he was gone. They were brewing multiple steps of beer daily since they pumped so much out.
He had operations personnel too.
“He should have been,” Kyle said. “The same with me, but one vat was leaking during the fermentation somewhere else. I called him over to help me. I had Bryan watching all the mashes going at once figuring things were fine. I checked myself.”
“Shit!” he asked. “How much did we lose in the vat and how much damage?”
“Not a lot,” Kyle said. “I caught it right away. Just a slow leak, but still have to dump the whole thing.”
It was a contamination issue. Shit like this could happen. Not often because he had regular maintenance and inspections done for this very reason.
But the fact it all started today made little sense to him.
Or maybe it did.
Double Fuck!
“What did the leak look like?” he asked.
“I can’t see it yet,” Kyle said. “We are emptying the vat. I didn’t want to bother you, but...”
“This is big,” he said. “I’ll get started on the mash the minute I get back. It doesn’t put us that far behind.”
He had to play it up as if it was a major deal and could affect his collaboration.
That wasn’t the case.
They’d planned this well with him being out of town for Laken’s wedding. He said he wasn’t returning until Tuesday to work.
No, he’d be flying home on Sunday, driving to Charlotte and then on Monday he, Ben, and Mason would get started for their collaboration.
Fierce Fifth Kid.
Their first beer together.
The next would be at his place, the same process as what he’d done with Mason. By then everyone would know it was closely guarded.
“I know,” Kyle said. “But you don’t want it to look as if you can’t control things either.”
He snorted and didn’t need that reminder.
“Nope,” he said. “I’ll reach out and let Mason know what is going on.”
“Sorry to hit you with this before you’re leaving. It’s not like you can come back and do something.”
He could if he had to and catch another flight, but he wouldn’t.
“It’s fine,” he said, lying.
It wasn’t fine because that told him there was more going on under his nose that he didn’t know about.
Could this be a coincidence again? He wasn’t leaning that way.
But was he so distracted by his personal life that he didn’t see things happening at work?
“I’ll keep you posted via text on what is going on,” Kyle said.
“Thanks,” he said and hung up.
“Not good news,” she said. “Right?”
“I know you didn’t care a lot for your grandfather, but that advice to set a trap caused something to be shaken loose.”
“Really?” she asked. “So though something happened it didn’t cause too many issues?”
He forced out a laugh. “It’s always an issue when you have to dispose of beer.”
“That isn’t what you set up though?” she said, frowning. The setup was no one knowing this morning's mash wasn’t really going to Fierce.
“No, but I’m wondering if one was a distraction for something else,” he said. “My mind doesn’t normally play that way, but it’s doing it now.”
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
He told her about the events at the brewery. “Can temperature gauges fail? Sure. But not that far off and not the same day there is a leak.”
“How do you mess with a temperature gauge though?” she asked.
“Calibration,” he said. “When I’m there I’m always double-checking with two gauges or a hand-held thermostat. My staff know to do that too.”
“But it sounds like this staff wasn’t doing their job?” she asked.
“He was called away to work on another problem. Kyle checked things prior to calling him away and thought it’d be fine.”
“So the question is, do you think Kyle or this guy had something to do with what happened today?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope it’s not Kyle. My gut says no, but anything is possible, right? There’d be no reason for him to do it though. The success of this with Fierce will reflect on him.”
“You make a good point,” she said. “You’ve got cameras, don’t you?”
“I do,” he said. “But there are blind spots.”
Her head went back and forth. “Did Mason tell you what they do at Fierce? Not sure if I should say anything, but I don’t think it’s a big secret. The staff all know and it’s how they have little to no problems there with theft.”
“I know they’ve got a tight security. We do too in distribution. My brother Foster has it set up on our servers. I’m going to text him to check into things for me while we are traveling.”
“But as you said, blind spots.”
“There is no way Fierce doesn’t have blind spots,” he said.
It was almost impossible to cover every inch of a place that big, from above and below.
“Ella’s husband, Travis, has a security company. He is the one who oversees it. He goes in and rotates cameras in new locations all the time. Usually once a week. Could be more than once a week if there is an issue. He can remotely control the cameras and change their angles at any time.”
“So can mine,” he said.
“But do you move those cameras?” she asked. “Fierce keeps several in place at all times but then know more are being added and moved and no one knows the location of them other than Travis and Mason? Ben doesn’t even know. Family only.”
“No,” he said. “I wish I knew that. It’s kind of brilliant. But I’ve got a lot of people working nights in the brewery. More than Mason does since we have more brews going than him and sell large quantities daily. It’s just a different model. He might be able to get away with it easier than I can.”
“You’d have to talk to Mason about it,” she said. “Which means you’d have to tell him why you are doing it and I’m not sure you want that, do you?”
“I’m not lying or covering anything up,” he said. “I’d never do that. I’m going to talk to Foster first and see if the guy he has set up to do it can take care of this or not.”
If not, he might reach out to Travis too and see if he’d travel this far or not. He was guessing he would if the money was right.
“I’m sorry this happened today,” she said, running her hand on his arm.
“I think it was meant to happen today. The question is why?”
“Do you think someone is out to sabotage you?” she asked. “Why now?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “As you’re aware, it’s a small town. People talk. I could have pissed someone off. No clue.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she said dryly. “It seems as if everyone loves you.”
“Not everyone,” he said, turning away.
The woman in the room he’d like to hear it from hadn’t said it once.
They’d been going strong for two months.
He felt more for her than he had anyone else in his life and yet she was cool as a cucumber on the eyes of a woman in a sauna right now.
Not much ruffled her feathers when she put her mind to it.
Even when she was out of her element, she stayed steady.
Like today.
Anyone in their right mind would be nervous about the flight they were getting on. Meeting so many of his extended family at once that were flying to New York with them.
She hadn’t said too much about it either.
She moved away from him. “Are you ready to go? I know it’s the last thing you want to do, but I’m set.”
She’d spent the night so they could leave for Fayetteville where they were getting on West’s private jet.
As far as he knew, most of his extended family who were traveling that way arrived in the area last night since the flight was scheduled to leave at ten.
“I have to put it from my mind,” he said.
“Which isn’t easy,” she said. “I wish I could take your mind off of it. Why don’t you tell me more about your family? I know I haven’t asked much, but the truth is, I’ve been so busy and the overload of information might not have been absorbed another time.”
He turned to look at her. “Huh?”
She laughed. “I know that sounds obnoxious. But when I’m focused on one thing it’s hard to open my brain to much more. I can and do. I have to and then prioritize. I’m not trying to diminish knowing your family.”
He got it. He did the same thing at work too.
Or used to.
Maybe that was why shit was happening under his nose because he couldn’t master the separation like her.
Or was it that she didn’t feel as deeply as him?
“So it’s not that you didn’t care one way or another?” he asked
“God, no,” she said. “I knew it was better to hear it all when I could give you my full attention. It’s not like there are only a few people.
You told me your mother’s brother has nine kids and your father’s brother has four.
That’s a lot of people. Then the eight of you.
” She shivered. “There is no way you all got together for the holidays, did you?”
He smiled. “We can talk and I’ll tell you in the car. But the sad truth is, the only time all of us ever got together before West’s wedding was my father’s funeral.”
“That is sad,” she said. “But now wedding number three for your family, so maybe it’s turning into a thing.”
He laughed. “Could be. Not a bad thing either. Let me give you a crash course on the way.”
Guess he could have saved himself the heartache and confusion over things if he’d just talked to Phoebe about it before.