Chapter 5 - Chase’s Golden Facade Cracks
On Friday morning, Dr. Henderson spent forty-five minutes inserting two small titanium pins into my radial head to stabilize the shattered bone.
When I woke up from anesthesia in the recovery suite, Daniel was sitting in the vinyl armchair next to the bed, his laptop open on his knees, typing with quiet intensity.
The grogginess clung to my brain like wet wool. “Daniel?”
He immediately snapped the laptop shut and leaned forward, his thumb brushing my forehead. “Hey. You’re out. Everything went perfectly. Henderson said the bone aligned cleanly.”
“What were you looking at?” I mumbled, squinting at the black computer.
Daniel hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he adjusted the blanket over my shoulders. “Work.”
“You have that look,” I said, knowing him better than anyone alive. “The look you get when a foundation is four inches off-center.”
Daniel smiled slightly, though there was a cold spark in his eyes. “We’ll talk about it when we get home.”
By Saturday evening, the nerve block had worn off, replaced by the deep, heavy ache of healing bone, but the prescription painkillers kept it manageable. Daniel had fluffed four pillows behind me on our living room couch, set a mug of hot soup on the side table, and sat down on the coffee table facing me.
He opened his laptop and turned the screen toward me.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Three months ago,” Daniel began, his voice analytical and measured, “my firm, Collins & Thorne Structural Engineering, was hired by the City of Eden Prairie for third-party compliance audits on commercial projects. One of the developments assigned to my team was the *Pinnacle Heights Promenade*.”
I blinked. “That’s the Holloway development. The one Chase’s father owns.”
“The one Chase is currently the lead acquisition and project manager for,” Daniel corrected. “He’s been running the site logistics for the last nine months. It’s his big showcase project to prove to his father’s board that he’s ready to take over the company.”
“And?”
Daniel clicked a folder. Blueprints, site inspection photos, and material delivery logs filled the screen.
“Chase wanted to cut costs to hit his Q4 performance bonus,” Daniel said, his finger scrolling down a column of numbers. “He switched concrete suppliers in October. He bypassed the approved pre-stressed structural mix for the main underground parking deck and subbed in an uncertified quick-cure mix from a cut-rate supplier in Wisconsin.”
I didn’t know structural engineering, but I knew Daniel. “How bad is it?”
“If that garage had been loaded with three hundred vehicles after the ribbon-cutting next spring, the shear stress on the primary load-bearing columns would have caused catastrophic spalling within twelve months. In plain English: the ground floor would have dropped into the basement.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Did he know?”
“He signed the change order himself,” Daniel said, pulling up a PDF document. At the bottom of the page was Chase Holloway’s signature, looped and arrogant in blue digital ink. “He marked it as ‘Minor Non-Structural Aesthetic Variation’ to bypass the municipal review board. He pocketed nearly two hundred and forty thousand dollars in budget surplus for his division.”
I looked up from the screen into Daniel’s face. “What are you going to do?”
“My job,” Daniel said simply. “I’m an engineer, Audrey. I stamp drawings with my license. If a structure is unsafe, I flag it. I don’t care who owns the dirt.”
“Chase thinks you’re doing this because of what happened at Christmas.”
“Chase can think whatever his pea-brain allows him to think,” Daniel said calmly. “The difference is, before Christmas, I would have flagged the discrepancy, called his project engineer, and given them forty-eight hours to replace the concrete cores quietly before submitting my formal audit to the municipal building commission.”
“And now?”
Daniel looked down at his watch. “Now, I’m submitting the report directly to the Chief Building Inspector of the State of Minnesota, with a copy to the Holloway Board of Directors, at eight o’clock on Monday morning. No courtesy calls. No warnings. No second chances.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “Daniel... they have money. Chase’s father has lawyers who eat small firms alive.”
Daniel reached out and gently laid his hand over my sling, right above my heart.
May you like
“They have money, Audrey. But I have the math. In my line of work, the math doesn't lie, it doesn't take bribes, and it doesn't care whose father is on the country club board. Chase thought he could break my wife’s arm and walk away because he wears a three-thousand-dollar suit. He’s about to find out what happens when the foundation gives out.”
***
