Page 56 of Sunset Tides
“Rob, Rob, since when do you worry so much? They’re excited! That’s good for us. They had the mockups on display like proud new parents. It’s all anyone can talk about.”
Nausea washed over him and he wrestled his suit jacket off before unlocking his car and getting into the driver’s seat.
This was all moving too fast. Why was Rick so confident they’d be able to pull this off? He was setting Grippy up for disappointment. Not only that, but OSS would look like amateurs if they failed now.
Rick was still babbling on. “I’m sending over a few things you need to do before the hearing, got it?”
Rob stared straight ahead. How was he going to stop this out of control train?
“You can handle this, right?” Rick let out a sigh. “Tell me you can handle this.”
Rob let out a long breath. “I can handle this.”
“Good.”
The line went dead and Rob sat in his car for the next half hour, running over everything in his head.
There was still a chance it wouldn’t go through, right? Rick was always confident, overconfident even.
Maybe Rob could talk to Grippy again and convince them to change to one of the alternate sites he’d proposed. The mockups could essentially stay the same, but they could save money on the location.
No, that argument wouldn’t work. They knew they’d get the land on Orcas at a bargain. It was incomparable. They’d offer pennies and the landowners would have no choice but to accept.
It was robbery, really. Not that he’d ever thought of it like that before…
He needed to see what the team at OSS had put together. Had the eminent domain team madethatstrong of a case?Or was the judge just crooked? Paid off? A dunce?
Yeah, that could be it.
Rob started his car and drove over to his office. As promised, Rick had sent over hundreds of pages of documents and arrangements.
The smell of fried seafood was as unbearable as ever and the music pounded through the walls, but this time it had no effect on him. Rob was determined. He settled into his desk and spent the next three hours poring over every detail.
It seemed like the eminent domain team had been active behind the scenes. They’d hired a team of surveyors, analysts, and economists. Each specialist had written a report after report highlighting how badly the area was doing.
They struck every imaginable point – decreased value of the surrounding home prices due to the overgrown lots, fire risk from the old buildings, loss of tourism and tax revenue from underutilized properties.
These were all significant to the county, and as much as he hated to admit it, it was a productive argument for seizing theland. Rob could almost kick himself for coming up with the idea in the first place.
By the end of the day, he had to strain to keep his eyes open, but he couldn’t stop reading. He needed to find a solution that would make everyone happy.
He was engrossed in stacks of reports when the door to his office flew open.
“This is a nightmare!”
It was Lucy.
He stared up at her like a mouse caught in a trap.
“You don’t look so good.” She sat down in the chair opposite his desk. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” He shuffled the papers so they were hidden behind his computer. “It’s been a long day.”
“Me too.” She paused. “But tell me about your day first.”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing interesting. What have you been up to?”
She threw her hands up. “Everything! Claire and I just hired an attorney. We’re meeting with him tomorrow.”
