Goddess Rising (33 page)

September—Monday Morning

Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico

S A M A N T H A

The Wyatt Petroleum
Sikorsky helicopter banked gently, flying low over the dark waters of the Gulf of Mexico as they headed out to their ocean oil platform. From the air, the rigs dotting the Texas coastline looked like massive, semi-submerged Tonka toys, each with slightly different formations and fixtures, some painted bold colors, others bare like the metal workhorses they were meant to be.

Sam sat in a leather captain’s seat next to her father, with two men situated opposite. A small table between them held coffees and binders stuffed with reports and findings. Mack McDevitt sat across from her father, while one of her father’s rising stars sat across from her, trying hard not to overtly check her out as Sam resolutely ignored her father. Not that her dad much cared. He was busy reviewing spec reports on the drill they were visiting anyway, engrossed in production-to-cost ratios.

They’d traded some words earlier in the morning before boarding the chopper, and Sam was still irritated that he’d forced her hand by having the ranch hands effectively steal her car so she’d have no choice but to go to the platform with him in order to get a ride back to school.

As Sam looked out the window, enjoying the feel of the sun on her skin, she caught the reflection of Travis Brandt, her father’s latest high-potential talent. Travis was a tall, good-looking guy with thick, well-cut hair the color of mink and the palest blue eyes she’d ever seen. He had the ingrained Southern charm that spoke of education and the kind of off-hand confidence that came from growing up with money. Sam also figured Travis had to be sharp as a tack and just this side of manipulative for her dad to like him, so the genial, gentlemanly behavior he exhibited around her had to be just for good show. If her dad considered Travis to be an up-and-comer, he’d would have to be well-versed in backroom deals and no stranger to bending some rules every now and then.

Sam took a sip of her coffee, catching Mack’s eye across the air-conditioned cabin. They shared the small, intimate grin of two people who knew each other well. Sam had grown up around Mack. He’d been with her father for as long as she could remember. Where Uncle Grant was her dad’s right-hand at the ranch, out here in the world of oil and shale, Mack was Robert Wyatt’s go-to guy and second-in-command.

Mack had the rangy build of a roughneck, with the weathered face to match. Fitting, since he’d come up hard in the oil fields, working for the Wyatt’s in some way or another over the past thirty years. He had black hair, shot with silver, and the kind of deep russet tan that was burned in several layers deep from years outdoors.

“You been kicking ass and taking names this semester, little girl?” he asked teasingly in his thick Texan drawl.

“Six ways to Sunday, old man,” Sam replied with a wink. “You still keeping Daddy in line?”

“Every damn day,” Mack drawled with a twinkle in his eye as Robert grunted, not bothering to look up from his reports.

Travis glanced between them both, a little taken aback by their good-natured ribbing.

“Sammy’s a sophomore over at A&M,” Mack explained, grinning.

“Good school.” Travis shot her an indulgent smile. “You in a sorority up there, Samantha?”

She caught Mack’s lips twitching.

“Not exactly,” she answered, offhand. “How long have you been working for my father?”

“A few months now.”

Travis’s startling blue eyes ran over her. Not too slow to be untoward, but not too fast either, letting her know he liked what he saw. She saw him making assessments as he took in her neat slacks and silky button-down, saw the satisfaction in his eyes when he thought he’d figured her out.

“The oil rig we’re visiting today is a semi-submersible, Samantha,” Travis explained, like he was hosting a tour of the platform they were choppering toward at over 160 mph. “The rig floats, so we can move her from place to place, and she can be ballasted up and down by altering the buoyancy in the tanks, which we anchor when we’re drilling.”

Sam nodded politely, ignoring Mack as he covered his mouth with blunt tipped fingers, trying hard not to laugh.

“A little more than seventy percent of the oil production in the Gulf comes from drilling depths of a thousand meters or more,” Travis went on. “But the capacity of this particular platform is about two thousand meters.”

“Actually, her capacity is three thousand meters,” Sam corrected affably, crossing her hands in her lap. “She’s one of the first deep-sea rigs out in the Gulf, but you’re right in that the deepest payload she’s hit to date has been at two thousand and two hundred meters, give or take.”

Travis’s brows shot up like she’d just spoken to him in Swahili.

“You know about the Imakaly?” he asked, referring to the platform.

“She named the rig, son,” Mack answered for her. “Trav, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but this girl knows more about the oil and gas industry than four years of college and a master’s degree in petroleum engineering could ever teach you.” Mack glanced at him with a smug grin. “Sammy’s been going out with me and her daddy since she could barely crawl.”

Travis turned wide eyes on her.

Samantha smiled serenely. “It’s Im-mo-ka-lee, by the way,” she pronounced slowly, for his benefit. “Cherokee for ‘waterfall.’”

“And with that rig’s production quantities, it’s more than fitting,” Robert chimed in for the first time in minutes as Travis sat back, duly humbled. Her father handed her a couple geological reports. “Have a look at these and tell me what you see.”

Sam reviewed the numbers slowly, digesting. When she was finished with one, she read through the other. Then she lifted both side by side, comparing both reports and running quick, back-of-the-envelope calculations in her head. Then she sat back, thinking.

“So?” her father prompted, crossing his arms as he waited. “What’s your opinion?”

“I know the logical move is to keep going farther west for this next platform, but the competition is getting awfully tight. We’ve got about four thousand rigs out there to contend with right now,” she said, thinking aloud. Sam set the reports on her lap, considering the map of the Gulf of Mexico.

“I’m thinking you should go east,” she said finally. “It’s more exploratory, and therefore more risky, but our rigs are all semi-mobile, and we’re nimble enough to move quickly if we don’t hit pay dirt in the first couple production quarters.”

“You do know that the federal government banned production in the eastern part of the Gulf a few years ago, right?” Travis countered, eager to regain his footing and put her in her place.

Sam shrugged. “I know more than nineteen percent of US oil came out of the Gulf last year. That’s more than any single state, with the exception of Texas. I also know that more than seventy percent of those four hundred million barrels came from depths of about three hundred meters, ban or not.”

She lifted one of the reports. “This geological report tells me there’s enormous untapped potential past fifteen hundred to three thousand meters in deep-water drilling, but most of that’s in the east, past Louisiana—meaning it’s only partially protected water.”

“But the coastal drilling ban—”

Sam turned to Mack. “Mack, how far out does the federal government want to make sure platforms stay in the east part of the Gulf?”

“I reckon about a hundred and twenty five miles from shore.”

Sam nodded. “And how many miles are recognized as United States territorial wVjkaters?”

“Usually around two hundred nautical miles.”

“So that’s about two hundred and thirty miles,” Sam calculated quickly. She looked back at Travis. “You’re a petroleum engineer, right?”

“That’s correct.” He nodded.

“So based on the depth our fleet of semi-submersibles can operate at and looking at this report, where would you say the best opportunity would be to drill deep water?” she asked, handing him a geological map of the Gulf and the reports she’d been studying.

It took him half the time to see what she’d seen, but then he was a trained professional in this field, while she was just the daughter of an oil man, raised to sniff out potential where there were opportunities to be found.

Travis looked up at Sam, then Robert. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Told you, son,” Mack chuckled.

Robert’s eyes twinkled with mirth. He rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide his smile.

“There’s a two-thousand-meter-deep pocket that’s wide open, just between the federally protected waters and international waters,” Travis murmured, eyes dropping back to the report.

“If it were up to me, I’d petition to have that water drilled in limited production quantities by an American-owned, private company, so any findings can still be fully taxed,” she told her father. “That’s something I think the government can agree to because it doesn’t open up area so significantly that it potentially causes them to reverse their position on the coastal drilling ban but everyone still gets their share of the pie.”

“Samantha, you’re one helluva natural,” Travis murmured, visibly impressed.

“Granddaughter of a wildcatter,” Robert said after a moment, pride in his eyes.

Sam shrugged, hiding her flush of pleasure by looking out the chopper windows. She watched as they descended onto the platform in a precise swivel.

As mad as her father made her, there was nothing quite like the look in his eye when he was pleased with her. And as the chopper descended toward the platform, Sam wondered, after all this time and after everything that had happened between them, why his pride and approval of her still mattered to her so damn much.

*

September—Tuesday Morning

The Viz Lab, Texas A&M

W E S L E Y

“Whatcha working on?”

Wes looked up from the computer where he was drafting the first of his articles. Miranda leaned against the doorframe, holding two cups of coffee and wearing the shortest hot pants he’d ever seen. Creamy legs for days. Damn, she looked spectacular.

“I seriously hope you didn’t wear those to the prison,” he joked.

Miranda scoffed. “I dress practically Amish to go to that place.” She mock shuddered. “Lord, that prison is seriously skeevy. All those grown men haven’t seen a woman in Lord only knows how long. It’s strange to feel so sorry for people who make your skin crawl.”

Wes closed the article he’d been working on as she sauntered toward him, a curious expression on her face. He pulled up the digitized photos of the FTX exercises he’d attended to date, as she handed him a cup of coffee.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling.

Miranda leaned over his shoulder. “These are good, Wes. Gritty.”

He nodded. “Purcell’s suggestion. Make it look less like a training exercise and more like the real deal. He thought it’d highlight how young these cadets really are too. Remind people enlistment age is still only eighteen.”

“Amazing we let kids carry automatic weapons, but they still can’t legally hold a beer.”

Wes lifted a brow. “I’m thinking that’s a good thing. Those two things don’t exactly mix.”

She pulled her red hair over her shoulder, momentarily distracting him. “I guess you’re right on that score.” She looked back at the screen, leaned across him, and worked the mouse so she could zoom in on a few shots he’d taken of Samantha in action.

Wes caught a drift of her perfume. Something sweet and intensely feminine.

“Samantha’s kind of a bad-ass, isn’t she?” Miranda admired, enlarging a picture of Sam at the rifle range the day she won the marksmanship challenge, holding her target next to Colonel Sasser.

“That she is,” Wes replied with a grin.

Miranda scrolled through the rest of the pictures quickly. “You’ve got more than enough for a single article, Wes,” she pointed out. “Need help narrowing them down?” she offered, smiling at him over her shoulder.

In truth, Wes had pitched an installment story about tracking the A&M Cadet Corp through the rigorous training, culminating with the finale article on the Challenge itself, with Sam as the story’s centerpiece. He figured even if
The Statesman
didn’t accept his pitch, he’d make sure it ran in the college paper.

Purcell had encouraged him to go for the whole nine yards, with the option to cut it back to a single article if the paper wasn’t interested in doing a full-series op-ed piece. He had a feeling Purcell was encouraging Miranda to do exactly the same with her death row work.

Before Wes could answer her, Miranda sidled onto his lap, surprising him. She wrapped an arm around his shoulder and leaned in, kissing him like she’d done a half-dozen times before. Miranda tasted like creamy coffee with a hint of cinnamon, her warm, pink tongue slipping into his mouth sweet and easy.

Wes pushed his hands through her hair, holding her still as he kissed her back, thinking maybe this was what he needed to get over Samantha and his strange obsession with her. They hadn’t spoken since he’d left her apartment Saturday, and Wes was caught somewhere between jonesing and indecisive. He’d been pitching back and forth between wanting to see her and trying to avoid her—and Miranda felt so damn good…