Devlon Petroleum to see if they were in trouble. The stock had gone up since yesterday and there were no EPA investigations or crew mishaps and while there was a part of him relieved by this, he had no regrets about quitting. There had been a couple of minor spills that hadn’t made big news, a couple of injuries that could’ve been avoided if safety measures had been followed. His last standoff with his chief pilot was when he refused to fly to drilling platforms in the Gulf during a hurricane watch that was soon to turn into a hurricane warning. If they’d been asking him to fly out there to pick up rig workers and bring them in, he would have done it. But they wanted to take more men out there even though the weather was taking a bad turn. His chief pilot was only following orders when he said, “You take this flight or take a walk.”
Coop had walked.
This was probably his own damn fault. When he’d left the Army after six years in a helicopter, he had taken on high-risk jobs. After a couple of years as a mercenary in a Black Hawk in countries without their own armies, he moved on to flying between offshore oil rigs and land and found that could sometimes be as questionable. But the money had drawn him. At the time he’d merely asked himself what the difference was between flying a Black Hawk in Iraq or Mozambique, getting fired on, and flying off Costa Rica or in the Gulf of Mexico back and forth between the continent and drilling platforms.
Then he’d experienced his first major spill and it all hit him pretty hard. The carnage was horrible. Coop hadn’t paid that much attention to seagulls, pelicans and fish until he’d seen them covered with oil. Hadn’t worried about where he was going to get his fish until he’d seen all the fishing boats moored and unable to work. That’s when he started to notice things, like a half-assed effort at cleanup, like regulations shaved too close to the bone, high fuel prices so the consumer could pay for their mistakes and company suits and stockholders wouldn’t take a hit.
He’d worked for a total of four oil companies. He left each one for what he considered irresponsible drilling and transporting. He’d look around for yet one more, but he needed a change. A break. And, although it made him feel a little guilty, the same companies he disapproved of had paid him well and given him stock bonuses. He had a healthy bank account; it would afford him some time to think about what to do next. If he thought it would make those oil companies more responsible, he’d have refused the money. Instead, he made donations to nonprofit organizations dedicated to cleanups and animal rescue.
Enough. He flipped over to his email. There was one from Ben Bailey, the guy who was supposed to meet him in Virgin River. He was up to his eyeballs in mess; his septic system had died, but it had gotten real sick first. He was trying to get everything taken care of so he could make at least a fast trip to the mountains, maybe at least aim at a deer if not shoot one. It was only a five-hour drive from his place in Oregon.
Coop shot back an email. Come when you can. I’ll be here awhile. I’m between jobs. Again. If you don’t get down here, I’ll come up. Never have seen this little business of yours.
“Ah, the infamous Coop,” a voice said.
He looked over the top of his laptop. The guy was a little taller than Luke, but the resemblance was unmistakable. He winced before he said, “Does it have to be infamous?”
“Your reputation, like my brother’s, precedes you.” He stuck out a hand. “Colin Riordan. Same DNA as Luke, and roughly same locale. We’re neighbors. How you doing?”
He slapped the laptop lid closed. “Doing a little relaxing. It just doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how he lucked into this,” Colin said, hands on his hips, looking around. “He and our brother Sean came up here hunting, found this compound all broken down with the elderly owner bedridden and dying. He stayed dying for years. But Sean and Luke put together a deal that would take care of the guy. Eventually Luke came up here and