And maybe, just maybe, it would save someone’s life.

He decided to buzz his secretary and make sure the plane tickets to Texas were all set. And after that, maybe he would take a trip down to the lab before he left. One more check wouldn’t hurt; maybe they had finally found something in those fish. It seemed clear that he wouldn’t get any extra sleep that night, though he was exhausted. He couldn’t afford to sleep. He still had a lot to do.

CHAPTER TEN

They remained at the Château Frontenac for four more days. David spent most of the time at the Hydro offices sorting through the massive files on the project, and Helen and Jessie spent the time sightseeing. The options available to tourists seemed endless, as was the work at Hydro Development: stacks of construction plans, environmental documents, legal papers, licenses, financial documents, stock purchase agreements, leases, deeds, and power purchase contracts in various forms. Not all of them fell under David’s area, but he felt more comfortable knowing as much as possible about the business and the project itself, especially with the FERC breathing down their necks.

He worked with Thompson briefly over those few days, and nothing more was said by either of them about the meeting and the argument that followed. He couldn’t exactly say the man was friendly to him, but he was at least polite. It was almost as if the strange outburst had never happened at all, and after a couple of days, David felt it fading away like a bad dream. As far as he knew, nobody at the office had heard from the FERC, so maybe they had realized their mistake. Maybe they had found somebody up there on a snow- mobile dumping pesticides, or discovered something seeping down from one of the Canadian mills.