THE QUIET KING OF GROWTH CAPITAL: HOW JAMES CARTER BUILT HORIZON WITHOUT BECOMING A CELEBRITY
Bradford stared at the photograph.
The same calm eyes.
The same face.
The same man who had been standing three feet from him less than ten minutes earlier.
He enlarged the image anyway.
Victoria leaned closer.
Her hand came away from her mouth.
"No."
Bradford did not speak.
"No, Brad."
"I see it."
"Maybe the article has the wrong picture."
He turned slowly toward her.
"Stop."
The word was quiet.
Victoria looked at the stage.
The event program had resumed. Ellen stood near the microphone while a student speaker described a robotics program funded the previous year. Under ordinary circumstances, Victoria would have found the speech charming and clapped at the right moments.
Now she could barely hear it.
She picked up the place setting in front of her.
A printed program lay beneath the napkin.
On the second page was the keynote listing.
8:30 P.M.
JAMES CARTER
FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
HORIZON CAPITAL PARTNERS
LEAD SPONSOR: $2.5 MILLION
Victoria read it twice.
"Brad."
"I know."
"We're meeting him Monday."
"I know."
"For fifty million dollars."
Bradford looked at her.
"I know."
The panic arrived not as a scream but as arithmetic.
Without Horizon's capital, Whitmore Enterprises had perhaps eight months of comfortable liquidity and less if two pending contracts slipped. The company had invested heavily in a new production line. Equipment had been ordered. A lease had been signed on a second facility. Several suppliers had already extended terms based on management's expectation that new financing would close before year-end.
The fifty-million-dollar proposal was not rescue money in the formal sense. The company was not insolvent.
But it was close enough to a difficult transition that Bradford had spent four months telling the board Horizon was the cleanest route forward.
Now the man controlling that route was standing somewhere inside the ballroom after Bradford had told him he did not belong at the table reserved in his own name.
Victoria's phone buzzed again.
Her mother.
Then her sister.
Then Melissa Greene, a friend from the country club.
Victoria opened Melissa's message.
What on earth were you thinking?
A second followed.
Please don't tag me in anything tonight.
Victoria looked sick.
Bradford's phone rang.
The chairman of his board.
He stood.
"I have to take this."
He moved toward the windows at the edge of the terrace.