Chapter 16: Out of the Chair

Shane was across the room before anyone else had moved.

He knelt on the carpet, pulled Dalton's father's tie loose and tilted his chin up.

"He's breathing," he said. "Somebody call nine-one-one."

Dalton's mother already had her phone at her ear.

She gave the address in a clear, steady voice, and then she knelt down on the carpet in her good camel coat and took her husband's hand.

"Stay with me," she said, in a tone I had heard her use on caterers. "Don't you dare."

Dalton stood against the glass wall with both hands over his mouth.

He did not go to his father.

Melanie stood beside her chair, looking from one of them to the other.

The paramedics came in six minutes with a stretcher.

They worked on him in the corner while the board stood in a ring with their hands at their sides.

"His pulse is coming back," one of them said. "We'll take him to Mission."

They wheeled him out with Dalton's mother walking alongside.

At the door she turned and looked at the man with the white eyebrows.

"Finish the vote," she said. "He'd say a motion on the table is a motion on the table."

Then she was gone.

The room was very quiet.

The white-eyebrowed man cleared his throat and put his glasses back on.

"There is a motion before the board," he said. "To remove Dalton Hargrove from his office as vice president, effective at once. All in favor?"

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