I stamped these during manufacture. The prefix letter R for review. He looked at her. I know this car the way you know handwriting you wrote yourself. Victoria stared at the photographs for a long moment.
Whatever she was thinking, she kept it contained. You were on the team. Junior technician. I was 23. I didn't know who owned the project or who was running it above the engineering level.
I just knew the work. He paused. I was told the car was destroyed. I believed it. And now?
Now I have 400 photographs documenting the physical evidence, 2 weeks of detailed examination, and approximately zero doubt that what's sitting in my workshop is the only running prototype ever built from program 7-X Meridian. He looked at her. Or what's left of it. Victoria set her coffee mug down on the edge of the workbench. It made a small sound in the silence of the shop, and neither of them moved for a moment.
Outside, a truck passed on the access road. Inside, the overhead lights hummed their indifferent fluorescent note. Cole, she said carefully. Do you understand what this means? If the car is authenticated, if the prototype designation is confirmed through independent verification, this isn't just a remarkable find.
This is a legal and corporate situation of considerable complexity. Marsh's NDA. The original company's liability. Ownership questions that will take years to resolve in court. She paused.
And people who have an interest in this not becoming public. I understand that. I'm not sure you do, she said, not unkindly. You're a mechanic in Tucson with a burned car and a good story. I'm a person with resources and connections and a very specific kind of interest in seeing this car verified correctly.
Those are not the same position. Cole looked at her steadily. He'd heard the hierarchy in that description. The implication that she had things he didn't, which was true, and that this meant something about how decisions got made, which he wasn't ready to concede. "I hear what you're saying.