I also think you're here because you need something from me that you can't get on your own. " Victoria was quiet. "The stamps," he said, "the coding system, the build documentation on the interior of the tub. You can read the codes because you have Westfield's records, but you can't interpret them at the component level. The specific sequence, the build phase designations, the inspection sign-offs. That requires someone who was there. " He paused.
"I was there. " She looked at him with an expression he couldn't quite name. Something between recalibration and something more reluctant than that. "You're right," she said. "So, we work together or we don't work at all. " She was quiet for another moment, which Cole was already learning meant she was deciding rather than hesitating. The two things looked the same from the outside but felt different in the room.
"Equal footing," she said. "You have the car and the technical knowledge. I have the records and the resources. Neither of us moves without the other. And Emma stays out of it entirely. " Victoria glanced toward the door that led to the small office where Emma was currently eating cereal and reading a book about deep-sea creatures.
"Of course. " "Say it plainly. Your daughter has nothing to do with any of this. She stays out of it. " Victoria met his eyes. "I'm a lot of things. I'm not someone who involves children. " Cole nodded once.
"Then we have a deal. " They shook hands across the workbench covered in photographs of a dead man's secret, and neither of them smiled because it wasn't that kind of moment. The next 3 weeks were the most technically demanding of Cole's working life, and he'd had some demanding stretches. He and Victoria fell into a pattern that nobody planned. She drove down from Scottsdale, where she was staying temporarily, every 2 or 3 days, arriving in the morning and leaving by evening. She brought printed documents, material requisitions, internal memos from the Westfield archive, shipping records, engineering correspondence.
Cole brought what he found in the car each time she came. New stamps, new physical evidence, measurements and photographs, and careful comparisons with what she'd brought from the records. It was like doing a puzzle where neither person had the box. Her documents told them what had been ordered, when, by whom, and to what specification. Cole's knowledge told them what the physical evidence meant, which stamps corresponded to which build phases, what the internal codes indicated about the construction sequence, where the significant components were located.
Together, slowly, a picture assembled. The car was the third and final prototype build. Builds 1 and 2 had been partial structural tests, never completed to running condition. Build 3 was the full vehicle, chassis, running gear, bodywork, powertrain. It had been completed in late 2017, about 2 months before the project was officially terminated.
The completion date in Victoria's records preceded the termination announcement by 8 weeks, which meant someone had known the project was ending and had pushed to finish the car anyway. "Marsh," Victoria said on the fourth day she came down, sitting across from Cole at the workshop desk with documents spread between them. He completed it after he knew the company was going to shut it down. He was already planning something. "The car was his," Cole said.