He didn't hesitate. I've completed the first phase of the archive project. I've also identified several operational irregularities in the vendor documentation that I'd planned to report to the appropriate channels. Victoria blinked. It was the smallest possible tell a single blink where there should have been none, but he caught it.
"What kind of irregularities?" She asked. Billing discrepancies, authorization gaps, nothing catastrophic, but significant enough to warrant a formal review. Amanda's expression had gone very still. Victoria looked at him for a long moment.
"Send the findings to Amanda by end of day," she said. "Of course," Caleb said. She turned to leave. And then Amanda said it. He would replay the moment many times afterward, the exact way Amanda said it, the precise cocktail of calculation and judgment that produced those eight words.
"Victoria," Amanda said. He doesn't really fit the image of this company. Victoria stopped. She turned back toward Caleb and she looked at him the way someone looks at an item they're deciding whether to keep or return. She looked at the jacket at the backpack with the repaired strap at the notebook and pencil on a desk with no personal items, no photos, no coffee mug.
She made a decision. It was the decision that would in 36 hours bring 10 black SUVs to the front of the building and stop the entire city block. But in that moment, it looked like nothing more than a powerful woman exercising the most basic form of the power she had been given. She squared her shoulders. "Mr. Thompson," Victoria Harrington said in the voice she used when she wanted something to be heard clearly and remembered permanently.
"You're done. Clear your desk and leave this building immediately." "Not, we're going to have to let you go." Not, "This isn't working out. You're done."
Two words, direct, final, delivered in front of 200 people on a floor that had gone absolutely completely motionlessly silent. Caleb looked at her. He looked at Amanda. He looked at Derek, who was watching from three desks away with the expression of someone who was witnessing an accident in slow motion. He looked at Elaine, who had looked down at her keyboard.
He looked at the employee badge in his hand. He'd been holding it when she walked over. He'd been about to reclip it to his jacket. He held it for a moment. The whole room waited.