He signed off on shipping it anyway. And then he stood at my wife's grave and lied to my face. Victoria's hand went to her mouth. "Where is he now?" Ethan said.
His voice had dropped to something almost inhumanly calm. The same calm he'd used inside that cockpit four days earlier when the tail rotor had cracked apart underneath him. Whitfield hesitated. Ethan, where is he? He's still with the company that manufactures the coupling, Whitfield admitted.
He's vice president of quality assurance now for Halloway Dynamics. They're the primary supplier for He stopped himself, but it was too late. They're the primary supplier for Sky Nova. Ethan finished looking at Victoria, aren't they? Victoria's face had gone white.
Yes, she said quietly. They are have been for 6 years. Ethan let out a short, humorless laugh that had no warmth in it at all. So, the man who killed my wife has been quietly supplying parts to your company this entire time, and nobody knew or nobody wanted to know. I didn't know, Victoria said quickly.
Ethan, I swear to you, I had no idea any of this. I believe you, Ethan said, cutting her off, though his voice still carried an edge sharp enough to draw blood. I do. But that doesn't change the fact that a man who shipped a part he knew was defective, who let it kill my wife who lied to my face at her funeral, has spent the last 17 years climbing the ladder at a company that just tried to kill someone else with the exact same part. Nobody in that hallway had an answer for that.
What happens now? Ethan asked, finally looking at Whitfield. Legally, what actually happens to a man like that? And Whitfield's face tightened. That depends on what we can prove.
Falsifying a quality control record to conceal a known defect. If the documentation holds up, that's federal fraud, possibly manslaughter charges tied to your wife's death, depending on how the statute of limitations plays out given the new evidence. It won't be simple. Companies like Halloway have lawyers whose entire job is making sure evidence like this never sees a courtroom. Then we make sure it does," Ethan said.
"Ethan," Victoria said carefully. "I need to tell you something and I need you to hear all of it before you react." He looked at her, something wary sliding behind his eyes. "What?" Halloway Dynamics isn't just our supplier," she said slowly.
"They're about to close a merger with Sky Nova. It was supposed to be finalized next month. full vertical integration, them building critical components in-house instead of us sourcing them separately. My board has been pushing for it for two years. It would have doubled our production capacity. Ethan stared at her.