In exchange, we would need your full cooperation in characterizing this as an isolated incident unrelated to any prior program at Edwards Air Force Base. The hallway went silent. Ethan looked at the man for a long moment and something in his chest, something that had been simmering since the moment he heard Richard Voss's name finally reached its boiling point. "You want me to say my wife's death and today's near catastrophe were unrelated?" Ethan said slowly.
"So your company can keep its merger and Richard Voss can keep his job and nobody ever has to answer for shipping a part they knew would kill people. I want you to consider the well-being of your daughter," Meyer said. his voice softening into something that sounded almost paternal and felt to Ethan deeply obscene. You have a chance here to secure her entire future. Financial security you will never see again in your lifetime. All you have to do is let the past stay in the past.
Ethan stood up slowly from the bench. "17 years ago," he said, his voice quiet, but carrying a weight that made every person in that hallway go still. A man stood at my wife's funeral and told me the truth would come out. He was lying. He knew he was lying because he was the one who buried the truth in the first place.
And for 17 years, I believed I had somehow failed her. That if I just fought a little harder, argued a little louder, maybe she'd still be alive. I have carried that weight every single day since. And you are standing here in a hallway offering me money to bury that same truth all over again for a second time. So your company doesn't lose a merger.
Mr. Cole, "No," Ethan said, and his voice finally rose, filling the hallway, drawing the attention of everyone still lingering near the conference room doors. "You listen to me now. I don't want your money. I don't want your settlement. I don't want a non-disclosure agreement that protects Richard Voss for one more day than he has left.
I want the truth in public in a courtroom if it has to be. So that every family who lost someone to a part that man shipped knowing it was defective finally gets to hear the words they deserved 17 years ago. And if that costs you your merger, Mr. Meyer, then I hope it costs you every single dollar you were counting on because that is a price I will happily watch you pay. Meyer's face had gone rigid with fury, but before he could respond, Victoria stepped between them. "He's right," she said quietly, and every head in the hallway turned toward her, including her own board chairman's.
Franklin, the merger is dead. I'm not signing it. Not with Voss anywhere near this company, and not by asking a man who lost his wife to lie about it. "Victoria," Meyer said sharply. The board voted.
The board doesn't run this company day-to-day. I do, Victoria said, her voice hardening into something Ethan hadn't heard from her before. Not performance, not showmanship, just plain unwavering conviction. And I am telling you in front of everyone in this hallway that Sky Nova Aerospace will not merge with a company whose vice president of quality assurance falsified safety records that got someone killed. If the board wants to fire me over that decision, you're welcome to try, but I will not have this company's name attached to what Richard Voss did.
The silence that followed was absolute. Meyer stared at her for a long moment, something calculating moving behind his eyes and then, without another word, turned and walked back into the conference room, the other board members trailing uncertainly behind him. Victoria let out a slow breath and turned to Ethan. I'm sorry, she said. That should never have happened.
I didn't know he was going to approach you directly. Would it have mattered if you had? No, Victoria admitted. I'd have told you exactly what I just told him, but I'm sorry you had to hear it from him instead of from me. Ethan studied her face for a long moment, and something in him, some deep guarded weariness he'd carried since the moment she'd mocked him in front of 200 people 6 days earlier, finally slowly began to loosen.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "En don't thank me yet," Victoria said grimly. Meyer's not going to let this go without a fight. And Halloway Dynamics has lawyers who will bury us in litigation. The second word gets out that we're walking away from this merger publicly over safety concerns tied to their VP.
"Let them try," Ethan said. Victoria almost smiled. "You really aren't afraid of anything, are you? I'm afraid of plenty," Ethan said quietly. "I'm just done letting fear make my decisions for me.
I did that for 3 years. Look where it got me. The confrontation with Richard Voss happened 4 days later and Ethan hadn't planned for it to happen at all. He'd been called to a deposition at a federal building downtown. A preliminary interview with NTSB investigators.
Nothing official yet. Just Ethan walking them through everything he remembered about the tail rotor coupling. And at Colonel Whitfield's gentle prompting, everything he remembered about the accident 17 years ago. It was supposed to be a quiet private session in a conference room with a court reporter and two investigators. Nobody had told him Richard Voss would be in the building.
He saw him in the lobby purely by accident. Both of them heading toward the elevator bank at the same time. Ethan recognized him instantly despite the 17 years older now heavier gray hair where there had once been dark. But the same sharp eyes, the same posture of a man who had spent his career being obeyed without question. Voss recognized him, too.
Ethan watched it happen. Watched the older man's face shift from polite, distracted, unfamiliarity to something that drained the color right out of his skin. Ethan Voss said his voice unsteady. Ethan Cole, Richard. Ethan's own voice came out steadier than he expected, given that his heart was hammering against his ribs hard enough to hurt.