He had gotten a firewall. But as he watched Clare eat her cold fries on the hood of a rusted car, treating his daughter with a bizarre but genuine respect, he realized the firewall wasn't just keeping the bad out. It was building something solid on the inside. The illusion of normalcy shattered on a Tuesday. The shop was busy.
Dean was elbows deep in the engine bay of a Dodge Ram, struggling with a seized alternator bolt. The knuckles on his right hand were bleeding sluggishly from slipping against the radiator housing. In the front office, Clare was on the phone with the bank, ruthlessly restructuring the shop's debt profile, effectively cutting Dean's interest rates in half. Sam was in the corner building a tower out of clean spark plug boxes. Then, a black Mercedes S-Class pulled into the cracked pothole-ridden lot.
It didn't belong. The car was entirely out of place against the backdrop of rust and industrial decay. Dean heard the low purr of the engine and wiped his bleeding hand on a rag. Stepping out from the bay to look. A man in a bespoke charcoal suit stepped out.
He didn't look around with the usual confusion of a lost commuter. He walked with total practiced purpose toward the front office. Dean dropped the rag. A cold spike of adrenaline hit his stomach. Guys in suits like that only came to places like this for two reasons, audits or repossessions.
He walked quickly toward the front office, wiping the worst of the grease from his hands. He opened the door connecting the bay to the office just as the man walked through the front entrance. Clare was still on the phone. Consolidate the two smaller loans into the primary mortgage or I pull the accounts, she was saying. Then she looked up.
She stopped speaking. She didn't hang up the phone. She just slowly lowered the receiver to the cradle. The color drained entirely from her face, leaving her looking like carved marble. "Hello, Clare," the man said.
His voice was smooth, polished, and carried a distinct undertone of impatience. "You are an incredibly difficult woman to locate. Your board of directors is in an absolute panic. The stock dropped four points on rumors of your medical leave alone." Dean stood in the doorway.
He looked at the man. He looked at Clare. "Who is this?" The man barely glanced at Dean. "I am Arthur Penhaligan, chief legal counsel for the global entity this woman happens to run.
I am here to take our CEO back to Chicago before the shareholders initiate a vote of no confidence." The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. global entity CEO Chicago. Dean looked at Clare. She was staring at Arthur, her jaw locked. She looked exactly like the woman who had terrorized Rick the supplier.
But now the scale made terrible perfect sense. "Is this a joke?" Dean asked, his voice low. "I don't make jokes about billion-dollar supply chains, mechanic," Arthur said dismissively. He turned back to Clare.