She looked at him across the kitchen table, this quiet, careful man who fixed thing two things with his hands and made sure his daughter knew how to notice when people were cold, and she understood that she was in serious trouble. I'm watching the road, too, she said. He was still for a moment. Then he nodded once, slowly, the way he nodded when a piece of information had been filed correctly. Okay, he said.
Okay, she agreed. They sat with the leftover evidence of the evening between them, and neither of them needed to say anything else. Her phone rang on a Thursday morning while she was in the garage handing Daniel a torque wrench. She looked at the screen. Her CFO, Noah Brenner.
She'd been dodging Noah's calls for four days. I have to take this, she said. She stepped outside into the cold. She could hear Noah's voice before she even raised the phone to her ear, clipped, precise, the voice of a man who had spent the last 72 hours managing something that had gotten significantly out of hand. Riley.
The Caldwell Group wants a response by end of day tomorrow. They're reevaluating our Series D terms, and if we don't get in front of this I know, Noah. Do you? Because your assistant told me you've been in Aspen for three weeks, and no one seems to know. I know the situation.
I'll get on a call at 4. They want you in person. Chicago. The board is I'll fly tomorrow. She closed her eyes briefly.
Set it up. She stayed on the phone for 12 minutes. When she hung up, she stood in the snow outside the garage for a moment, her breath clouding in the cold air. The mountains were very still. She went back inside.
Daniel was still working on the truck. He didn't look up immediately, but she saw something in his posture, the slight change in how he held his shoulders that told her he'd heard. Your company, he said. Not quite a question. There's a situation I need to deal with.