"Because you were the right person for the project," she said. "And because putting your name on the org chart would make Fitch move faster than he would have otherwise. I needed to see what he'd do." The room was quiet enough that Marcus could hear the building settling. "You used me as bait," he said. "I put you in a role you're qualified for, and I watched what happened." She said, "There's a difference." "There is." He said, "It's not as big as you think.
She didn't argue that." He gave her credit for it. She could have. She had the verbal tools for it. She chose not to. "What do you need from me now?" He said, "Pacific Ridge off the Cambria bid list.
Done in a way that's defensible under procurement policy. Nothing that can be litigated as targeted. Your documentation of the Phoenix connection. And she paused. I need to know if you want to keep the job.
He looked at her after what I just told you. She said, "You have every reason to. I'm keeping the job," he said. She blinked. It was small and fast, and it was the first uncontrolled thing he'd seen her do in 6 months.
"Why?" she said. "Because it's a good job," he said. Because Pacific Ridge comes off the list today. And because if Fitch has people inside the company, you need someone who already knows what his plays look like and what to write down when he makes them. Something moved across Dian's face, not pity.
Nothing close to it, but something that was deciding whether to be surprised. She'd been expecting resistance or withdrawal or at minimum a negotiation. He hadn't given her any of those, and she was recalibrating. "Okay," she said. They worked for 3 hours.
Marcus pulled up the vendor qualification requirements on his laptop, went through Pacific Ridg's submitted documentation line by line, and found four separate technical grounds for disqualification that had nothing to do with Phoenix, an insurance certificate that had lapsed and been renewed with a GAP, a contractor's license that had a disciplinary flag in the Nevada database, a failed mechanical project in Sacramento that was part of the public record, and a bid bond that was undersized relative to the project's declared value. Any one of them was enough. All four together was a door that closed and locked. He wrote it up in the format Diane's general counsel would need. She was on a call for 40 minutes.
While he did it, he could hear her through the half glass partition, measured and controlled, the voice she used when she was managing someone she didn't trust. When she came back, she picked up his write up and read it standing. "This is good," she said. "I've done contractor documentation before," he said. "I know." She kept reading.
I read the Phoenix file twice before I offered you this role. The original report you submitted, not the summary the company published. He looked up. How'd you get the original? Bitch's civil suit went to Discovery before it settled.
Discovery documents are public after the case closes. She set the pages down. You flagged 11 discrepancies before you had hard evidence on any of them. You built documentation over 4 months while still running the project at full capacity. You went to the ethics line directly, not your supervisor, which was the correct call.