The room went quiet. Reed looked at Grant then, directly. For the first time since the day he had been walked out of this building, he was in the same space as Grant Holloway and had something in his hands that Grant could not take away. "Mr. Holloway, his voice was level. Would you like me to read from the internal technical report dated March 14th, 2017?
The one you deleted from the company server in 2019? I have the original." No one spoke. Grant opened his mouth, closed it. He was a man who had spent decades knowing exactly what to say, and he was looking at Reed Callahan and calculating whether there was anything left.
Vivian, standing at the head of the table, was looking at Grant with an expression Reed had not seen on her face in any of their interactions. She was watching her technical director fail to speak, and something in her face was going very quiet and very certain. Reed picked up the folder. "Ms. Ashcroft, you have 37 vehicles from the current production line with the same coolant architecture as the prototype. Every one of them has the same unresolved design fault.
He headed for the door. Your legal team can reach Pete Granger directly regarding the supplier dispute. He had nothing to do with what happened to your test driver. He stopped. Did not turn.
You have 48 hours before Dana Chou publishes whatever she's already found. I thought you should hear it from someone who was there first. He left. Dana came to the garage that evening after 9:00, when the last car had been picked up and Pete had locked the main bay. Reed was at the workbench, not working on anything.
Just sitting. She set a folder on the bench. Inside was the termination documentation from Reed's separation from Ashcroft, sourced from public filings, and two former employees who had agreed to speak on background. Reed picked it up and read it. He got to the third page and stopped.
The signature authorizing his termination was not Grant Holloway's. It was Thomas Ashcroft's. Reed set the paper down. He looked at the surface of the bench for a long moment. "Did you know this when you came here?"
"No," Dana said. "I found it this afternoon." Reed was thinking about Thomas Ashcroft, who had died of a stroke in his office 4 years after Reed's termination. 3 months after Vivian had taken over. Reed had met him twice.
Both times Thomas had said safety engineering was the conscience of the industry. If I flagged the coolant fault, Reed said, it went to the executive safety committee. Thomas chaired that committee. Then why did he sign the termination? Reed stood up and went to the far end of the workbench.