Reed explained he had a contractual right to in-person mediation and showed her the relevant clause. She did not read it. She called a security officer. By the time Vivian came through the corridor to see what was causing the delay, there were two people in a standoff at the reception desk. The camera crew had half-turned toward the disturbance, and journalists were watching with the attention of people who recognize a story beginning to take shape.
Vivian read the situation in approximately 2 seconds and made the wrong decision. Sir, her voice was clear and carrying. This reception isn't open to vendors. The delivery entrance is on the east side. She did not ask what he was there for.
She did not look at the document he was holding. A journalist made a sound that was almost a laugh. A photographer captured the frame. Reed looked at Vivian Ashcroft for a long moment. Not with anger.
Not with humiliation. With the specific quality of attention. Of a man who is recording something carefully for future reference. Then he folded the contract, put it back in his pocket, and walked to the exit. Wren was in the van.
She had been reading. Bent over her book at the angle she used when trying to finish a chapter before being interrupted. She looked up when Reed got in. She waited until they had driven three blocks. Then, "They don't know who you are, do they?"
"No," Reed said. She turned back to her book. She did not turn any more pages for the rest of the drive home. Dana Chou had covered the automotive industry for 6 years. First for a trade publication in Detroit, and then for a Pacific Northwest Business Journal that cared more about narrative than spec sheets.
She had been at the Ashcroft reception for a profile on Vivian, and she had watched the exchange at the reception desk with the professional instinct of someone trained to notice what other people dismiss. There was something in the face of the man in the delivery uniform that did not match the uniform. On the car ride back to her office, she pulled up the Ashcroft technical archives and began looking at engineering credits on older documentation. She found a name. She read it twice.
She sat with her tablet in her lap for the remainder of the ride and did not speak. Five days after the reception, Pete called Reed at 8:00 in the morning. And the sound of his voice was enough. He had run into a man named Terry Okafor at a bar the night before, a former Ashcroft technician who'd had three beers and talked about the prototype problem. With the exhaustion of someone no longer required to be discreet.
The heat cycling anomaly on the third coolant loop, he'd said. Temperature spikes on the fourth lap of any sustained run. Three days of diagnostics and the team couldn't locate the root cause. Grant had locked down the data. Pete relayed all of this the next morning, not thinking much of it.
Reed listened without speaking. When Pete finished, Reed asked, "Which lap did the temperature spike?" "The fourth." "Why?" "Just asking."