He was sitting up and talking when the medical team reached him. Grant was on the phone with the company attorney before Marco's car had fully stopped. The report Grant submitted to the board 6 hours later was thorough and convincing. The failure had been traced, he wrote, to a substandard brake component sourced from an outside vendor." The documentation listed the vendor.
It listed Pete's Automotive. Pete received the formal legal notification the following morning. Liability claim for $4,700,000. Pending court order to freeze business assets. His voice on the phone was the voice of a man trying very hard not to sound like what he was, 60 days from losing everything he had built over 20 years.
Reed drove to the garage. He sat across from Pete at the workbench and said, "I need to tell you something I've never told anyone." He told Pete about Ashcroft, about the position he had held as chief safety engineer, about the coolant loop flag, about Maya. She had been a test driver for the development program, not a professional racer, but a trained engineer who had volunteered for the internal test rotation because she was precise and fearless in equal measure. The accident occurred on a closed course on the fourth lap of a heat test run when the temperature on the third coolant loop crossed its critical threshold and the emergency torque cut snapped the car sideways at a speed that left no margin.
The official investigation concluded, "driver error." Reed had known, looking at the data, that it was wrong. He had said so in writing. Six weeks later, he had been handed the NDA and a termination notice. And a lawyer had explained in careful language that if he spoke publicly, the company would pursue sole custody of Wren on the grounds of his documented emotional instability.
He had signed. Pete sat through all of it. When Reed finished, Pete said, "How long have you been carrying this?" Reed didn't answer that. "The NDA prohibits me from speaking to media or legal counsel for the opposing party," he said.
"It doesn't prohibit me from entering Ashcroft's facility as a credentialed vendor under an active supply contract." He paused. "Which we still have. So, what are you going to do?" "Walk in the front door."
Reed said. What neither man knew was that Wren had come downstairs partway through the conversation, heard enough to understand that her mother had not simply died in an accident, and gone back upstairs without either of them seeing her. She lay in her bed with her hands flat on the blanket and looked at the ceiling for a long time. Reed arrived at the Ashcroft Group at 8:15 the following morning. He carried a folder and a handwritten technical analysis on four sheets of graph paper.
Security called upstairs. He waited. After 12 minutes, Vivian's assistant came down and told him Miss Ashcroft was unavailable. Reed sat in one of the lobby chairs and said he would wait. He'd been sitting for 8 minutes when Dana Chou came through the main entrance, badge clipped to her collar, there for her scheduled interview with Vivian.