Rhett had been awake for 4 hours when Brooke Ellis called. He was in his hotel room in yesterday's clothes with a cup of coffee going cold on the nightstand and the Denver variance report finally finished and emailed. When the number came up as a New York City area code he did not recognize, his first thought, still half entangled in the previous night's embarrassment, was that it was going to be something formal, an apology request, a note through proper channels about professional conduct on. Commercial flights. Mr.
Callaway, this is Brooke Ellis calling on behalf of Clare Vaughn at Vaughn Meridian Systems. Miss Vaughn would like to meet with you this afternoon. Regarding an operational matter, if you're available, Rhett was quiet for a moment. An operational matter, he repeated. Yes, sir.
Not the other thing. No, sir. Specifically, not the other thing. He exhaled. What time?
He arrived at the Von Meridian building at 2:30 in a gray button-down, dark slacks, and his regular shoes, which were clean, but emphatically not corporate. He still had the backpack. The lobby receptionist gave him the particular look that high-end offices reserve for people who have arrived correctly, but do not look like they have, a look that measured the gap between his appearance and the floor number he had been cleared to visit, and found it notable. Rhett ignored it with the ease of a man who had been given that look in nicer lobbies than this one, and had stopped performing for it a long time ago. Tyler Knox was waiting near the elevator bank, and his expression when he saw Rhett was the expression of a man revising a theory he had not expected to need to revise.
"Mr. Callaway," Tyler said with the extended audible pause that precedes a statement designed to establish hierarchy. "I understand you had a conversation with Clare on the flight last night." "I did. Clare is generous with her time. She talks to a lot of people.
He let that settle for a moment. Our operations team is quite experienced. We don't typically bring in outside perspectives based on ah another pause precisely placed in formal introductions. Rhett looked at him evenly. Then this should be a short meeting.
He followed the assistant to the conference room and did not look back. Clare was already there, standing at the far end with Naomi beside her and a wall screen showing a live routing dashboard. 16 Major corridors, dozens of active routes, the whole operational anatomy of a large logistics company laid out in columns of green and amber and a scattering of quiet, steady red. Rhett set his backpack against the wall, walked to the center of the table, and looked at the screen without sitting down. He looked for 30 seconds.