The clean floor where machines once sat, leaving their absence like a bruise. "Can I come in?" she asked. He stepped aside. She walked in and stopped in the middle of the floor. And for a moment, she just looked around, not with contempt this time.
With something closer to attention, like she was actually seeing it for the first time. "You've been selling equipment," she said. "Paying suppliers," he said. "They don't wait." She turned to face him. "I know I owe you money, Malcolm." "You owe my team money," he said.
Rachel Kim worked 80 hours on that aircraft. David Torres worked 63. My apprentice, a 22-year-old kid named Jerome, worked 41 hours, including two overnight shifts. He paused. They have bills, too.
Victoria absorbed that. She didn't deflect it. Then he noticed. I came to talk, she said. I know why you came, he said.
Six pilots told you no. Her jaw tightened slightly. Seven, actually, as of an hour ago. Malcolm didn't say anything. He gestured toward the two chairs he kept near his desk.
The ones for clients, not for adversaries, and after a moment, they both sat down. "Tell me about the component," she said. And so he told her. He pulled out tab 4 in the binder and walked her through it the way he would have walked her through it in that conference room if she'd given him the chance 43 hours earlier. the directional flight control assembly, the serial number that didn't appear in the. FAA registry, the rejection documentation he'd found through Rachel's research, a 2019 quality control record from the original manufacturer showing that a batch of components had been flagged and destroyed due to material inconsistencies in the alloy composition.
Except they hadn't been destroyed. At least one of them had ended up in a Sterling Crown aircraft. Victoria listened. She didn't interrupt. She didn't reach for her phone.
She didn't look out the window. She listened the way people listen when they've stopped performing listening and started actually doing it. One component, she said when he finished, in your jet, he said, "In the aircraft I was hired to restore, that's the one I know about with certainty." He paused and looked at her. But I contracted to restore one aircraft, Mrs. Sterling.
I didn't audit your fleet. What are you saying? He opened tab 7. I'm saying that Apex Vector Aviation has been supplying your procurement department for at least four years. He said, "Based on the invoice records Rachel pulled, and I want to be clear, these are records your fleet coordinator provided us during the contract.
Records we needed to match against the aircraft's maintenance history. Apex Vector components appear in purchase orders across your entire operation." He laid the page in front of her. She looked at it and he watched her face change. Not dramatically. Victoria Sterling didn't do dramatic in the way most people did dramatic.