Yeah, he said quietly. I probably would have, but she laughed at you. She laughed at the invoice, he said. And then she refused to deal with the safety flag. And that combination, he stopped.
He set down the coffee cup. That combination told me something about the culture inside that company. And when I went back and looked at what Rachel found at those 11 components at the procurement records, he shook his head. This isn't a billing dispute anymore. It hasn't been a billing dispute for a while.
He picked up the binder, opened it to tab 7, laid it flat on the desk. Someone in Victoria Sterling's company has been buying aircraft components from a supplier with a junk certification history, marking them up and installing them in aircraft that carry human beings, he said. And the reason nobody caught it. He looked at Rachel, is because Victoria Sterling didn't think operational details were worth her time. She inherited an aviation program and never looked at it.
Until now, Rachel said. Until now, Malcolm agreed. He closed the binder. Outside the shop window, a car pulled into the parking lot. A black SUV.
No driver, just one person in the back. Malcolm watched it park. He watched the door open. And Victoria Sterling, CEO of Sterling Crown Industries billionaire. The woman who had laughed at his invoice 43 hours ago, stepped out of the car alone.
No assistant, no attorneys, no executives. She walked toward the door of Hayes Arowworks. Malcolm didn't move. Rachel looked at him. Should I get another cup of coffee, Malcolm said?
This is going to be a long conversation. Victoria Sterling had never knocked on a mechanic's door in her life. She knocked anyway. Malcolm watched her through the shop window for three full seconds before he moved. He'd been sitting at his desk with the Apex Vector binder open in front of him and a cup of coffee gone cold at his elbow.
And when that black SUV pulled into his lot without a driver, without assistance, without the full court press of attorneys and executives she'd brought to every previous interaction, something in his gut shifted, not softened, just shifted because a woman like. Victoria Sterling didn't go anywhere alone. That was a statement. He just wasn't sure yet what it was saying. Rachel had already disappeared into the back of the shop.
Malcolm stood up, straightened his shirt, and opened the door. Victoria looked different outside her conference room. Still polished, she would never not be polished. But something around her eyes was wrong. Not wrong like grief.
Wrong like a person who'd been running at full speed and suddenly found there was no more ground in front of them. "Malcolm," she said. "Miss Sterling." She looked past him into the shop at the workbenches at the equipment. Some of it still there. Some of the spaces where equipment used to be noticeably empty.