"The method is documented."
"Most of it is documented."
Grant looked annoyed.
"What does that mean?"
Katherine set a binder on the table.
"The vendor sequence was modified for the Carrington fixtures. Ethan wrote the main procedure. I can follow it. But there are at least three compensation values in the current setup whose derivation isn't written down in the released procedure."
Vanessa frowned.
"Are they arbitrary?"
"No. That's the problem. They make sense. I can see what they're correcting. I can't certify why those exact values were selected or whether the conditions that generated them are still valid."
Grant leaned forward.
"You're a controls engineer. Derive them."
Katherine looked at him.
"That would be a new method, not continuity of the validated one."
"How long?"
"To re-derive and correlate properly? Days if everything behaves. Weeks if it doesn't."
Vanessa looked at the binder.
"Would Carrington accept your signature if you gave it?"
Katherine's answer came immediately.
"No competent engineer over there should."
Grant exhaled sharply.
"This is becoming ridiculous. We are allowing one technician's poor documentation habits to hold an entire company hostage."
Katherine turned toward him.
"His documentation isn't poor."
"You just said values are missing."
"I said the released procedure doesn't contain the full derivation. There's a work package on his station with forty pages of draft transfer notes. It was scheduled for completion by end of quarter."
Vanessa closed her eyes for one second.
Katherine continued.
"Knowledge transfer takes time. You can cross-train a method, but not after you terminate the person in the middle of documenting it."
Grant's face hardened.
"Careful."
Katherine looked directly at him.
"I'm being careful. That's why I'm not signing."
She left the room.
Vanessa watched the door close.
"Forty pages," she said quietly.
Grant did not answer.
At eleven fifty-one, Ethan called back.
He had driven home, put the cardboard box from his locker on the kitchen counter, and slept for two hours in the clothes he had worn all night. Claire was at school. The house was quiet.
When he woke, he saw eight missed calls, three from Blackwood, two from Sterling's office, one from Diane, one from Noel, and one from a number he did not recognize.
He made coffee first.
Then he called Vanessa.
She answered on the first ring.
"Mr. Cole."
"You called."
Vanessa stood behind her desk. Patrick sat in a chair near the window, available if the conversation crossed into legal territory.
"We need you back this afternoon to complete the Carrington verification."
There was a pause.
Ethan turned off the kitchen faucet.