At six-thirty, she entered Ryan Sterling's office. It was a spacious room with walnut shelving, a view of the river, and an enormous portrait of Thomas beside his son. Ryan had commissioned the portrait after taking the chief executive role. The artist had made Thomas's expression more severe than it had ever been in life, and Otis always thought the change was revealing. Ryan preferred a father who looked like a monument to a father who had worried about paying his machinists.
She was wiping a coffee ring from the edge of the conference table when the office door opened. Ryan entered with Logan Matthews and didn't slow when he saw her. He set his phone on the desk, then looked at the cleaning cart with undisguised irritation.
"Again?" Ryan said. "How many times do I have to tell people not to schedule cleaning while I'm working?"
"The room was scheduled before eight, Mr. Sterling," Otis replied. "I'll be finished in five minutes."
Ryan looked at Logan. "See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. We've got people on legacy payroll arrangements who cost twice as much as an outside contractor. My father thought kindness was a business model."
Logan smiled. "Some of the oldest employees seem to believe the building comes with lifetime occupancy rights."
"Check the facilities budget again," Ryan said. "We're paying for nostalgia while competitors pay for results."
Otis kept her hands on the cloth. Her salary wasn't extravagant, and neither man had ever bothered to examine it carefully. There were years when she'd accepted no increase because she knew technicians on the plant floor were overdue for one. But the figures weren't the point. Ryan wanted an audience, and he wanted to demonstrate that he could humiliate her without consequence.
"You heard me, Mrs. Carter?" he asked. "I'd like to think there are still jobs simple enough to complete without interrupting senior management."
"I heard you," she said.
The answer gave him nothing to push against. He waved her toward the door, and she moved her cart out without another word. In the hallway she stopped beside the old company photograph mounted near the elevators. She had designed the pump impeller displayed in the picture, though the brass plaque beneath it credited only Thomas Sterling. The omission was so old that it had begun to look like history.
On the thirteenth floor, she found two young maintenance workers eating breakfast from paper wrappers near a service alcove. One was Luis Vega, who had worked at the plant for nineteen years and knew the sound of every press on the east assembly line. The other, Maya Benson, was an apprentice who had been hired six months earlier and was trying to finish evening classes in industrial electronics. They both straightened when they saw Otis, as if she were a favorite aunt rather than another employee with a mop.
"Morning, Mrs. C," Maya said. "Want half my sandwich?"
"You need that sandwich more than I do. How's school?"