Ryan answered the forum with another press campaign. His representatives circulated old internal memos showing that Otis had been consulted about cost reductions years earlier. The implication was that she had supported the same policies she now condemned. Some of the documents were genuine. Their dates were old, their context complicated, and their conclusions less flattering than Otis wished.
Rather than denying them, she asked Judith to release an accurate chronology through the appropriate channels. Otis had agreed to some earlier reductions when the company was facing real losses and when alternatives had been reviewed. She had also failed to challenge others strongly enough. The current proposed four hundred layoffs were different because the operating analysis was incomplete, employees were being classified unfairly, and executives stood to receive significant bonuses linked to the cuts.
She made a public statement admitting that controlling shares carried responsibility even when the shareholder delegated her authority. It was not a comfortable admission. The newspapers could quote it without sympathy. But the public record became harder to manipulate when she stopped trying to present herself as someone who had made no mistakes.
At Sterling, the recovery plan began to show measurable results. Denise reorganized maintenance schedules and reduced overtime caused by recurring preventable failures. Grace negotiated longer payment terms with suppliers willing to see the new controls in place. Walter Phelps's quality records helped identify a faulty outsourced component that had led to repeated scrap and rework. The company worked with the supplier to correct the defects, improving output without firing the technicians who understood the machinery.
One Saturday Otis returned to the shop floor wearing safety glasses and a plain work jacket. Denise had asked her to examine a prototype modification proposed by a young engineering team. Otis listened to their explanation, asked about the load cases, and pointed out a problem with an assumption in the drawings. The engineers began defending their calculations until she showed them where the test setup differed from the equipment's real operating conditions.
A young engineer named Priya Shah studied her, fascinated. "You still do this in your head?"
"Not as fast as I used to," Otis said. "And never well enough to skip a test."
They spent the afternoon evaluating alternatives with the technicians who would have to manufacture and service the design. Otis found herself laughing when the prototype failed in a completely unexpected way. It was the good kind of failure, the kind that taught you something before a customer depended on the result. For a little while she felt as if she had returned to the first workshop, where expertise mattered more than titles and every problem was an invitation to learn.
The legal investigation, meanwhile, gathered weight through quieter work. Federal agents reviewed referrals from the company's counsel and the independent committee, requested records through lawful process, and interviewed people who had approved or questioned the disputed transactions. Agent Daniel Simmons, assigned to the financial-crimes investigation, met with Jake, Grace, Patricia, and several former executives. He also interviewed Otis, asking difficult questions about her years of delegated authority rather than treating her as innocent simply because she had exposed the problem.