The words seemed to land somewhere deep in Marcus's chest. His shoulders lowered a fraction, and he nodded. They worked beside each other for the next two hours, checking the service assemblies used in the company's fleet vehicles. Technical work created room for trust without requiring either man to pretend the difficult conversation was finished.
Around eleven, Priya summoned Charlotte, Helen, and several members of the independent committee to a secure conference room. Her team had verified that Colin Pike's credentials were used during the unauthorized export and that a portable storage device had been connected to the administrative workstation. More importantly, the file timestamps corresponded with a series of messages instructing Colin to prepare materials for an external evaluation. The messages came from an account registered to Victor Sloane's office, although the team still had to establish who actually sent them.
Priya displayed the relevant records without dramatizing them. "The evidence is sufficient to justify immediate access restrictions and formal interviews. It is not, by itself, a criminal conviction. But there's a second issue. We compared the modified connector to the original test anomaly described in Daniel Carter's notes. The failure behavior is strikingly similar."
Charlotte asked what that meant for the prototype's safety. Priya said the team had quarantined the suspect components and recommended a complete independent validation before any demonstration resumed. The technical defect could be repaired; the unauthorized access was the more urgent threat. If the design files had already left the company, no amount of replacing hardware would bring them back.
Helen placed another document on the table. It was a preliminary financial disclosure showing that a private trust linked to Victor's family held an interest in Horizon Mobility Capital. The holding was structured through several entities, but the ownership trail was sufficiently documented to raise a material conflict. Charlotte had known Victor was wealthy. She had not known he could benefit from the company selling the very division whose launch he was trying to delay.
"He'll say it's a passive investment," Charlotte said.
"He may," Helen replied. "We'll ask him for a formal disclosure and give him an opportunity to respond. But the board must know before taking action that could favor the buyer."
At noon the emergency meeting began. Victor entered the boardroom smiling with the practiced reassurance of a man who expected fear to make everyone obedient. He took his place at the head of the polished table and arranged his papers as if he were about to conduct an ordinary review of quarterly earnings. Charlotte watched him and remembered a younger version of the same man standing beside Richard Bennett during Daniel's dismissal.
Twenty years had passed, but the room carried the same dangerous question. Who would be allowed to define the truth when the evidence threatened somebody powerful?
Victor Sloane began the meeting by thanking everyone for coming on short notice. He wore a dark suit, a watch that caught the light whenever he moved his wrist, and an expression of carefully managed concern. Around the table sat eight directors, two outside attorneys, Charlotte, Helen, Priya, and Aaron Bell. Evan had been invited to provide technical testimony about the prototype, not to participate in the board's decisions, and he stood near the back with Marcus beside him.