He sounded different from the man who had escorted me out the previous morning.
“You need to come back.”
I asked why.
He hesitated.
“The woman from the crash is here.”
For several seconds I said nothing.
Kevin continued.
“She’s the buyer.”
I thought I had misheard him.
He repeated it.
The woman I had left beside the mountain road while sirens approached was in the building Jackson had fired me from, and by the end of that day’s closing she would control the company.
I told Kevin I wasn’t interested in being paraded through the office as some kind of rescue story.
He said that wasn’t what this was.
Then another voice came onto the call.
The woman.
Her voice was tired but steady.
“I don’t know if you remember me conscious.”
I told her I didn’t.
She had barely moved before the paramedics arrived.
“Then I should start with thank you.”
I looked down at the bandage on my hand.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Maybe not.
But your former employer owes me some answers, and I believe he owes you several.”
I drove back to Blake Logistics just before noon.
Walking through those doors less than twenty-nine hours after being escorted out felt stranger than the rescue itself.
Kevin didn’t look at the floor this time.
He opened the security gate and nodded toward the conference room.
Dennis was there.
Jackson was there.
So was the woman.
The folder sat open in front of her.
My safety complaint was on top.
Jackson did not stand when I entered.
The woman did.
For one brief second, neither of us spoke.
Without the mud and rain, I recognized details I had missed on the mountain: the shape of her face, the streak of bruising near her hairline, the way she protected one side of her ribs when she moved.
She looked at my injured hand.
“That happened getting me out?”
“Part of it.”
Jackson shifted in his chair.
“We don’t need to dramatize this.”
The woman turned toward him.
“You fired him before verifying whether the incident happened.
You attempted to withhold his final pay pending an assessment you hadn’t completed.
You referenced his daughter during the termination conversation.
And eight months before that, he gave you a documented list of safety concerns that did not appear in the materials supplied during this transaction.
Which part would you prefer I make less dramatic?”
Jackson said my complaint had been exaggerated.
I finally spoke.
“Then inspect the trucks.”
He looked at me.
“What?”
“Inspect them.
All of them.
Not your summary.
