Chapter Two
Cait
She had known what Garrett Knox looked like before he walked into the room.
She had his LinkedIn photo, his firm bio, a profile piece from a finance journal two years ago that called him 'surgical' three times in four paragraphs, and a photograph from a Chicago Tribune business section that had caught him coming out of a courthouse on LaSalle Street, not smiling, jacket open despite the cold, looking like a man who had somewhere better to be.
None of it had quite prepared her for the stillness.
Most executives in these meetings fidgeted.
They clicked pens, they straightened papers, they checked phones.
Garrett Knox sat at the head of the table like the table had been placed around him rather than him arriving at it, and he had not moved significantly since she walked in.
He was watching her the way she imagined he watched everything: not because he was performing attention, but because he had decided she was worth the expenditure of it.
That was fine. She was used to being watched.
She had been the only woman in union meetings since she was twenty-six, first as an observer, then as staff, now as the person who brought the folder with the handwritten tabs.
Being watched did not unsettle her. What mattered was what you did while they were watching.
"The press line," he said. He had picked up the pen again. Still hadn't written anything. "You're arguing it changes the calculus on the closure."
"I'm saying your firm's assessment treats the asset base as static.
The press line was a capital investment made eighteen months ago with a thirty-year amortisation schedule.
The decision to invest was made by the previous ownership, which your firm acquired along with the debt.
The investment itself is sound." She turned to the relevant tab.
"Page fourteen. The capacity projection from the original capital proposal. "
She watched him take the folder. He did not read it immediately. He looked at the tab first, then at the margin notes, then he turned to page fourteen.
The two union men on her left, Petrov and Hicks, were watching her the way they always watched her in the first ten minutes of these things: waiting to see whether she had overplayed it.
She had a tendency, in their view, to front-load the technical argument before the room was ready for it.
She had a different view: if you waited for a room full of men in suits to be ready for a technical argument from a woman in her thirties, you would wait a very long time.
"Where did you get the original capital proposal?" Knox said. He was still looking at the page.
"Your firm filed for discovery documents in the acquisition process. They became part of the public record through the Cook County filing. I have a researcher."
He looked up. "You have a researcher assigned to Meridian Steel?"
"I have a researcher assigned to every Ashford Meridian acquisition in the Midwest for the last three years."
Dubowski's lawyer made a sound. It was not quite a laugh and not quite a cough. Dubowski himself was looking at the table.
Knox said nothing for a moment. He turned back to page fourteen. His finger moved along a line of figures, not tracing them, just resting there, which was how she knew he was actually reading rather than appearing to read.
"This projection assumes a thirty percent increase in regional steel demand over five years," he said.
"Based on the infrastructure bill, yes. The Lake Shore highway expansion alone accounts for a significant portion of the projected demand."
He set the folder down before she finished. "I know what it accounts for. The demand projection is real. The question is whether this facility is positioned to capture it."
"That's exactly the question," Cait said. "And your closure plan doesn't ask it."
The room went quiet again. Outside, a truck pulled into the lot. She heard the engine cut.
Knox looked at her for a long moment. He had grey eyes, she noticed. Not the warm grey of weathered wood but something cooler, more deliberate. They did not move from her face.
"What's your alternative?" he said.
"Partial restructure. Cut the secondary line, which is genuinely end-of-life.
Retrain the workers from that line for press operations.
You reduce headcount by sixty, not three-forty.
You run the facility lean for eighteen months, then you are positioned to take contracts when the infrastructure work begins. "
"That's an eighteen-month bet on a government infrastructure timeline."
"It's an eighteen-month bet on signed contracts," she said. "I have the contract numbers. Page twenty-two."
He found page twenty-two. She watched his face change slightly, which for him meant something moved behind the eyes and then stopped.
"These are real," he said.
"Yes."
"How do you have these?"
"A contractor who bid on the Lake Shore expansion. He's a member."
Knox put the folder down again. He picked up his pen and this time he wrote something, three words at most, on the blank notepad in front of him. He turned it face down when he was done.
"I'll need time to review this properly," he said.
"I assumed you would." She closed her own folder. "I'm available this afternoon. Or tomorrow morning, if you need the evening to work through the numbers."
"This afternoon," he said. Without checking his calendar. Without asking anyone else in the room. "Four o'clock."
"Four o'clock," she agreed.
She picked up her coffee, which had gone cold. She drank it anyway.