Chapter Ten
Cait
Monday came cold and clear, the sky the particular shade of blue that Chicago produced after a weather system had passed through and scrubbed everything clean.
Cait drove to the plant with the heat on and the radio off, which was how she drove when she was thinking through something she had not yet finished thinking through.
She pulled into the plant lot and sat in the car for a moment. There was frost on the windscreen of the truck parked beside her, the intricate kind that formed overnight when the temperature dropped fast. She looked at it without seeing it.
Petrov was waiting in the hallway. He was sixty-one years old, had been a member for thirty-four years, and had the patience of someone who had learned that impatience cost more than it bought. He handed her a coffee without being asked.
"Well," he said.
"The proposal is with Hale. Knox is recommending full review."
"Which means."
"Which means they haven't decided yet." She drank the coffee, which was hot and strong and exactly what she needed. "It's better than a no. It's not a yes."
Petrov nodded slowly. He had the quality of someone who measured things by a longer timescale than most. "The members want to know."
"I know. Tell them I'll have an update by Wednesday. I'm not going to give them a number until I have one."
"They'll ask about Knox."
"Tell them he's done his job. Whether his firm lets him do it is a different question."
Petrov looked at her with the particular expression he used when he was deciding whether to say the thing he was thinking. He had used it in her direction approximately forty times in three years. "Is he straight?" he said.
"Yes," she said. "I think so."
"You think."
"I know the analysis is straight. I know he went back to the source data on his own methodology before our second meeting. I know he asked me questions he didn't have to ask." She handed back the empty cup. "Whether his firm follows the analysis is not about whether Knox is straight."
Petrov took the cup. He said nothing for a moment. "Your father called," he said. "He heard about Meridian. He wanted to know how it was going."
She had not told her father she was working the Meridian case. "How did he hear."
"He still knows people. He follows the filings." Petrov almost smiled. "Apple and tree, Caitlin."
She left him in the hallway and went to the small office they had given her for the duration, which had a window that looked onto the secondary parking lot and a desk that wobbled on the left side and a radiator that produced heat in thirty-minute intervals separated by twenty minutes of cold.
She hung up her coat. She sat down. She opened her laptop.
There was an email from Garrett.
She opened it. It was four lines. Victor Hale had read the full proposal. He had questions. Knox was asking whether she was available for a joint call that afternoon at three o'clock, herself and Knox and Hale.
She read it twice.
A joint call meant Hale was engaging with the substance rather than dismissing it.
A joint call at three o'clock on a Monday meant it had moved up the priority queue.
She wrote back: Available at three. Send dial-in details.
She sent it before she thought too carefully about what it meant that her hand was not entirely steady when she pressed send.