They came back with heirloom tomatoes and some kind of herb Emma had selected on instinct and a bunch of flowers she'd bought with her own $3 because she thought they would look good on the kitchen table. Cole was putting the flowers in a glass of water when his phone rang with an unknown Arizona number. He almost didn't answer it. He answered it. Cole Bennett?
A woman's voice, direct and clear. Who is this? Victoria Hale. I got your number from the auction house registration. I'm calling because I want to have a conversation about lot 47.
Cole looked at Emma, who was arranging the flowers with the concentration she usually reserved for things that mattered. How did you know to bid on that car? He asked. A pause. Not long.
Victoria Hale didn't seem like someone who left long pauses, but real enough. I'll tell you that, she said, if you'll tell me what you found under the splitter. Cole was quiet for a moment. Tucson, he said. Come to Tucson.
I'll show you. Another pause. Tomorrow, she said. Send me the address. She hung up.
Emma looked up from the flowers. Who was that? The woman from the auction. The one who called you dumb? She didn't exactly is She said it was the bumest purchase she'd ever seen.
Cole conceded this. Yeah. Her. Is she coming here? Tomorrow.
Emma looked at him with the considered expression of someone taking a long-term view on a situation. She doesn't know yet, she said, that she was wrong. No, Cole said. Not yet. He picked up his phone and started composing a text with the workshop address.
And outside the kitchen window, the Tucson afternoon was going golden long, the desert doing what it did in that last hour of light, turning everything the color of something rare. His hands were steady. His mind was very fast and very quiet. He'd spent eight years not thinking about a small facility in England and a car that didn't exist. Now someone had sent him the car, whether they meant to or not, and someone else who was connected to the story had showed up at the auction, and the NDA had expired 3 years ago, and the evidence was in his shop documented in 400 photographs.
And tomorrow, Victoria Hale was coming to Tucson. Cole set the phone down and looked at the flowers Emma had put on the table, cheap dahlias, bright orange, listed sideways in the glass, and thought that whatever was coming next, it was already in motion. It had been in motion since the moment he saw that stamp. Victoria Hale arrived at 7:58 in the morning, 2 minutes before the time Cole had given her, in a rental car that was considerably nicer than anything that usually parked in the industrial strip off I-10. She was dressed differently than the auction, no blazer, just dark jeans and a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.
And she stood outside the roll-up door of the workshop looking at the signage for Bennett Restoration with an expression Cole couldn't read from across the parking lot. He'd been there since 6:00, hadn't slept much. He opened the side door before she could knock. Coffee's inside, he said. She came in without ceremony and looked immediately at the car.
Or what remained of it, now further disassembled than it had been in Nevada. The surviving body panels laid out on moving blankets across two workbenches with his photo documentation printed and arranged beside each piece. The chassis tub sat on a low rolling stand at the center of the bay, stripped and clean under the overhead lights. Victoria walked toward it slowly. She didn't touch anything.
She moved around the tub the way Cole had moved around it at the auction. Not looking for something specific, just reading it. He poured two cups of coffee from the machine on the desk, watched her, and waited. After maybe 3 minutes, she stopped at the front of the tub and looked at the series of stamps on the interior face of the firewall section. "XP7. " She said quietly.
"You know what that means? " Cole said. It wasn't a question. She'd said, "You know what that car is? " at the auction, and she'd known exactly what she was bidding on, and now she was reading a prototype code with no surprise on her face at all. Victoria turned around and took the coffee he held out. "I know what it means.
I didn't know how much of it would still be readable. " She looked back at the tub. "It's in better condition than I expected. The tub protected itself. That's what tubs do. " Cole leaned against the workbench. "Your turn. " "How did you know to be at that auction? " She wrapped both hands around the mug.
"I've had a shipping manifest flagged for 2 years. Anything moving through Western US salvage channels that matches a specific weight range and carbon fiber component profile. " She paused. "I run a carbon fiber manufacturer in Woking. We have access to material batch data that goes back 15 years. " "Westfield Composites. " Cole said. He'd looked it up.
"We acquired it 4 years ago, along with their archived records. " She met his eyes. Including material requisitions from a project that was officially terminated in 2017. Cole was quiet for a moment. So, you knew the car existed? I knew a car existed.
I knew materials had been requisitioned for a prototype build that was never officially completed, and I knew those materials matched a very specific composite specification that Westfield developed in-house and has never used for any other client. She set the mug down. When the manifest flagged a salvage lot in Nevada with a partial carbon fiber body matching that weight class, I came to look. And then you bid. I bid because I wanted it before anyone else could get it.
She glanced at him with something that might, in other circumstances, have been dry amusement. I didn't expect competition. You lost. Yes. She looked at the tub again.
I'm aware. Cole straightened up. So, who built this car? Because you clearly know more than you said at the auction. Victoria was quiet for a beat too long.
That's complicated, she said. It always is. He crossed his arms. Try anyway. She looked at him with the kind of directness that Cole was coming to understand was just how she operated.
Not aggressive, just unfiltered. The project was run internally by a small team under a man named Gerald Marsh. He was a senior development director at the time. The project wasn't officially sanctioned. It was funded through discretionary budgets and kept off the main engineering ledgers.