Ivory answered with grease on her hands. She was elbow-deep in a transmission rebuild for a neighbor who needed his truck running by Friday.
"Ms. Young, my name is Arthur Pemberton. I'm the chairman of the board at Stonebridge Dynamics."
Silence on the line.
"I've seen your video. I'd like you to come to Stonebridge tomorrow morning and show the board exactly what you showed Nathan. Can you do that?"
More silence, then steady: "Yes, sir, but I'll need access to the South Building floor and one of the failed SD9 units."
"You'll have both."
"And I'll need people to stay out of my way while I work."
Pemberton almost smiled. "I'll do my best."
He didn't tell Garrett what was coming. He didn't tell Brent. The agenda for the emergency session listed only one item: Outside technical perspective on SD9 failure analysis. Garrett assumed it was another consulting firm, another PowerPoint, another invoice. He had no idea.
The next morning, Ivory took the Red Line from Englewood to the South Side. She carried a backpack with a tube of NLGI grade one grease, a portable magnification lamp, a dial indicator, and her composition notebook. She wore steel-toed boots from a Salvation Army on Halsted Street and a clean work shirt she'd ironed at 5:00 in the morning.