"Stop," Wells said. One word: quiet, final.
He walked toward Boyd slowly, the way a man walks toward a bill he finally has to pay.
"You told me this fault wasn't in any manual," Wells said. "You told me someone had tampered with my car. You looked at my housekeeper and her son, and you let a room full of people think they were thieves." His voice stayed level, which made it worse. "And the whole time, the answer was a worn shim, a part the size of a fingernail, found in eight minutes by a boy you wouldn't let hold a flashlight."
Boyd's jaw worked, but nothing came out.
Then Nathan Reed stepped forward. The young technician had been silent for three days; he was not silent now.
"Mr. Wells, you should know something. We flagged that the timing readings looked custom on the first afternoon. Mr. Boyd told us to ignore it and reset to factory. Twice." Nathan swallowed. "And those forced resets put real strain on original parts. We came close to cracking a housing on a $20 million engine. He knew the risk. He did it anyway because admitting he was lost looked worse to him than wrecking your car."
A stunned murmur ran through the crowd.
"That's a lie," Boyd snapped.
"It's in the service log," Nathan said. "Every reset is timestamped. I kept my own copy."
Wells looked at Boyd for a long, cold moment. "I made some calls while that engine was warming up," he said. "It seems your master certification expired two years ago. You never renewed it. You have been signing off on million-dollar restorations with credentials you no longer hold." He shook his head slowly. "That is not a mistake. That is fraud."