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Homeless Girl Tells Millionaire 'I Can Fix Your Car' — Then They Laughed At Her

Homeless Girl Tells Millionaire 'I Can Fix Your Car' — Then They Laughed At Her

Chapter 2

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Three engineering teams had rotated through the bay in shifts. Two outside consulting firms had charged a combined $600,000. A German diagnostic specialist named Klaus Brenner had flown in from Stuttgart at $3,200 a day and left on day nine. Before Klaus walked out, he said one sentence to Preston at the door: "Your engine is not broken. Something in this building is lying to it."Preston had not slept since.The investor demo was scheduled for 9:00 the next morning. Thomas Whitmore of Arbor Ridge Capital was flying in from Boston: an $85 million signed term sheet, contingent on the engine starting. Gregory Hastings, the CEO, had stopped taking Preston's calls on day eight.By 8:42 a.m., Preston was standing in the parking lot with a journalist, pretending everything was fine.The chain-link fence separating the Arkwell test bay from the public sidewalk was six feet high. On the other side that morning stood a young woman named Faye Carter: twenty-four years old, short natural hair, a faded Carhartt jacket two sizes too large inherited from her father, work boots that had been resoled twice, hands that moved the way a pianist's hands move when they are not playing—restless, precise, always almost forming a shape.For seven months, Faye had been sleeping in the back of a 2004 Honda Odyssey parked behind a shuttered laundromat on Burnet Road: a toolbox under the third-row bench, a grease-stained spiral notebook in the glove compartment, a three-legged pitbull named Beans curled up on a moving blanket beside the spare tire.For three weeks, Faye had been stopping at that chain-link fence. She had noticed things the engineers had not.That morning, she had finally approached one of them, a nervous man named Lyle working his fifth double shift in a row. She had spoken softly through the fence."Excuse me. Your intake is pulling a false vacuum reading. One of your pressure sensors is wired backwards."Lyle had looked at her the way people look at a stain on a nice rug. "Ma'am, this is a restricted area.""I'm not asking to come in. I'm telling you what's wrong with your engine.""Please, step away from the fence."He had walked off toward the side entrance. Faye had stayed.That was when Preston came out of the main door with Claire Donnelly and her camera. That was when he heard her voice and turned."Get your filthy black hands off that fence."
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Homeless Girl Tells Millionaire 'I Can Fix Your Car' — Then They Laughed At Her

17 Part