The Offer

They found Foster Lang in a folding chair inside the command tent, coffee gone cold in his hand, looking like a man who hadn't slept in two days.

Callum dropped the printed report on the table between them. "Explain this."

Foster didn't even glance at it. "I already know what it says."

"You signed my report six years ago. After I was gone."

"I signed what came across my desk with your report number on it. I swear to you, Callum, I never saw the original. Someone pulled your file, rewrote the conclusion, kept your signature block, and routed it to me for countersign three months after HR walked you out."

"Who?"

Foster's eyes flicked, just once, toward the tent flap — toward the black SUV idling outside it, toward the man in the charcoal suit stepping out of the back seat like the wreckage forty feet away was a minor scheduling inconvenience.

Bram Halsey hadn't aged the way Callum had hoped he would.

"Mr. Reece." He said it warmly, like they were old colleagues catching up. "Thank you for coming in."

"You forged my signature on a safety report."

"That's a serious accusation to make in front of witnesses." Halsey's eyes moved to Priya, then back, unbothered. "I have a contract in my car. Emergency consulting rate, triple your last salary here, full media blackout clause. You look at bracket seven-B, you tell us what you'd have told us seven years ago, and Anchorpoint makes this right — quietly, and fast."

"And if I don't sign your NDA?"

"Then you're a disgruntled former employee with a grudge and no company credentials, standing at an active disaster site, telling reporters a story with no documents to back it up." Halsey smiled. "I'd rather we not find out how that goes for either of us."

Priya's tablet was still in her hand, still open to the forged report.

Halsey's eyes dropped to the screen for exactly one second too long.

"Where," he said, very quietly, "did you get that file?"