What Priya Knew

I brought the memo to her the next morning before anyone else arrived, laid it flat on her desk without a word.

Priya looked at it for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice had lost its careful edge.

"I was twenty-four. It was my second year here." She wasn't looking at me anymore, just at the paper. "There was a woman before you — a real hire, not a temp — who found the same pattern. She went to Voss's predecessor with it. Two weeks later she was let go for 'performance issues' after four years of perfect reviews. Everyone understood the message."

"So you just... wrote the template."

"I was told it was standard industry language for low-risk sites, that a full physical inspection every quarter for a hundred locations wasn't realistic, that a rotating spot-check schedule covered the real risk. I believed it, or told myself I did, until I stopped asking which sites actually got spot-checked."

"Did Site 4 ever get one? Ever?"

Her silence answered before she made herself say, "Not that I've found."

I thought about my father walking onto that floor twelve years into a decade of nobody looking. "People could still get hurt. Are still getting hurt, maybe, right now."

"I know." She finally met my eyes. "I've known for years, Naomi. I told myself it wasn't my file to fix anymore. That's not something I'm proud of."

I wanted to be angrier at her than I was. Mostly what I felt was tired, and certain, in the particular way you get certain right before you do something you can't undo.

"I'm going to do something about it," I said. "With or without you."

Priya opened her mouth to answer, and that was when Corinne Wexler from HR appeared in the doorway, smiling the exact smile people use right before they ask a question they already know the answer to.

"Naomi. Got a minute? I need to walk through your badge access logs from this week."