Back Where She Belongs(50)

He softened slightly and swallowed.

“You go to the doctor with your wife, Matt, even when your boss hassles you. You’d do anything for your family. You’re a family man. I admire that. And Wharton’s your family, too. You felt like it was your duty to save them. Because family counts.” Those were the words he’d used in the electric cart that day.

His eyes shot to hers, almost proud. He was breathing fast and shallow, scared, but also strengthened by her kind description of his motives.

She didn’t speak, waiting for his confession to bubble up.

“I had to do something,” he finally said. “Pescatore said they were going to outsource assembly. He saw the proposal on the fax machine. TGR Manufacturing in Tennessee. He got fired for spilling the beans.”

His jaw muscle twitched, his eyes gleamed with fervor. “We work hard. Everybody on the line. The whole plant. We put together a good product. They wanted to go cheaper. It was Banes pushing it. I knew it would ruin us. It would ruin the whole town.”

“So you had to fix it somehow,” Tara said, urging him on.

He nodded once. “You get what you pay for. Cheap vendors make cheap products. I had to prove TGR was a bad company. I had to monkey with the tests. I had no choice. It would have happened anyway, later on. All Ryland had to do was admit it was TGR’s fault, then find a better supplier. Nobody would get hurt. Easy.”

He ran his hands through his hair, then jammed them on his hips, looking down. He swallowed, glanced at Dylan, then Tara. “When Mr. Wharton drove out here a couple weeks ago, it was after hours. I’d come back after the doctor’s appointment to catch up on reports. He said he had a wager going with Sean Ryland about the Ryland assembly. He asked me to put one on.”

It had been her father who requested the installation, after all, Tara realized. She’d been wrong to attack Dylan’s father.

“I got this great idea. If I put in a bad unit, he’d give Sean Ryland hell and that would be the end of the debate.” His voice took on a desperate, panicked quality. “I’d saved a few bad ones so I could match the calibrations on the tests I messed with. So I put one in. All that should have happened was a stall. That’s all. Not a wreck. It couldn’t cause a wreck. Like the Ryland guy said, it couldn’t get dangerous without a torque or collision. When he was killed, I couldn’t believe it. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”

He blinked hard, looking away, his face crumpled as he fought tears.

Tara looked at Dylan, whose mouth was a grim line, his eyes full of sorrow. She felt the same way, burning with outrage, swamped with sadness. Such a waste. Such a tragedy. So many people hurt. And all over a rumor. Her father would never have closed down Wharton.

“What’s going to happen to me?” Matt asked, looking like a prisoner about to be hanged. “I swear I didn’t know this could happen.”

“We need you to repeat your story for the police,” Dylan said. “And we want a statement certifying that the drive assembly units Ryland provided Wharton Electronics were functional, that you rigged the test results. Agreed?”

“Whatever you say,” he said miserably. “I’m done for no matter what. Jeb will fire me. With the baby coming, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

“One step at a time, Matt,” Tara said, realizing she’d echoed her mother’s advice about having a child. “First, tell the truth, then deal with the consequences.” Her heart went out to him, but he’d done a terrible thing. “My father would never have closed the factory. The company and the people who worked for him meant too much to him. He sacrificed all his earnings and investments to keep it going until the profits from the new battery came in. You should have asked about the rumor, not taken it as truth.”

Matt hung his head. He’d been scared. People did stupid things when they were scared. She’d seen it over and over in her work. “Can I call my wife, tell her where I am? She’ll have to go to the doctor alone.”

Dylan and Tara stepped away to give him privacy while he broke the bad news to his poor wife. “I’ll drive him in, Tara. You can get going.”

“This shouldn’t have happened,” she said. “It wouldn’t have if Wharton management had kept its employees informed. That’s what I would have told Faye if I’d really listened and tried to help. I might have prevented the accident after all.” Guilt washed through her and she bit her lip.

“One piece of advice can’t turn a company around, Tara.”

“I know that. I still regret not doing my part.”

“Now we have to go forward, make things right where we can.”

She nodded, grateful for Dylan’s steady presence, his reasonable words. “Matt’s confession will bring an investigator out here for sure. We can email the tape we just got. If we’re lucky, the investigators will figure out who hit the car. They do in-person interviews. Someone needs to pin Fallon down.”

“We may never know what happened, Tara. You have to be prepared for that.”

“Maybe when Faye wakes up, she’ll tell us.” The possibility seemed far away and Tara’s chest felt hollow and hopeless for a moment. She forced herself to stick with what she could do, not what she hoped for.

“I hate to say this, but my father was right,” Dylan said. “We were being sabotaged by Wharton testers.”

“And I owe him an apology for what I accused him of.” Dylan had been right. She had been too eager to blame his father. “Wharton wronged your company. We need to set up a meeting to discuss how to correct that.”

“That will be good. I think we just saved Ryland Engineering. If you hadn’t pushed for the truth, we would likely have lost the Wharton contract. I owe you for that, Tara. I’ll always be grateful.”

“We made a good team,” she said, trying to smile. “Mostly. Except when I was naming suspects right and left.”

“That’s true.” He smiled, then got serious. “But you made me see one thing. I have worked long enough with my father. I need to get on with what I want. Since it looks like the company will survive, I can leave when I planned.”

“I said some harsh things. I exaggerated. I know that.”

“There was enough truth in what you to get me thinking and a conversation I had with Victor made it even clearer. I told my father I’ll be leaving the business as soon as it’s feasible.”

“I’m glad then,” she said, emotion rising in a wave inside her. “If that’s what you want for yourself.”

“It is.”

Hearing him declare his independence from his father made her proud of him. He’d listened to her rant and calmly sorted the wheat from the chaff. She loved him more than ever. She’d said unfair things to him, and she hated herself for that.

“When I came here, I thought I was a better person,” she said. “I thought I’d gotten past the bad feelings, the bad attitude, but I guess not. I guess I couldn’t get past the imprint.”

“That’s not the whole story, Tara. You’ve done a lot. You put up with some pretty terrible things here, but you’ve kept your head most of the time. You’ve reached out to your mother, accepted her on her own terms. Your parents left you guessing growing up. It takes a big person to see past that.”

“Thank you, Dylan.” She tensed against the urge to cry. “That means a lot coming from you.”

“You do know how to love,” he said in a rough voice, his eyes burning at her. “Once you believe that, there will be no stopping you.”

“Goodbye, Dylan.” She rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, embarrassed to see she’d left a tear on Dylan’s cheek. She wiped it away with her palm, turned and nearly ran for her car, blinking back the rest of her tears. She had no time to cry.

Tara had meetings to schedule, key people to inform and plans to make, including how to start a meaningful dialogue between Wharton management and its employees. She had a big job ahead of her. She would do her best. For Faye. For her father. For the company. Hell, she just might make a worthy contribution to Wharton Electronics, after all.

She was pretty sure her father would be proud.

* * *

AFTER AN EXHAUSTING afternoon at Wharton, Tara went to the hospital to tell Faye about the breakthrough. She sat in the chair and took Faye’s pale hand, noticing the nail polish was still bright. Her sister hadn’t been able to twitch a finger, let alone chip a nail.

Faye had been unconscious for seventeen days. How long could she last? Every day that passed without change made it more likely that Faye would die. The thought nearly killed Tara. She fought down the choked feeling, the ache in her throat, and gave Faye the news.

“We know what happened to you. A bad part was put in Dad’s car to prove a point that didn’t need to be proved. All that’s left is to learn who bumped your car. The insurance company will be sending out an investigator anyday.” The adjuster had put in an expedited request.