Chapter Two

Corbin Barker hated leaving the city.

New York had everything he needed—every resource, every contact, every convenience engineered to ensure that a man in a well-cut suit never had to stand on a gravel shoulder and watch his left front tire shed its tread across Route 11 like a snake molting in the wrong season. The city had car services. The city had cell signal on every block. The city did not have two lanes of cracked asphalt winding through trees that looked like they'd been planted specifically to block any hope of a cell tower reaching its signal this far north.

The meeting had gone well. That was the thing. The reclusive owner of Harwick Precision Components—a man who hadn't taken a meeting in Manhattan in six years—had agreed to the acquisition. The contract was in Corbin's briefcase, signed and notarized, the ink barely dry. The multi-million dollar project that depended on Harwick's proprietary manufacturing process was no longer in danger of crashing and burning. By any reasonable measure, the day had been a success.

And now he was standing on the shoulder of a road he couldn't find on his GPS, watching steam—or possibly smoke, he couldn't tell the difference—rise from the wheel well of his black Mercedes, and his phone displayed the same two words it had displayed for the last twenty minutes: No Signal.

His jaw was set. His shoulders were pulled back in that rigid posture he wore in boardrooms, the one that communicated authority and control, and it was doing absolutely nothing for him here. The charcoal suit was wrinkled across the thighs from sitting in the car for four hours. His shoes—Italian leather, the kind that cost more than most people's monthly rent—were covered in a fine dust from the gravel shoulder. 

He'd attempted to find the jack, found it, and then spent ten minutes trying to locate the lug wrench before realizing it was a different compartment entirely. The owner's manual was in the glove box, and he'd read the section on tire changes twice, and the words might as well have been written in Cantonese.

He did not know how to change a tire. The realization sat in his chest like a stone, heavy and absurd. He was forty-six years old. He had closed deals worth nine figures. He had negotiated with men who owned countries, practically. And he was standing on Route 11 with a shredded tire and no idea what to do about it.

The road was empty. The trees stood in their October colors, indifferent. The sky was going grey at the edges, the light thinning toward evening. Corbin took out his phone again. No Signal. He put it back in his jacket pocket, took it out again. No Signal. The repetition was not productive, but it was the only action available to him, and action was the only thing that kept the frustration from climbing into his throat.

His watch read 4:47. The money clip in his pocket held more cash than most people carried in a year. Neither of these facts was useful.

He heard the truck before he saw it—a low diesel rumble coming from the south, the sound of something heavy and mechanical moving at a steady pace. A flatbed tow truck appeared around the curve, its orange light bar off but its bulk unmistakable against the narrow road. The truck slowed as it approached, and Corbin stepped back from the shoulder, one hand raised in a gesture that was half wave, half signal.

The truck pulled over. The engine idled. The driver's door opened, and Corbin watched, expecting—what. A man in coveralls. A local with a beard and a toolbox. Someone who would charge him an exorbitant f*e and tow him to the nearest shop, where he'd sit in a waiting room that smelled like instant coff*e and old magazines while someone took three hours to mount a spare.

What he did not expect was the woman who stepped down from the cab.

She was tall—nearly his height, and he was six-one. Red hair in a messy bun, strands escaping along her temples. Pale skin, freckles across her nose and cheeks and what he could see of her chest above the neckline of a band t-shirt that had seen better decades. Pale blue eyes that looked at him the way a mechanic looks at a problem—not with sympathy, not with curiosity, but with the flat assessment of someone cataloging what needed to be done. Her jeans were grease-stained. Her arms were covered in tattoos—gears and geometric patterns that ran from wrist to shoulder, dark ink against fair skin. She moved with a slight hitch in her left leg, barely perceptible, the kind of thing you'd only notice if you were watching closely.

Corbin was watching closely.

"Blowout?" she said.

"Yes." The word came out clipped, controlled. He was aware of how he looked—a tall, dark-haired man in a charcoal suit standing on a gravel road with steam coming off his car. He was aware that the suit was ridiculous here. That he did not belong here. That the watch was ridiculous. That the money clip was ridiculous. That he, in totality, was ridiculous in this context, and the woman standing in front of him knew it.

She walked past him to the front of the sedan, crouched, and looked at the tire. The tread had separated completely, the rubber shredded and hanging in strips. She reached out and touched the wheel itself, her fingers checking the temperature, then stood and looked at the car—really looked at it, the way someone looks at a machine and reads its history.

"Tow or fix?" she asked.

"Can you fix it here?"

"No. I can mount a spare if you've got it, but you need to have it checked out after a blowout. You could have busted lines and any of a hundred different problems beyond the tire itself. Rim's fine, but I don't carry tires on the truck. I've got a flatbed. I can tow you to my shop and mount a new one. I've got the size in stock."

He blinked. "You have Mercedes tires in stock."

"I stock most sizes. Comes with the territory."

The territory. He almost asked what territory she meant, but the practicality of the situation overrode his curiosity. He needed to be back in the city by morning. He needed cell signal to make calls. He needed to not be standing on Route 11 anymore.

"How far is your shop?"

"Ten minutes."

"What do you charge?"

She looked at him then, a look that lasted about two seconds longer than necessary. Her expression didn't change, but something in her eyes shifted—a flicker of amusement, maybe, or the recognition of a type. The man who asks about price before agreeing to the service. The man who has never been in a position where the price was the deciding factor.

"Tow's sixty. Tire's a hundred eighty. Mount and balance is forty. Two-eighty total."

"Fine."

She nodded and walked back to the truck. The flatbed lowered with a hydraulic whine, and she positioned it in front of the sedan with the precision of someone who had done this a thousand times. She hooked the chains, winched the car up, and secured it in under eight minutes. Corbin stood on the gravel and watched, his hands in his pockets, his jaw still set. He didn't offer to help. He didn't know how to help. She didn't ask him to.

"You can ride in the cab," she said, not looking at him.

He climbed into the passenger side of the tow truck. The interior smelled like diesel and coffee and something herbal—mint, maybe, from a tin of Altoids on the dashboard. The seat was vinyl, cracked and worn. A cassette adapter was plugged into the radio, and something alternative was playing low. The floorboard had a layer of gravel dust and a pair of work gloves.

She climbed in and drove without speaking. The road wound through trees, past the single-pump gas station, past the diner with its CLOSED sign. Corbin watched the scenery with the expression of a man cataloging unfamiliar terrain. His posture hadn't relaxed. His shoulders were still set. His hands rested on his knees, fingers pressed flat.