PART 6:

It started with the smell. Claire was in the middle of a video conference with her board of directors explaining why the Taipei acquisition was worth the premium they were paying when she caught it, faint, chemical, wrong. Like burning rubber mixed with something sweet and toxic. She paused mid-sentence, her nose wrinkling.

Ms. Montgomery? One of the board members leaned toward his camera. Are you all right? “Fine,” she said automatically, but she wasn’t. The smell was getting stronger. She glanced around her office, 1,800 square feet of minimalist luxury on the 43rd floor, but saw nothing obviously on fire. Then her assistant burst through the door without knocking, which meant emergency.

“The parking garage,” Jennifer gasped. “Your car.” Claire was out of her chair before the sentence finished. The board of directors found themselves staring at an empty screen as their CEO disappeared without explanation, which was somehow both surprising and completely expected. She took the elevator down 30 floors, her heart hammering in a way that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the primal fear of losing something irreplaceable.

The smell got worse the lower she went, acrid and thick enough to taste. When the elevator doors opened on the parking level, she saw smoke. Not a lot, just a thin gray haze hanging in the air like fog, but enough to make her throat tighten. Her Valkyrie sat in its reserved spot and even from 50 feet away she could see something was wrong.

The hood was slightly open and wisps of smoke curled out from underneath like dying breath. The building’s security guard, Thompson she thought his name was, stood nearby with a fire extinguisher looking uncertain. “I didn’t touch anything, Ms. Montgomery,” he said quickly, “but I called 911 and notified building maintenance.

The fire department should be here in” “Open the hood,” Claire interrupted. “Ma’am, I don’t think that’s” “Open it.” Thompson set down the extinguisher and approached the car like it might explode. Maybe it would. Claire didn’t care. She walked right up beside him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from the engine bay. When he popped the hood fully open, the smoke thickened briefly then began to dissipate.

Claire stared down at her engine, her perfect $3 million engine that had been running flawlessly for 3 weeks, and saw melted plastic, scorched wiring, and what looked like a small fire that had burned itself out. “Jesus,” Thompson breathed. Claire pulled out her phone and called the last number she’d sworn she wouldn’t call. He answered on the third ring.

“Davies Automotive, this is Nate.” “My car’s on fire.” Claire’s voice was remarkably steady considering her hands were shaking. A pause. “Ms. Montgomery?” “Well, it was on fire. Now it’s just smoking, but something definitely burned. The wiring, I think. The plastic.” “Where are you?” His voice had changed, gone sharp and focused.

“My office building, underground parking. I haven’t driven it since yesterday morning and when I got here this morning everything was fine and now” “Don’t touch anything,” Nate interrupted. “Is the fire out?” “Yes.” “Completely out? No flames, no glowing metal?” Claire looked down at the engine bay again.

The smoke was almost gone now, leaving behind the acrid smell and the evidence of catastrophe. “Yes. It’s out.” “Good. Don’t try to start it. Don’t touch the battery. Don’t let anyone else touch anything.” She could hear movement on his end, the rustle of fabric, the jingle of keys. “What’s the address?” Claire gave it to him, her brain cataloging the strangeness of the situation even as she spoke.

She was calling a mechanic, not her mechanic, not even a mechanic she paid a retainer to because something in her chest had insisted that if anyone could understand what went wrong, it was him. “I’ll be there in 20 minutes,” Nate said. “Probably less if traffic cooperates. Just keep people away from it until I get there.

” “Why?” “Is it dangerous?” “Depends on what caused the fire. If it’s an electrical short, probably not. If it’s something with the fuel system or the battery pack, maybe. I won’t know until I see it.” “20 minutes?” Claire repeated. “20 minutes,” Nate confirmed, and ended the call. Claire stood there in the parking garage with smoke in her lungs and Thompson hovering nearby looking confused and realized she was trusting a man she’d met once for 3 hours to come save her car.

A man who’d given her a spark plug and a lecture about humanity. A man who probably thought she was exactly the kind of entitled billionaire who deserved to have her expensive toys catch fire. She should have called the dealership. Should have called her insurance company. Should have called literally anyone else.

But she’d called him. 18 minutes later, Claire had been counting, a 10-year-old Honda pulled into the garage and parked in a visitor spot. Nate Rhodes got out wearing the same faded jeans and work boots, though this time his shirt was clean and his hands were free of grease. He carried a toolbox in one hand and what looked like a diagnostic tablet in the other.

He walked up to her car without greeting her, without small talk, and stopped dead when he saw the engine bay. “Shit,” he said quietly. “That bad?” “That’s not good.” Nate set down his toolbox and leaned over the engine, his eyes scanning the damage with systematic precision. After a moment he pulled a flashlight from his pocket and started tracing individual wires, following their paths through the serpentine complexity of the engine bay.

Claire watched him work, remembering this focus from before. The world could be ending around Nate Rhodes and he wouldn’t notice, not when there was a system to understand, a problem to solve. “This shouldn’t have happened,” he said after several minutes. “Obviously.” “No, I mean” He straightened, wiping soot off his hands onto his jeans.

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