PART 8:

“Yeah, Aston Martin. Possible sabotage. I’ll explain when I get back.” He ended the call and turned back to the car. “The truck will be here in 30 minutes. I’ll follow it back to the shop and start the repair.” “How long?” “Depends on the damage. Could be a few days, could be a week.” “I need it faster.” “Ms. Montgomery, the car was on fire.

Fast isn’t” “I have the Seattle Automotive Gala this Saturday. I’m receiving an award. I will not arrive in a rental car.” Nate looked at her like she’d just told him she planned to juggle chainsaws during the ceremony. “Someone just tried to kill you, and you’re worried about appearances at a party?” “It’s not a party.

It’s the single most important networking event of the year for automotive manufacturing on the West Coast. And yes, I’m worried about appearances because appearances are everything in my world, Mr. Rhodes.” “Then rent something impressive.” “I own something impressive. I want it fixed.” They were back to staring at each other, and Claire could feel the frustration radiating off him in waves.

Good. Let him be frustrated. Let him see what it was like to deal with someone who didn’t bend just because you made logical arguments and had moral high ground. “3 days?” Nate said finally. “That’s the best I can do. And that’s if I work around the clock and nothing goes wrong and I don’t find more damage than what I can see right now.” “3 days?” “Done.

” “And you owe me another favor.” Claire’s eyebrow arched. “Another broken spark plug?” “I haven’t decided yet.” “That’s not how” “It is now.” Nate pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to her. It was simple white cardstock with just a name and phone number, no title or logo. “Call me if anything else happens.

Anything strange, anything suspicious, anything that makes you nervous. And I mean it about being careful.” Claire took the card, her fingers brushing his for just a moment. His hands were clean today, but she could still see the permanent stains in the creases, the small scars that came from years of working with sharp metal and hot engines.

Hands that fixed things. Hands that built instead of destroyed. “Why do you care?” she asked quietly. Nate looked surprised by the question. “What?” “Why do you care if something happens to me? I was rude to you. I kicked your creeper. I treated you like you existed to serve me. So why do you care whether someone tries to kill me or not?” For a long moment, Nate didn’t answer.

He just looked at her with those dark, steady eyes that saw too much. “Because everyone deserves to be safe, Ms. Montgomery,” he said finally. “Even people who kick creepers.” Then he turned and walked back to his Honda, leaving Claire standing alone in the parking garage with smoke in her lungs and something uncomfortable blooming in her chest that felt dangerously close to guilt.

The flatbed arrived 23 minutes later. Two men she didn’t know loaded her Valkyrie with the kind of care usually reserved for museum pieces, which it basically was. Claire watched them secure it to the truck, watched them drive away with her baby, and felt the loss like a physical thing. Then she pulled out her phone and made three calls.

The first was to her head of security, demanding a full audit of her parking garage access logs and security camera footage. The second was to her personal attorney, instructing him to begin a quiet investigation into anyone who might want her dead. Competitors, disgruntled employees, activists, anyone.

The third was to Jennifer, telling her to clear everything nonessential from her calendar for the rest of the day. Because Claire Montgomery needed to think. And thinking meant going home, pouring a scotch she wouldn’t drink, and standing at her floor-to-ceiling windows watching the city move below her like blood through veins while she tried to figure out who hated her enough to commit murder.

The list was longer than she wanted to admit. But as the afternoon light faded and the city began its transformation from business to nightlife, as Claire stood there in her perfect apartment holding her untouched scotch and staring at nothing, she found herself thinking not about enemies or sabotage or security protocols. She was thinking about a mechanic who’d asked her why she cared, and wondering when she’d become the kind of person who needed to be asked that question.

The next day, Claire took an Uber to work. It felt wrong, like admitting defeat, but Nate’s words kept echoing in her head. “The kind of person who sabotages a car like this isn’t going to stop.” She spent the morning in meetings that felt hollow and pointless. Every time someone mentioned quarterly projections or market share, she wanted to scream that none of it mattered if she was dead, but she didn’t scream.

She nodded and made decisions and signed approvals and played the role of the Ice Queen with the same precision she’d perfected over 15 years. At lunch, she couldn’t eat. At 2:00, Nate called. “I need you to come to the shop,” he said without preamble. “What did you find?” “Just come, please.” The please was what convinced her.

Claire canceled her 3:00, ignored Jennifer’s protests, and took another Uber across the city to Davies Automotive. The shop looked different in daylight, less menacing, more mundane. Just a building where people fixed cars and went home to their lives. When she walked in, Jack Davies was behind the counter and looked up with something that might have been sympathy.

“He’s in bay seven,” Jack said. “Fair warning, he’s been up all night. He might be a little punchy.” Claire walked through the waiting room into the service bay and immediately saw what Jack meant. Nate was sitting on the floor next to her disassembled Valkyrie, surrounded by parts and wiring harnesses, and what looked like every diagnostic tool the shop owned.

His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair was standing up in directions hair shouldn’t stand, and he had that particular kind of exhaustion that came from running on nothing but caffeine and obsession. He looked up when she approached, and the expression on his face made her chest tighten. “Show me your phone,” he said.

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