Chapter Seven
Camden
The shimmer catches my eye first—a scatter of glass across the asphalt, glinting like a spilled constellation.
I crouch beside it, squinting against the glare.
There’s too much for a beer bottle. The chunks are thicker, heavier, and some are bent at ninety degrees.
A smashed headlight? Or a busted magnum wine bottle from someone’s tailgate party gone wrong.
Vegas, where even your road hazards come drunk.
When I straighten, my stomach sinks. The back tire sags flat as a pancake. I give it a halfhearted kick. Nothing. It wheezes at me, insulted.
“Great,” I mutter, surveying the scene. Desert heat rising in waves. The road empty except for our dust trail. “Guess this is where my luck taps out.”
I know how to change a tire. In theory. Haven’t done it on this vehicle before, but there’s a spare in the hatchback and my pride refuses to call roadside assistance when Dot’s watching. I’m supposed to be competent. Useful. The kind of guy who can keep things rolling when life throws a pothole.
I tiptoe through the glass, collecting the bigger shards into an old fast-food bag. They clink together, glittering meanly in the sun. “Somebody was celebrating big,” I call, glancing toward the car. “Probably dropped a whole magnum right in the middle of the road.”
Dot sits rigid in the passenger seat, one hand cupped around Mira’s puck like she’s shielding it from the light. “Or maybe it’s a trap,” she says.
“A trap?”
“Yeah. People throw stuff in the road, wait for someone to pull over, and then—bam.” She mimes being ambushed. “Vegas desert murder podcast material.”
I can’t help laughing. “If someone tries to kill us out here, they’re gonna be disappointed. My wallet’s all Apple Pay, and your AI is smarter than most people.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It wasn’t supposed to.”
Her mouth twitches. Victory enough.
I pop the hatch and start pulling out the jack, the tire iron, the emergency triangle that’s still shrink-wrapped. The sun beats down so hard I swear it’s trying to melt me into the pavement. I set the jack under the frame, crank a few turns, and the car groans like it’s complaining about leg day.
I lean into the open window. “I’m gonna change the flat, and we’ll be back on the road.”
Dot peels one eye open. “We could call someone.”
“Nah, I’ve got it. Done this a bunch of times.”
That’s only half true, but I deliver it with enough swagger to sell it. “Give me fifteen minutes and you’ll never even know we stopped.”
She eyes me, skeptical. “You sure you don’t want help?”
I grin. “Nope. Sit tight, enjoy the AC, tell Mira to play some motivational music or something.”
“Mira,” she says, deadpan, “play the sound of impending doom.”
Mira obliges with low, dramatic cellos. I shake my head, chuckling. “Perfect.”
I roll the window down before killing the engine—just enough air that she won’t roast, but not enough to drain the battery. Then I get to work.
The first bolt fights me. Sweat slides down my temples as I lean my weight into the wrench.
Dot’s reflection watches me from the glass.
I can feel her gaze even when I’m not looking.
She probably thinks I’m showing off—and she’s right.
I want her to see me as capable, the guy who can fix things when they go sideways.
Not the awkward one she used to tutor through physics.
I finally get the lug nut loose with a grunt that’s half triumph, half pain. “See?” I call. “Still got it.”
The desert air smells faintly like hot rubber and sagebrush. A hawk cries somewhere above us. The world feels weird, like we’ve slipped out of time for a second—just me, Dot, and the ghost of a tire.
When I lift the deflated one off the hub, Dot’s door opens. She steps outside, balancing on the painted line to avoid the glass. The sun hits her hair and turns it gold.
“Hey,” I say, straightening. “What happened to sitting tight?”
“I can’t just watch you melt out here.” She squints, shading her eyes. “Besides, Mira says your hydration levels are probably dropping.”
“She’s spying on me now?”
“She’s reading the car sensors.” Dot offers a bottle of water from the console. “Drink. Don’t argue.”
I take it. Her tone’s bossy, but her hand trembles slightly when she passes it to me. Anxiety, not heat. She hides it well, but I’ve known her too long. She’s probably picturing every worst-case scenario—car explodes, we die, Skinbad never gets rescued.
“Hey.” I nudge her wrist. “We’re good. Ten more minutes.”
She nods but doesn’t move away. She watches me like she’s daring the universe to prove me wrong.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I hide behind the bumper of the car to pull up a YouTube tutorial. “I don’t get it,” I mumble to myself. “The freaking car jack has four options. How come none of them fit?”
I crouch lower, wipe sweat off my forehead with the back of my wrist, and glare at the stupid hunk of metal.
Somewhere in my brain lives the vague memory of watching my dad change a tire on his pickup—me holding the flashlight, him telling me to “keep it steady.” I’d aimed the beam everywhere except where he needed it, mostly because I was seven and fascinated by how the light caught in the dust. He’d laughed, fixed the tire in five minutes flat, and tossed me a root beer like it was nothing.
Now I’d trade a year’s salary to have that same calm, know-what-you’re-doing energy. Instead, I’ve got a sunburn and a jack that looks like it belongs in a Transformer movie. I mutter, “How hard can this be?” and immediately regret tempting fate.
I scrub through the video in search of the parts that are immediately relevant to me. I have the volume on low, but it must not be low enough, because I hear Mira say, “I don’t think Camden knows how to change a tire.”
Yikes. Roasted by the robot assistant. My ego takes a hit.
I glance toward the car window where the little puck sits glowing faintly blue, like a smug eye of judgment.
The tone in Mira’s voice isn’t mean, exactly—just clinical enough to make me feel like a lab rat.
I’ve been chirped by teammates, coaches, even a few fans on social media, but nothing cuts quite like being dissed by Siri’s evil twin.
It’s the way she says it, too: calm, certain, no hesitation. Viktor would be proud. Hell, she sounds exactly like him mid-drill—“Head up, Beck, your stick’s in the wrong place.” I half-expect her to follow up with, “Do twenty suicides while you think about what you’ve done.”
I shake my head and mutter, “At least Viktor buys me dinner first.”
From inside the car, Dot laughs, and the sound carries over the empty road. The hit to my pride stings a little less after that.
“No way,” Dot counters. “Of course he does. All guys know how to change a tire.”
A second hit, right to my soul. If Viktor said that, I could roll my eyes and shake it off, but this is basic stuff. I should be able to do this. I skip another thirty seconds forward and pray that this guy will get to the damn point.
“I think you are mistaken. I don’t hear the sound of lug nuts turning. There is no grunting or swearing. Therefore, I do not think he has even started the job.”
The more Mira talks, the more she reminds me of Viktor.
What a pain in the butt. Also, did I miss something?
The guy on YouTube talked for fifteen minutes about how he was going to break it down, and then he got that tire off in fifteen seconds flat.
Fucker. He didn’t have to make it look that easy.
“I’ll check on him,” says Dot. The passenger door clicks open. Louder than before, she calls, “Cam, are you okay out there?”
“Yeah, but I think one of the bolts is stripped or something?” This isn’t a total lie. After my abject failure to remove the hardware, it’s a real possibility.
Mira speaks louder, too, though her voice modulation doesn’t change. “Bring me to him. I can talk him through it.”
Dot lowers her voice again. “Come on, Mira. He might not like having you talk him through it. I’ll go out alone first.”
Through the window, I see Dot glance toward the door pocket where Mira sits. Her fingers hover above the puck like she’s about to touch it, then thinks better of it. The blue light pulses, slow and patient—waiting for orders.
Dot sighs. “You don’t always have to fix everything,” she whispers, mostly to herself.
Her eyes keep flicking to mine, like she’s asking a question she doesn’t want me to answer.
I want to tell her it’s okay to sit still, to let me sweat this out.
But maybe that’s not what she’s afraid of.
Maybe she’s scared I’ll mess this up—and she won’t know how to fix it either.
Dot stalls, torn between convenience and dignity. “I’ll go first,” she tells the puck again, gentler. “If he needs you, I’ll come get you.”
The light flickers once in what looks suspiciously like disapproval.
“It would be more expedient to take me.”
“Yeah, but you can be kind of… you know. Abrasive. At times. Not on purpose!”
“I am direct and to the point, which is more than I can say for the host of the video Camden is currently watching.”
Busted. My pride is already wounded, and it’s creepy as hell that Mira knows what I’m doing on my phone, but she’s right about one thing: we’re on a deadline here.
Skinbad is counting on us, and time is ticking away.
I’d rather get Dot where she needs to go than risk anything happening to the gnarly little dog she’s got her heart set on.
Plus, it’s hot out here without AC, and my shirt is already clinging to my back. Nobody’s having fun, me least of all.
I lean on the fender for a second, catching my breath.
The air tastes like burnt rubber and road heat.
Inside the SUV, Dot’s silhouette moves—she’s either wiggling in her seat or arguing with Mira again.
Probably both. I picture her biting her lip, watching me through the windshield, wondering if I’m about to give up.
No chance. Not when she’s looking.