Page 18 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
“Yeah?”
She gritted her teeth and sucked in a breath, pleading for patience. She lifted the phone back to ear. “My car won’t start.”
No hellos. No pleasantries.
She could picture Pete, six hours away in Wisconsin, his flannel shirt hanging loose over his beat-up T-shirt. Grease under his fingernails and permanently embedded in his calluses. His nose,crooked at the end, and it wasn’t because of some cool sports injury—he’d just been born that way. His brown eyes, the whiskery face, the shaggy hair. The man was as Midwestern-rural as they came. She’d been attracted to him once. Years ago. Now?
“What’s it doing?”
Pete’s question startled her back into the present.
“It’s groaning.”
“Groaning?”
“I don’t know. Like it’s trying to start but can’t.” She hated trying to describe mechanical issues to Pete.
“Is the battery dead?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to check it.”
“It’s not making a clicking sound?”
Shea tried not to be irritated. In the end, this wasn’t Pete’s fault. “No. It’s—groaning.”
“Like a slow engine crank?”
“Sure?”
“I can’t help you if I can’t identify the issue.” Pete’s frankness was never meant to sound harsh, but she always took it that way. Why couldn’t he couch his statements in something nice, likeI know you’re trying, and I appreciate it, but it’s difficult for me to identify the issue. Perhaps you could try starting the car and I could listen on this end? But no. There was none of that. Just “I can’t help you if...”
“It acts like it wants to start, but then it runs out of energy and dies.” She made another attempt and then waited.
A pause.
“It’s probably the battery.”
She waited longer and then realized Pete wasn’t going to offer if she didn’t ask. “What do I do then?”
“You’ll need to have someone jump-start it. You should have cables in the trunk. I made sure they were there before you left.”
Shea winced. She was hard on him, but then in times like these, he always seemed to come through.
“I also checked the fluids in the car. I hooked it up to the reader and didn’t get any error codes, so it shouldn’t be giving you trouble.”
“I don’t need this right now.” Shea sagged in the seat and eyed the dashboard. It was ritzier than what Pete had wanted her to get. He preferred older vehicles that didn’t have so many electronics and things that could go wrong that weren’t fixable with a spark plug or an easy-to-get part.
“Want me to drive up and help?” His offer wasn’t unusual. That was Pete’s way. If she couldn’t fix it on her own, he’d just come and do it himself. She could never tell if he wasokaywith coming and helping or if he did it because he was her husband and had to.
“I can find someone to jump-start the car.”
“K. If you can’t, call me back. I could make it there by tonight.”
Anyone else might find Pete a tad heroic, but Shea knew better. It wasn’t her he was coming for; it was the car. Vehicles were his best friends. Mechanics. Tools. Grease. He lived for it. If Pete loved her as much as he adored his cars, she’d be as valued as his 1969 Javelin.
She’d give Holt a ring.
Shea ended the call with her husband and checked the phone’s signal. Still one bar. Barely enough. She rang Holt, and within seconds he answered.
