Dust And Deception

~Two~

The skytrak wasn't moving.

Ava stood with her hands on her hips, the rig lights casting long shadows across the equipment yard. The big red lift sat dead-still in the gravel, forks raised halfway toward the catwalk like it had just given up mid-job. Its diesel engine was silent. No warning beeps, no low idle—nothing.

She turned to Levi, who was crouched beside the rear tire, flashlight gripped between his teeth, hands buried in an open panel of hydraulic lines.

"It's electrical," she said flatly.

He spit the light into his palm. "Thought you were a fluids girl."

"I'm an technician," she said, crouching beside him. "Fluids, circuits, or broken-down prehistoric machines like this—if it breaks, I've probably seen worse."

He gave her a glance. Not mocking. Not impressed, either. Just curious.

"Well," he muttered, "she stalled out mid-lift. Wouldn't cycle back down. I pulled the key, but she's still drawing amperage."

Ava peeked inside the control bay, eyes scanning the mess of patched wires and dust-caked fuses. "This wiring's a crime scene," she muttered, reaching for the multimeter clipped to her belt. "You've got a grounded circuit pulling battery even when it's off. That's why the hydraulics locked mid-cycle. We're lucky it didn't drop the load."

Levi stood, arms crossed, watching her work. "You always troubleshoot like you're trying to prove something?"

"I don't need to prove anything," she said, yanking out a half-melted fuse. "This rig should've been decommissioned ten years ago. What I need is for this lift to work before someone tries to climb the mast without a harness."

"You're not wrong," he said, and for the first time since she arrived on-site two weeks ago, he sounded... not just civil, but something close to impressed.

She didn't look up. "I'm never wrong when it comes to electrical. Not when someone's life's on the line."

A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the hum of machinery and the rustle of wind moving over open land.

Then came the noise.

A hard clunk, followed by the shrill whine of a hydraulic line under pressure.

Levi turned sharply. "That line shouldn't be active."

"I didn't touch the pump relay," Ava said, already on her feet. "That's not possible—"

The skytrak lurched. The forks dropped two feet with a metallic snap, slamming into the mast tower and sending a tremor through the platform.

Ava stumbled back. Levi grabbed her arm, steadying her instinctively as the lift bucked and hissed, the hydraulics squealing against metal.

"Shut it down!" she yelled.

Levi was already at the power kill switch. He flipped the breaker, yanked the emergency fuel cutoff, and everything went still. Silent, except for their breathing and the buzz of adrenaline just under Ava's skin.

"Something's fried deeper in the control system," she said.

Levi looked down at the machine, jaw tense. "Could've killed somebody."

"Almost did."

They stood there in the quiet, watching the machine like it might lurch again. Neither moved.

Then Levi looked over at her.

"You always this calm when shit hits the fan?"

"Only when someone's watching," she said, a breath short of a laugh.

"You're good at this," he said. "Even if you did show up in clean boots and a clipboard."

Ava smiled for real this time. "They're not clean anymore."

He looked down—her coveralls were streaked with grease, her boots scuffed and caked with gravel dust.

"No," he said. "They're not."

The wind picked up—warm and dry, carrying the faint scent of oil and creosote. Somewhere across the lease, a pumpjack groaned to life again.

"Rig Two, what's your status?" a voice crackled over Levi's handheld.

He lifted the mic, eyes still on her. "Skytrak failure. We're grounded until sunrise."

He clipped the radio back on and nodded toward the truck.

"You want a ride back to the trailer?" he asked. "Or are you sticking around to babysit a dead lift?"

Ava exhaled, the adrenaline fading. "I'll ride."

He fell into step beside her, hands in his pockets. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds.

But something had changed.

In the desert, under the stars, surrounded by busted steel and crude history, they weren't just a roughneck and an engineer anymore.

They were something else.

And neither of them could name it—yet