Dust And Deception

~Five~

The world came back in pieces.

First, the sterile smell of disinfectant and bleach. Then, the soft beeping of machines. A slow, aching weight across Levi Carson's chest told him he was alive—though he couldn't say whether that was a blessing or a curse.

His eyelids dragged open like they'd been glued shut.

Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A TV in the corner whispered the local news, muted. The window beside the bed showed a flat pale sky and the edge of a prickly pear cactus. No skyline. No pumpjacks. No rig.

He turned his head and felt a flash of pain bloom at the base of his skull.

"Easy, Mr. Carson," a nurse said from the foot of the bed. "You took a pretty hard hit."

"Where...?" His throat was sandpaper. "Where am I?"

"UMC Emergency Care in Lubbock. You've been here two days."

His mind stuttered. The rig. Fire. Steel tearing open like it had been struck by lightning. Ava's voice yelling over the roar. Her hand gripping his sleeve before—

"Where's Ava?" he rasped.

The nurse blinked. "Ava?"

"Ava Kellinger. She was with me." His words came faster now, clarity rushing in like floodwater. "She was on the rig. She was hurt. She was right beside me when—"

"Oh," the nurse said, checking her clipboard. "Miss Kellinger was discharged yesterday morning."

Levi's mouth went dry. "She what?"

"She was banged up, but walking. Refused a full evaluation. Left before noon. Didn't say where she was going."

The nurse offered him a plastic cup of water. He waved it off. "I need a phone."

"There's one in the room," she said, and then, like an afterthought: "You're lucky to be alive."

Levi didn't feel lucky. He felt—wrong. Like the days had shifted under him while he was unconscious.

He reached for the phone and called Ava's cell. Straight to voicemail.

He tried again. Same.

By the second try, he hung it up and took a deep breathe.

Something itched at the back of his memory. Not just the explosion—the moment before. A low hum. Not from the rig. Under it. And Ava had felt it too. He remembered the way she froze, how she opened her mouth to say something—

Then the blast.

And now she was gone.

He swung his legs over the bed. The floor was cold. The nurse rushed back in, but he was already standing.

"You're not cleared to leave."

"I'm not asking."

Levi dressed in slow, stubborn silence. His ribs hurt. There was gauze on his temple. He didn't care. There was something moving beneath all this. Something that didn't feel like coincidence.

Levi's truck rumbled over the dirt track like it recognized the way on instinct. Thirty miles outside Odessa, past the rusted fence lines and wind-blasted mesquite, the land opened wide — raw and flat and full of silence.

He didn't bother checking the GPS. He didn't need to. Rig 3 had been his site for six weeks. He could've driven there with his eyes closed.

But now... it was gone.

He killed the engine and stepped out onto the hardpan, boots crunching in the dust. He stood in the middle of where the rig floor should have been — where just three days ago, derrick legs stretched into the sky, the drill line thrummed, and Ava had stood with her tablet, barking instructions over the wind.

Now there was nothing.

No steel. No burned trailers. Not even the black char-stain of scorched earth.

Just bare dirt.

The sagebrush had already started creeping back in, like the land had healed itself overnight. Like it wanted to forget.

Levi walked in slow, measured steps, scanning the ground. He crouched low where the mud pumps had once sat, scraping at the dirt with his fingers.

Nothing.

No oil spill, no tire tracks, no twisted metal. He could've been standing in the middle of any godforsaken stretch of desert in the Permian.

He stood up slowly, eyes narrowed.

"Hell no," he muttered. "No way this was cleaned up that fast."

Not in two days. Not without lights, crews, backhoes, permits, paperwork.

He turned at the sound of an engine.

A belly dump truck rolled down the access road, hauling a load of crushed caliche. Probably headed to some county road job, judging by the dust layer and dented front bumper. Levi stepped up and flagged it down.

The driver slowed, window rolling down halfway. Fortyish, sun-weathered face, dark glasses.

"You break down?" the driver asked, nodding toward Levi's truck.

"No," Levi said. "You been hauling down this road a while?"

"Couple times today, yeah."

"You seen a rig out here? Rig 3?"

The driver's brow furrowed. "What rig?"

"There was a blowout. Site went up two days ago."

The man frowned deeper. "Buddy, I been running this haul since last week. Ain't no rig out here."

"You didn't see the wreckage?"

"Nope. Just dirt and scrub." He leaned out the window a bit. "You sure you got the right spot?"

Levi's jaw tightened. "I'm sure."

The driver shrugged, unconcerned. "Well, you oughta talk to your dispatcher. Maybe it's the next tract over."

But Levi didn't answer. He was still staring out at the emptiness. The road, the brush, the wind—unchanged. Too unchanged.

The driver gave a small wave and rolled on, dust kicking up behind him in lazy spirals.

Levi stayed there long after the truck disappeared, standing in the silence. Every bone in his body told him something was wrong. This wasn't cleanup. This was erasure.

He pulled out his phone.

Still no word from Ava.

She'd seen it too—whatever was under the rig, whatever caused that vibration right before the blowout. They'd locked eyes that moment, both realizing it at the same time. And then...

Fire.

Levi looked down at his boots.

The desert doesn't bury its secrets. It just waits for people to forget them.

But Levi hadn't forgotten.

And now Ava was gone, the rig was missing, and someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure no one asked questions.

He wasn't ready to stop.