The car had stalled. Tom turned the key but the engine choked apologetically. In the vast and sudden silence he could hear it ticking like a quiet little bomb.
He tried again. ‘Shit. Come on.’
She touched his hand. ‘Give it a minute.’
Tom sighed and turned off the headlights to conserve the battery, for what that was worth, and they were plunged into blackness.
He looked at his watch: twelve forty-three. Pam and the team wouldn’t be out until six or seven at the earliest.
Tom checked his phone. Shaking it didn’t help it find a signal. ‘You got your phone?’
Ness gave a wry half-smile.
This was just great – worth halting sure-fire sex with the hottest woman he’d ever known. He wished feverishly that she’d stayed at the guesthouse and not been witness to this latest display of incompetence.
He got out and went round to the front of the car, shivering in the cold desert night.
The stars here were extraordinary; they seemed so close and bright, and were thickly spread in places as if someone had spilled a packet of star seeds and they’d grown haphazardly where they fell. Clustered in places and bare in others. A patch immediately overhead was naked indigo with only a single lonely point in the middle of it, light years away. Tom wished he were there.
Ness was beside him, following his gaze to the same star. He could feel her shoulder nudge his companionably as she leaned against the car. Her throat was slender, white and vulnerable where it stretched upwards under the starlight.
‘The carburettor’s probably just flooded,’ she said softly.
Her voice made even such mundanity sound sexy. He gave her a cheeky grin. ‘Are you coming on to me?’
There was a moment of silence and then she started to laugh.
He turned, trapping her body between his and the car.
He could see her teeth as she giggled, and was aware of her warmth heating his chest, hips and thighs. He felt himself grow hard against her and suddenly her teeth were hidden from him, and he could feel her ragged breath on his throat.
‘Yes,’ she said, pressing her hips into his, ‘I’m coming on to you.’
Ancient stars bore witness as they explored hungrily, using hands and lips as substitutes for eyes and words in the darkness. He felt Ness moan low into his mouth, and pressed her down to the still-ticking heart of the Honda. For the second time in thirty minutes his out-of-practice hands fumbled with his button-fly – and suddenly they were illuminated in the lights of an oncoming car heading towards De Rust.
Tom straightened and Ness propped herself on her elbows and quickly pulled her dress down over her thighs.
The car passed them, leaving them in the blackness again, breathing in its dust.
The moment was gone.
In the ensuing silence, Ness levered herself off the hood and smoothed her clothes. She didn’t look at him as she slid back into the passenger seat.
With a groan he couldn’t suppress, he realized he’d never even got his jeans undone.
*
This time when Tom turned the key, the car coughed into a semblance of life and – after a brief, heart-sinking wheel spin – he swung it back onto the road towards the wreckage.
They didn’t speak. Tom didn’t know what to say and her face gave nothing away – she was as calm and unruffled now as she had been when they were standing at check-in at LAX.
He’d like to track down the inventor of the button-fly and make him suffer …
The barn’s skeletal silhouette loomed out of the darkness unexpectedly soon. Tom parked the Honda so it lit their way to the barn and he and Ness walked the short distance in silence. His flashlight was still in his pocket, he was relieved to find, as they reached the remains of the engine housing on the port wing.
But the fan disc was no longer on the ground.
Tom frowned and swept the dust with the thin beam.
‘Where is it?’ said Ness.
‘We left it here, right?’
She nodded, confused. ‘Sure. You and Paul turned it over and laid it flat right here, see?’ With her toe she pointed at the faint, broken ring the fan disc had pressed into the dust.
Tom illuminated the mark. A footprint bisected it. He checked his own, and then Ness’s. Neither was a match. ‘Someone’s taken it.’
‘Taken it?’
Tom squatted to touch the footprint. ‘This print was made after the fan disc was lifted up.’ He was aware that his voice was calm, and realized it was because he was numb with disappointment. He stood up and waved the flashlight beam pointlessly at the road. ‘The other car. They must’ve been on their way here. No wonder the bastards didn’t stop to help.’
‘But why would anyone take it?’
‘It was the only evidence that there might be something wrong with the disc. The only proof. I should never have left it out here. Fuck!’ He kicked impotently at the dirt.
‘It’s not your investigation, Tom. It wasn’t your call.’
He waved her logic aside. He was a jerk. Possibly the only material evidence to two fatal crashes, and he had left it out here in the middle of a desert without security. Without even a door. With a polite little sign asking passers-by not to steal souvenirs. He needed his ass kicked, and hard.
