couldn’t go an inch more than five-three and might go an inch less—and walked around to face them.
“Sorry about the wait, guys. I got moving as fast as I could.”
“No problem,” Frank said, and he was going to shake her hand when the gray-haired man interrupted.
“If it’s no trouble, can we do this car first?” He pointed at the Lexus.
The woman wore jeans and boots and a denim work shirt, sleeves rolled to expose thin forearms. There were grease stains on her clothes, and both the pants and shirt were loose, giving her a shapeless look. She didn’t wear any makeup, but her eyebrows—not a feature Frank would ordinarily notice—had been carefully attended to, well shaped. Cool green eyes, now fastened on the Lexus driver.
“There a reason that one needs to go first?”
He gaped at her for a second, then looked at Frank and forced a smile.
“Well, I was just hoping . . . I’ve got a meeting to get to, and I was sort of—”
“In a hurry,” the woman finished.
He nodded.
“Right,” she said. “Well, I can give you the first tow unless this gentleman has an objection.”
Frank shook his head.
“Great,” the woman said. “Here’s how we’re going to do this—I’ll get the Lexus rigged up, tow it back to the shop, and you guys can ride with me, unless you’ve got someone coming to get you.”
This time Frank and the gray-haired man shook their heads in unison.
“Okay. Well, probably be easier to figure out your situations from town, unless you’d rather stand out here on the edge of the road.”
“Sure,” the gray-haired guy said. “Town’s fine.” But he was looking down the road with a frown.
The woman walked over to the Lexus and knelt beside it, studying the front end. Frank turned away when she bent over to see under the bumper, not wanting to stare. When was the last time a guy had wanted to check out a tow truck driver, anyhow? She straightened up and walked back to the truck, climbed in and put it in reverse and had the thing centered in front of the Lexus in half the time it would’ve taken Frank.
“I have to winch you out of that ditch before I can get it ready to tow,” she told the gray-haired guy. “Looks like the Jeep is sitting clear enough already.”
She hooked the winch beneath the front bumper of the Lexus, went back to the truck, and turned it on. The chain went taut and the gears hummed and the Lexus slid away from the trees and up the ditch, shedding a tangle of branches and broken glass in its wake. When she had the car on the flat surface of the road, she shut the winch off, went back and fussed with the chains for a few seconds, and turned to the car’s owner.
“This thing’s all-wheel drive. We should use the dolly on the rear wheels to keep from hurting your axles or transmission. The thing about that is, we also charge an extra thirty dollars to use it.”
The gray-haired man stared at her, mouth open about an inch. Didn’t see many women winching your fifty- thousand-dollar car out of a ditch.
“Uh, yeah, sure.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You’re okay with that?”
“You think that the dolly will save time?”
“It’ll save your transmission.”
“Whatever. Faster the better. I want to get moving.”
She went back to the Lexus, and Frank thought her stride was slower, almost as if she were screwing with the guy because he was in such a hurry. It made a wry smile build on Frank’s face, and he turned before the Lexus driver caught it.
Once she had the wheel-lift under the front end of the Lexus—looked like a set of mechanical arms wrapped around the wheels—she strapped the tires to it for added security and disappeared behind the car. Frank and the gray-haired man stood together in silence, waiting. Eventually she walked back around to the front, gave the wheel-lift one last look, and then made a small nod of satisfaction and turned back to them.
“Go on and get in. Short straw gets to sit in the middle.”
Frank got to the passenger door first, pulled it open, and slid across to the middle seat as the gray-haired man climbed up beside him and the woman got behind the wheel.
“What’s your name?” Frank asked her.
“Nora Stafford.” She took one hand off the wheel and extended it. When they shook, he felt fine bones on the back of her hands, the skin smooth and cool, but hard on the inside, beneath her fingers.
“I’m Frank.”
“Good to meet you, Frank.” She put the truck in gear and checked the mirror. “Who’s your buddy?”
“You know, I didn’t make his acquaintance yet, just his car’s,” Frank said.
“My name’s Dave O’Connor. Sorry. Should’ve introduced myself earlier. I’ll be paying for this, which brings up a, uh, a question. I was wondering . . . see, I’m from out of town, and I need this done fast, but, well, I don’t have my credit cards on me.”
“Credit cards?” Nora turned to him with surprise. “Sir, I think you’re going to want to make an insurance claim on that.”
“No, we’re not going to do that.”
“Um . . . I don’t mean to tell you your business, but this job is going to be several thousand dollars,” Nora said.
Frank shifted in his seat. He’d hit the guy, and his insurance should be paying for the damages, but the gray- haired man had been adamant.
“So what I was wondering was, I mean my question, well, could I give you cash? Because I’ve got some cash on me, see. And if I gave you that, you know, to get started, and then I could come back with a credit card or call you and give you the number . . .”
Nora’s face hardened just a touch, barely noticeable, a little frost in her eyes even though she didn’t take them off the road. There was something about the edge she showed in that moment, like the way she’d slowed down just because the gray-haired guy was in a hurry, that Frank found damn appealing.
“Two cars, both with substantial damage,” she said, her voice friendly. “Parts and paint alone are going to run up a decent bill, Dave. That’s without labor figured in.”
“I could give you two thousand dollars today. Surely that’s enough to get started? You aren’t going to burn through two grand in the first day.”
Nora kept her eyes ahead, and so did Frank, but in the few seconds of silence that followed he felt a shared curiosity with her—
“Well . . .” Nora nodded her head as if in discussion with herself. “Two thousand dollars is a sizable down payment. The bill for this work will run well over that, but it’s certainly enough to get us started.”
They were on the highway now, southbound toward Tomahawk, the tow truck’s engine throaty, straining to get its load up to speed. Nora’s thigh was warm against Frank’s. He looked at her hands on the steering wheel, saw no wedding ring. So it wasn’t her husband’s body shop. This was just what she did, drive a tow truck in a town like Tomahawk? A young girl, intelligent, with perfect teeth and eyebrows?
“You guys have someone to come get you?” Nora asked.
“Nope,” Frank said, and Dave O’Connor shook his head.
“I’ve got to get something figured out,” O’Connor said. “Like I told you, I’m in a bit of a hurry. Got a meeting that won’t wait all day for me.”
“A meeting at the Willow?” Frank asked.
“No. I, uh, I’ve got to get to . . . Rhinelander. Little bit of a drive left to make, so, you know, got to figure something out.”
Rhinelander. He’d been westbound on County Y, headed for Rhinelander? That was an interesting route, considering County Y took you out to the Willow, across the dam, and then looped back down to the old highway and into Tomahawk. O’Connor had been driving the exact opposite direction from Rhinelander, and not toward any highway where he could correct his course.
“Any chance you’d have a car you could rent me?” O’Connor asked Nora.
She shot a sideways glance at him. “I don’t rent cars. I fix them.”
“You don’t have anything around the shop? It’d be one day.
