Page 22 of Hard Check
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dawson had both hands inside the Audi’s engine bay when Wyatt leaned against the doorframe behind him.
“Three to four weeks on the condenser assembly.” Wyatt had the phone against his shoulder, one hand on the frame. “That’s if they have the right housing in stock.”
“They won’t.” Dawson pulled back and wiped his hands on a shop rag. “It’s a 2022 A8. Half the parts have to come from the dealer network.”
“Then quote him dealer pricing and let him decide.”
Dawson nodded. Wyatt went back to his desk, and through the open door, Dawson could hear him pick up the next call without a pause. Wyatt ran the garage the way their father had, one thing at a time, no wasted motion, no wasted words. The three of them could go a whole day in the shop and say forty sentences between them, and the work got done.
Ethan was under a John Deere in the first bay, just his boots and calves visible. The radio played something with fiddles and a woman singing about a highway. Dawson turned back to theAudi. The pulled radiator sat on the bench beside the mangled bumper support, and underneath, he’d found a bent tie rod that hadn’t been visible in the dark. The deer had come from the driver’s side, which meant Leo had seen it for maybe half a second before impact. Not enough time to brake and have it do any good.
He pulled up the parts list on his phone and started typing the order. Radiator, condenser, headlight assembly, bumper cover, and tie rod end. He’d have to source the hood through a dealer in Chicago, which meant another week tacked onto the timeline. Four weeks, minimum. Closer to five.
He thought about calling Leo. Texting was easier, so he texted.
Parts ordered. 4-5 weeks. Hood’s coming from Chicago.
That’s longer than 3 weeks.
Found more damage underneath. Tie rod’s bent.
Is that expensive?
Insurance covers it. There’s a couple other things I found that aren’t related to the accident. I can work up an estimate on that and send it over.
Might as well get it all taken care of since you already have the car. Thanks.
That’s exactly what Dawson had figured. He put his phone away and stared at the Audi’s engine bay. A German luxury sedan in a shop that ran mostly American trucks and farm equipment. It looked wrong in here—too sleek, too clean, other than thedamage, every component precision-fitted in a way that made his usual work feel like carpentry compared to watchmaking. Leo’s whole life was probably like that. Polished where Dawson’s was rough. Expensive where Dawson’s was functional.
He picked up the shop rag and wiped his hands again, even though they were already clean.
The Keller barnsat a half mile off the county road at the end of a gravel drive that turned to mud when it rained and dust when it didn’t. Dawson pulled up beside Justin’s truck and killed the engine. The barn doors were open, both of them swung wide, and the pulling rig was parked under the overhead lights with its engine cover off.
Justin was somewhere inside. Dawson could hear the radio, classic rock, the kind of station that played the same forty songs in rotation, and nobody minded. He grabbed the six-pack from the passenger seat and walked in.
The barn smelled like diesel and hay dust, the way it had since high school. Justin’s workbench ran along the east wall: tools on a pegboard, coffee cans of bolts sorted by size, a feed-store calendar two years out of date. Dawson had spent more hours in here than he could count. It was the one place outside the garage where his brain went quiet.
Justin was sitting on an overturned bucket next to the rig, eating an apple and reading something on his phone. He looked up when Dawson set the beer on the workbench.
“Throttle linkage,” he said, and took another bite.
“What about it?”
“Felt sticky at the pull. Figured you’d want to look before Oshkosh.”
Dawson grabbed a creeper and rolled under the rig. A little grime in the pivot, nothing a cleaning and a fresh bushing wouldn’t fix. He started working, and the noise in his head quieted the way it always did when he had a job in front of him.
Justin didn’t talk for a while. He was usually chatty, but when Dawson was in the zone he kept his mouth shut. The radio played. Dawson’s wrench clicked. Somewhere outside, a dog barked twice and stopped.
“Fairgrounds called,” Justin said. “They’re booking the fall exhibition. October fourteenth. You in?”
Dawson’s hands went still on the wrench.
The fairgrounds. Leo’s grip on his arm during the pull, and Dawson not pulling away. The soft skin on the inside of his forearm prickled, and he shoved his sleeve up and went back to the bolt.
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
