“Eighteen minutes early,” Mia replied. There was a smile in her voice.
“Time check,” he said.
Carver Oldham grunted an acknowledgment. He was fifty-three years old, with a bad knee, arthritis in his right hand, and a reputation that stretched from the Permian Basin to the Alberta oil sands. He was here for one reason: the .
Then he moved to the right side, the vertical uphill (3 o’clock position). Here, the fight began. The puddle wanted to sag. It wanted to drip. Carver tilted his rod up, shortened his arc, and used a tight side-to-side weave. His hand moved like a sewing machine—steady, rhythmic, hypnotic. Each oscillation caught the edges of the bevel, freezing the puddle before gravity could steal it. Sweat froze on his eyebrows.
