“If we had hit the highway,” Calvin whispered, his breath clouding in the light, “the first time the driver touched the pedal on a downgrade, they would have had nothing.”

“My mother told me,” I said.

Calvin stood up, wiping grease from his gloves onto his canvas pants. “How did she know?”

“Because she and my father are the ones who ordered it,” I said.

I turned my back to the wind and pulled my coat tighter around myself.

“Get the mechanics to swap the lines on every rig in the yard,” I said. “Double-check the steering linkages too.”

“And what are you going to do?” Calvin asked.

“I’m going to see Malcolm,” I said. “We need to know how deep this goes.”

***

The high-rise office building in downtown Denver was quiet at nine o’clock at night.

The heating system hummed softly behind the wood-paneled walls of Malcolm Sayer’s office.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city lights flickered through a heavy curtain of falling snow.

Malcolm sat behind his mahogany desk, his reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.