He groaned, because the sound preceding the swerve had been something the Orion couldn’t counter. The swerve, sure. It put them back on the straight and narrow. But as clever as the Orion was, it couldn’t change its own damn tire.
Especially when said tire was back at the garage.
Shit.
“What the hell just happened?” Hannah breathed, gulping down air like she’d had her head held underwater instead of having the living daylight scared out of her.
He shot her a look, saw her wide-eyed terror and grimaced at her. “It’s okay, Hannah. The Orion is prepared for all kinds of eventualities.” He had to admit though, as much faith as he had in the technology they’d spent a fortune on developing, his instincts had been to grab the wheel and take over. He could understand why she was terrified, because his heart was pounding too.
“Then why did we swerve?” Hannah questioned.
“The debris… it must have popped a tire.”
“Oh crap,” she said with a wince. “What do we do?”
“I have to call out one of the technicians from the compound.” So saying, James pressed a few buttons on the console dash and waited for the call to connect. When it did, he murmured, “Gonzalo? A tire’s blown on the Orion. I need you to come with a spare.”
“Don’t you carry them?” Hannah asked crossly. She was back to scowling again.
Although, truth was, he thought he preferred her scowling to that lost puppy look she’d just had. Seeing Hannah scared was the last thing he wanted.
Watching her come? Yeah.
Crapping herself in terror? Not so much.
“No. Not in prototypes,” he answered, cutting her a look.
She huffed. “Aidan was right. We should never have come out in this.”
“Are you kidding?” he immediately snapped. “We’ve just had the best real-time demonstration of the Orion’s capabilities. The way it was programmed, I knew it could handle those kinds of scenarios. It’s one of the hardest parts of the program. Trying to figure out the impossible. But, that was…” He shook his head, impressed by what had just happened even though it hadn’t turned out perfectly. “It was far more than I could ever have expected. I always have faith in whatever we turn out, because I know we test it above and beyond what most of our competitors could even imagine. But now? After this? Wow.”
He could tell she was still mad, but a smile danced about her lips as she said, “Sounds like you’re starting to believe your own press.”
Before he could do more than grin sheepishly at her, Gonzalo asked, “Sir?”
Damn, he’d forgotten the tech was on the other end of the line still. By the looks of her blush, so had Hannah.
“Sorry, Gonzalo. We just had to maneuver through a landslide on the top of the mountain heading toward the Vistabel viewpoint. We managed to scrape through without any damage save to the wheel, but I’m not sure if a truck will be able to make it through. It might be wise to come in a smaller sedan with the spare, and then we just maneuver through it once we can drive again. Can you arrange for someone to come and clear the debris though? Also, this side of the hill might need shoring up.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Arias. I’ll get that arranged. We’ll be up there as soon as we can.”
“Thanks, Gonzalo.” James cut the call, then stared at Hannah. “The viewpoint’s not far from here if you want to go see it.”
“Is that where we were heading all along?”
He shrugged, “It’s nearly sunset. I figured there wasn’t a better place to view it than from there.”
“S-Sure.”
He wasn’t sure who was more stunned by that faint stutter. Him or her. Instead of playing on it though, he watched her nibble at her lip again as she opened the door and climbed out onto the roadside.
After reaching for his cell which he’d placed in the dock earlier, he put it in his jacket pocket as he joined her on the road. Up here, while not technically a lot higher than the compound, the air was definitely fresher. Even though he could smell the faint scent of gas from the Orion’s minimal output, more than anything, he could smell mountain. Clean and tinged with earth.
Nice.
When she nodded at him, they walked up the road. Over in the distance, they could see Portland in all its beauty. The city wasn’t asleep yet, but soon it would be. As the sun grew somnolent in the sky, shards of purple and red streaked across the horizon before them. With each passing moment, Hannah’s attention swerved from him and whatever subject was truly bothering her to the beauty of the view before them.
When they made it to the top, she smiled at a bench that he must have had installed there. She shot him a look. “You come here often?”