The storm came without warning. One moment the road was passable, dusted with the thin, polite snow that Aspen locals dismissed as background weather. The next, the sky opened up and the mountains disappeared behind a curtain of white. Visibility dropped to maybe 30 ft. The pine trees lining Route 82 became gray shadows, swaying and indifferent.
Riley Hargrove had been riding for 6 hours. She'd left Denver just after noon, telling her assistant she needed a few days to think, which was the closest she'd come to honesty in months. She hadn't taken a bag. She had a wallet, a phone at 11% battery, and a 1978 Triumph Bonneville that she'd bought on an impulse two years ago and barely ridden since. She'd wanted to feel the cold.
She'd wanted her mind to go quiet. Instead, 3 miles outside of Aspen proper, the Triumph sputtered once, coughed like an old man insulted, and died. Riley coasted to the shoulder and sat there for a moment, helmet still on, watching the snow pile onto the speedometer. Then she pulled off the helmet and looked at the sky, enormous and white and completely unconcerned with her. "Okay," she said to no one.
She tried the ignition three times. The engine turned over but refused to catch. She pulled out her phone. 11% became nine as she stared at the screen, trying to remember if she had any contacts in Aspen. She didn't.
She'd been in Aspen exactly once before for a conference, and she'd stayed at a hotel that sent a town car. A gust of wind cut through her riding jacket like it was paper. She was standing up on the shoulder, looking up and down the empty road with growing desperation, when she noticed the lights. About 200 yards ahead, set back slightly from the highway, was a low-slung building with a hand-painted sign that the snow was slowly obscuring. She could make out the words "Carter's Auto and Cycle" and beneath that, in smaller letters, "Est.
2009. We fix what others won't. " A single window glowed amber in the white dark. Riley pushed the Triumph through the snow, boots soaking through immediately, arms aching. She'd ridden motorcycles. She'd never pushed one through a blizzard.
By the time she reached the gravel lot in front of the garage, her fingers were numb inside her gloves and she'd stopped feeling her toes. The large bay door was closed, but a smaller door beside it was cracked open, warm air leaking out in a thin ribbon. She knocked on the frame. "Hello? " A pause. The clang of something metal being set down.
Then, footsteps. The man who opened the door was tall, maybe 6' 2", with dark hair that hadn't been cut recently, and three days of stubble that was coming in unevenly on the left side of his jaw. He wore a gray thermal shirt under a canvas work shirt, both of which had been washed many times and fit him the way clothes fit men who don't notice clothes. His hands were dark with grease to the wrists. He held a rag in one of them, and he was using it on his fingers when he looked at her with the particular expression of someone who has opened a door expecting nothing and found something unexpected instead.