“I’ll do the talking. You observe and take notes.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, saluting him.
He rolls his eyes. “Come on, Minami.”
Outside, the rumble of machinery and the metallic rattle of tools fill the air. The smell of diesel and hot steel hits as soon as I open the door. My blazer already feels too heavy. Why did I wear it? Iknewit was going to be hot and humid today.
I’ve been here two months, and I still haven’t gotten a Florida-appropriate wardrobe. I make a mental note to go shopping on my next day off. Opting for comfort, I leave the coat in the car and set out in a sleeveless lilac top.
Theo grabs a high-vis vest and hard hat from the back seat and hands me a set. “Gear up, Minami.”
I slide on the rough fabric of the vest, but the helmet strap is another story. It’s stiff, and my clumsy fingers can’t quite get the plastic clip into the buckle. I’m fumbling under my chin, growing more frustrated by the second, when a shadow falls over me.
“Hold still,” Theo says, chuckling.
Before I can protest, he leans in. His scent hits me first—sandalwood and a hint of something sweet. Whatever it is, it’s a nice clean smell.
His fingers are cool as they brush against the sensitive skin of my jaw, steadying the strap. The contact is brief, but it sends a sharp, electric pulse straight through me. He clicks the buckle into place with a definitivesnapand lingers for just a heartbeat, his thumb grazing the edge of my chin as he checks the tension. “There.”
By the time I look up, he’s already stepping back, hisexpression once again unreadable behind those dark lenses. “Here we go.”
We step onto the gravel path leading toward the job trailers. Sunlight flashes off the steel track, bright enough to make me squint. A crane groans overhead as a section of rail is lifted into position, workers guiding it with taglines, their voices raised over the clamor. Sweat beads at the base of my neck almost immediately.
Theo’s stride is purposeful, as if he owns every square inch of the site. Crew members straighten when they notice him. Their chatter stops. I hurry to keep pace, my boots crunching against the gravel.
He doesn’t look back, but his voice carries, pitched low enough that only I can hear. “Remember what we discussed in the car.”
“I will,” I say softly.
We approach the base of the cobra roll, where a foreman in a battered hard hat waves us over. “Morning, Mr. Riverton.” His voice is rough, probably from decades of shouting over heavy machinery. “You’re just in time. We’re ahead of schedule since your last visit. We’ve got the launch track section lined up for welding.”
“Good.” Theo shakes his hand. “We’ll do a walk-through first, then go over the logs and survey marks.” He gestures toward me, still focused on the foreman. “This is Kaori Minami, one of the engineers on my team. She’ll need access to your torque logs.”
The foreman’s gaze flicks past me, already drifting back to Theo, like I’m an attachment instead of a person. It’s not the first time, nor will it be the last, that I’ll be disregarded like this. This is a man’s world—or at least it still feels that way. The crews don’t expect to see someone like me in thefield. And part of me hates that I almost understand why they doubt me.
Theo leads the way as we weave past stacks of rebar and coils of cable. “This section is looking good.”
I follow his line of sight, and at first, I agree. The track curves cleanly overhead. All the welds appear to be uniform, and the supports are aligned. It’s impressive—until I look closer.
Just beneath a scaffold, a joint catches my eye. Three bolts don’t sit flush against the splice plate—the heads are tilted just enough to set off a silent alarm in the back of my brain. It’s subtle, the kind of thing you only notice if you’ve spent a thousand hours staring at CAD models. It wouldn’t cause a failure today, but over time, those uneven load paths would concentrate stress in all the wrong places. It’s a hairline fracture waiting to happen.
I snap a quick photo on my tablet and zoom in, my heart hammering against my ribs.Maybe it’s just perspective distortion,I tell myself.A trick of the light.I pinch the screen, staring until the pixels blur. But the longer I stare at it, the more certain I am that it’s off.
I chew at my lip, weighing the risks. If I speak up and I’m wrong, I’m the overeager junior who can’t tell the difference between a shadow and a structural flaw. I’ll be back to square one with Theo. But if I stay silent and I’m right, I’m letting a ticking time bomb stay buried in the steel.
My grip tightens on the tablet until my knuckles ache. This is what we talked about in the car. This is the human factor. Despite every instinct telling me to stay in my lane and let Theo handle the heavy lifting, I know I can’t let this go.
I step closer to him, careful to keep my voice low. “Theo, there’s something you should see.”
He doesn’t look at me, but he does shift his stance, a subtle acknowledgment that he’s listening even as the foreman continues outlining the weld schedule. He exhales through his nose, just once, then shifts his stance. “Go on,” he says evenly, still facing the foreman.
I angle my tablet toward him, keeping it discreet. “It’s the splice joint beneath the scaffold. The second support in from the access ladder.”
He flicks a glance at the foreman, then back to the track. “I walked that section myself last week,” he says evenly. “And we had a survey conducted on Thursday. It came back clean.”
“I know,” I say, quietly but firmly. “But was the survey done before final torque? If the bolts aren’t fully seated when they’re tightened, the readings will still pass and the issue?—”
“Isn’t the alignment. It’s the contact,” he says. “Let me see that tablet.”
