Ciara saw the wall of dust before she heard it. It came up over the far ridge like a brown tide, wide as the horizon, and she was two miles from any road. Her jacket was already stiff with grit from a week of surveying alone. She had told the office she preferred it that way. She had told everyone, loudly, ever since the last man she loved walked off a job site and never came back. Sand was easier than people. Sand didn't leave. She checked her clipboard, pinned the top page down, and started for the only cover in sight: a low outcrop half a mile east. The wind hit before she made it a hundred yards. It knocked her sideways and shoved sand into her collar. She dropped to one knee and pulled her scarf over her mouth. An engine cut through the roar. Headlights swung across the dune. A boxy Jeep in dusty blue slid to a stop beside her, wide tires throwing grit. The passenger door pushed open from the inside. "Get in," a man shouted over the wind. "Now." She got in. She would have argued on any other day. She slammed the door and the noise dropped by half. The driver was already reversing toward the outcrop, one hand on the wheel, the other braced on the seat behind her. He had a sunburned jaw and a torn sleeve. She had never seen him before. "You're the surveyor," he said. Not a question. "I don't need rescuing." "Then get out." She didn't. He parked the Jeep nose-in against the rock and killed the engine. The storm hit full force a second later. The windshield went brown. Sand hissed against the metal like water on a hot pan. He reached behind the seat and dragged out a canvas tarp and a pack stuffed with rope, a lantern, a canteen. He rigged the tarp across the two open windows on the lee side, weighted the corners, and passed her the canteen without looking. Then he pulled out bread, an apple, a wedge of cheese, and set them on the console between them like it was nothing. "Eat," he said. "This lasts an hour, maybe two." She drank. She ate. She did not thank him. She watched his hands instead, the way they knew every buckle without looking. On the dash, taped crooked, was a photo of four children on a porch step, and behind them, a yellow house with an orange door. Her stomach did something she did not authorize. "I'm Ciara," she said, before she could stop. He glanced at her. Half a smile. He didn't give his name. Outside, the storm pressed the Jeep like a hand. Inside, she was dry, fed, and sitting six inches from a stranger whose kids smiled at her from the dashboard. She had sworn off exactly this. She had sworn loudly. The wind kept blowing. He didn't move away.