"I know," she said, her voice quieter. "But I looked at the job description. It’s all coding, Dad. Software simulations. I’d be sitting in a cubicle staring at lines of code for autonomous driving systems. I wouldn't touch a wrench. I wouldn't smell oil. I wouldn't..." she trailed off.
Jack finally looked up, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He was a mountain of a man, perpetually dressed in denim and flannel, a stark contrast to his daughter, who looked like she had just walked off a futuristic movie set. "One minute in a garage is a lifetime when a piston ring is stuck."
"You know," Jack said slowly, "when you were six, I bought you a Barbie jeep. Battery powered. Plastic."
Valerica didn’t move. “You died.”
He turned to face her, his expression serious. "An office job would have killed your spirit, Val. I see that now. I just wanted you to have an easy life."
"Relax, Pops. I brought the goods." Valerica pulled a greasy paper bag from her backpack. "Double cheese, extra onions. The kind that makes Mom scream when you breathe near her."
Her father’s handwriting.
Jack cracked a rare smile, taking the bag. "Good thinking. Your mother’s got the nose of a bloodhound." He gestured to the workbench. "Grab a stool. I found the issue."
But this case was different.
She closed her fingers around the vial.
She believed in hard data, in the sharp click of a camera shutter, in the cold weight of a microphone cable coiled around her palm. As a rising star in paranormal investigation, she’d debunked more haunted attics than she could count—loose floorboards, rusty pipes, even a neighbor’s cat that liked to knock things off shelves at 3 a.m.
Valerica stiffened slightly. She picked at the label on her soda bottle. "I didn't apply."
She’d spent fifteen years proving nothing was out there. valerica steele dad