Racing Into Your Heart

CHAPTER 5

"Nina," Lena said into the radio. "I have an amber light on the dash."

"Checking." A pause filled with keyboard clicks. "Telemetry shows nothing. Every sensor is green. It could be a glitch. Ignore it and drive."

"It is blinking."

"I know. I see nothing on my side. Lena, trust me. Just race."

She wanted to trust her. She wanted to trust everyone. But a single sentence from Dom Reyes was still ringing in her skull. Tomorrow, in the race. Be careful.

The light blinked once more and then went dark.

"It stopped," she said.

"Told you. Now go and catch him."

She did.

By lap ten, she was in second place, glued to Ethan's rear wing. The black Valkyrie in front of her was beautiful to watch, every movement crisp and certain. He drove the way he did everything else, as if the whole world had been built to make way for him.

She hated how much she admired it.

"Gap is point six," Nina said. "Marcus wants you to hold position. Team orders. He says Ethan has the title fight and you should stay behind him until the first stops."

Lena almost laughed. "Tell Marcus he can ask me nicely."

"He did not ask nicely."

"Then no."

"Lena."

"Nina. I did not come here to follow."

There was a short silence on the radio. Then Nina said, quietly, "I will tell him the radio cut out."

On lap twenty two, the DRS flap opened on the back straight and Lena went for it.

She pulled out of his slipstream with the desert wind roaring around her helmet. Ethan moved to cover her, then moved back. He had seen her in his mirror. She had seen him decide.

The two cars hit the braking zone side by side, wheels almost touching.

Turn one. The inside line was hers. He knew it. She knew it. For one beautiful, terrifying moment, they were so close that she could have reached out and touched his front wing.

He braked first.

She went through.

The grandstand roared. Her radio erupted in Nina's laughter. "You passed the reigning champion! You passed Ethan Cole!"

In her mirrors, the black car shrank. Then it stopped shrinking. Then it began to grow again.

"He is coming back," Nina warned.

"Let him."

They fought for nine laps. He tried the inside at turn four, the outside at turn eight, the long run into turn ten. Every time, she held him off. Her arms burned. Her neck screamed. The temperature inside the cockpit climbed past fifty degrees, and sweat ran into her eyes and soaked the collar of her suit.

"Lap thirty one," Nina said. "You are doing it, Lena. Half a second ahead. Another twenty five laps and you win your first race."

The words had barely left her mouth when the car began to shake.

Not much. A tiny tremble through the steering wheel, like a heartbeat gone wrong.

"Nina. Something is off."

"Say again?"

"The wheel. It is vibrating."

"Reading nothing. Reading nothing. Lena, hold on."

The amber light blinked back on.

This time it did not stop.

She was on the back straight, at full throttle, flying toward the braking zone at three hundred and one kilometers an hour with the entire world watching. The hundred meter board appeared. She lifted off the throttle and stamped on the brake.

Nothing happened.

The pedal went straight to the floor.

No resistance. No pressure. No bite. Just air.

"Nina!" She stamped again. Again. Again. "Nina, I have no brakes! I have no brakes!"

"What? Say again, Lena!"

"No brakes! No brakes!"

The fifty meter board went past in a blur.

Everything slowed down. She heard her own breath, quick and shallow. She saw her father's face, laughing at a kitchen table. She saw the ocean behind her childhood home. She saw the barrier at the end of the braking zone rushing toward her like a wall of concrete.

Think. Downshift. Downshift. Use the engine.

Her left hand flew to the paddles. Fourth gear, third, second. The engine screamed and the car shuddered, and the speed dropped by almost nothing at all.

Two hundred and eighty kilometers an hour.

Two hundred and sixty.

Turn one flashed up in front of her. She yanked the wheel right.

The car did not turn.

It skated across the track, nose pointing at the wall, a runaway missile of carbon fiber. She heard someone screaming and realized it was her.

The last thing she saw was the barrier.

Then a flash of white light, a crash so loud it swallowed the world, and the hard, sudden dark.

Pain.

That was the first thing. A hot, wet, endless pain, and the smell of smoke and burning rubber in her nose. Her helmet had cracked against something. Her ears rang. Somewhere above her, a voice was shouting.

"Lena! Lena, open your eyes! Look at me!"

She tried. The world swam into color. Orange flames licked across the nose of the car a few feet away. The heat pressed on her face like a hand.

A shape appeared in the haze. A black suit. A white helmet. Hands, strong and shaking, tearing at the belts across her chest.

"Ethan?"

"Do not talk. Stay with me."

"My leg."

"I know. I have got you. I have got you."

The belts snapped free. He wrapped his arms around her and heaved her out of the cockpit as the fire marshals ran toward them with extinguishers. He did not stop at the barrier. He carried her fifteen full meters across the asphalt before he lowered her to the ground, and when he pulled off her helmet his hands were trembling so hard that he nearly dropped it.

"Look at me," he said. "Look at me, Lena."

His face was inches from hers. His visor was pushed up, and his grey eyes were wide and wet and terrified. Not the champion. Not the golden boy. Just a man, white faced and breathing hard, looking at her as though she were the only thing left in the world.

"You stopped," she whispered. "You stopped the race."

"You are an idiot."

"You were winning."

"I do not care."

His voice broke on the last word. He pressed his forehead against hers, just for a second, and she felt his whole body shake.

"Do not ever," he said hoarsely, "do that to me again."

Then the medical team arrived and pulled them apart, and the world dissolved into flashing lights and voices and the cold bite of a needle in her arm.

She woke in a white room.

Machines hummed softly. A drip ran into the back of her hand. Her left wrist was in a cast, her ribs were wrapped in bandages, and a monitor clipped to her finger blinked a steady green. Pale morning light slanted through the blinds.

Nina slept in a chair beside her bed, her head on her folded arms, dark circles under her eyes. A paper cup of cold coffee sat untouched on the table.

"You are awake."

Dom Reyes stood by the window. His cap was crushed in his fists. His face looked ten years older than it had two days ago.

"What happened to the car?" Lena croaked.

"It is being examined." He looked down. "The investigators say it was a brake failure."

"It was not a failure."

Dom did not answer.

"You warned me," she said. "You told me to be careful. You knew."

"I did not know. I only feared."

"Dom. What are you afraid of?"

He looked at the sleeping Nina. Then at the door. Then back at her, and his face twisted with something so deep and old that she could not name it.

"Your father," he whispered. "He had the same look on his face. The morning before."

His voice cracked. Before she could ask what he meant, he put his cap back on, muttered "Rest," and left the room.

Lena stared at the closing door. Her heart pounded so loudly the monitor began to beep faster.

The day dragged on in a haze of medication and doctors and whispered visits. Marcus came and went, gray faced and brisk. Richard Cole held her good hand for ten minutes and said he would find whoever was responsible. Isabella Laurent sent a bouquet of white lilies the size of a small tree. Lena put them in the hallway.

By midnight, the hospital was quiet.

She could not sleep. Her body ached and her mind would not stop turning. At two in the morning she pushed herself upright, wincing, and swung her legs out of bed. She wanted water. She wanted air. She wanted to be anywhere but alone in the dark with the picture of that wall in her head.

The corridor was empty. Lights hummed overhead. At the far end, near the window, a tall figure stood with his back to her, one hand pressed against the glass and the other holding a phone to his ear.

Ethan.

She almost called out. Then she heard his voice, low and rough and furious, and the words froze her where she stood.

"She was not supposed to be in the car that early. You told me I would have more time."

Silence. Whoever he was speaking to answered.

"No. I do not care what the schedule says. Move the plan forward. Now." A long pause. "She nearly died tonight. Do you understand that? She nearly died."

Lena pressed herself against the wall, hardly daring to breathe.

"I will handle her," Ethan said. "She does not know anything yet."

Her blood ran cold.

He dragged a hand through his hair. His reflection in the glass looked exhausted, haunted, a stranger.

Then he lowered his voice to a whisper, and spoke the sentence that made the hospital corridor tilt beneath her feet.

"She cannot find out who she really is."