Racing Into Your Heart

CHAPTER 2

Lena's pen stopped halfway through the signature.

"You," she said.

"Me," Ethan agreed.

He walked into the motorhome like he owned it, which in some ways he did. Everything about him took up space. The jacket, the shoulders, the quiet confidence of a man who had never once been told no by a room. He picked up her trophy from the table and turned it in his hands.

"Nice drive. Your brake bias adjustment on the last lap was clever."

"You watched?"

"I watch everything."

She snatched the trophy out of his fingers. "Do not touch that."

Marcus Vale cleared his throat. "Mr. Cole, I believe you were asked to wait outside."

"I got bored." Ethan never looked away from Lena. "Besides, I wanted to see her face when she found out."

"And how do I look?"

"Like you want to throw something at me."

"Not yet," she said. "I am still deciding what."

One corner of his mouth twitched, and that made her angrier than anything he could have said.

She turned back to the table, pressed the pen down and finished her signature in one hard stroke. Lena Morgan. It was done.

"Welcome to Valkyrie," Marcus said, and he sounded as if he was reading from a script. "A car will collect you on Monday. The press conference is Tuesday at ten. You will say as little as possible."

"Understood."

"I mean it, Miss Morgan."

Ethan pushed away from the doorframe. As he passed her, he leaned in, close enough that she caught the smell of cedar and rain on his jacket. His voice dropped low.

"For the record, I did not ask for this."

"Neither did I."

"Then we agree on something." He paused at the door. "It is going to be a long season."

He left. The air in the room felt lighter and heavier at the same time, and Lena hated that she had noticed.

Tuesday arrived like a storm.

Valkyrie Park sat in the English countryside, a sprawling campus of glass and carbon fiber that looked more like a spaceport than a racing team. Lena walked through the main doors wearing the only suit she owned, a navy blazer she had bought for a sponsor dinner two years ago. Cameras were already waiting. So were two hundred journalists and a stage with a banner that read WELCOME LENA MORGAN in letters taller than she was.

"Smile," muttered a press officer beside her.

"I am smiling."

"That is your teeth. Try your eyes."

She tried.

On the stage, five chairs waited behind a long white table. Marcus Vale sat at the center. Beside him sat the chairman of the team, a silver haired man in a navy blazer whose warm blue eyes crinkled the moment he saw her.

"Lena," said Richard Cole, rising to take both of her hands. "I have been looking forward to this for a very long time."

His hands were warm and dry. His smile was kind.

"Thank you, sir."

"Richard, please. Any friend of this team is family." His gaze lingered on her face a second longer than she expected. "You look so much like your mother."

Lena blinked. "You knew my mother?"

"A long time ago." He patted her hand. "Sit, sit. We will talk later."

She sat. Her heart was beating strangely. She did not know why, but something about the way he had said her mother made the back of her neck prickle.

Then the last chair scraped, and Ethan Cole sat down beside her.

The room lit up with flashes.

The questions started warmly enough. How did it feel to join Valkyrie. What were her goals. Did she feel pressure being the first woman on the team in a decade. Lena answered each one carefully, exactly as Marcus had told her to.

Then a journalist in the third row raised his hand.

"Ethan, six years ago you were asked about Lena on television. You said she was brave but not talented enough to race at your level. Do you stand by that comment?"

The room went silent.

Lena kept her eyes forward. Her fingers curled into her palm until her nails bit her skin.

Ethan took a long breath. Then he leaned toward the microphone.

"I said what I said."

A gasp went through the crowd.

"Talent is not the same as a good race," he continued, his voice smooth and carefree. "Lena had a good race. A very good race. We will find out whether she has a career."

Cameras exploded. Someone laughed. Marcus did not move. Richard Cole looked down at the table.

Lena felt her face go hot, then cold. Six years. Six years of rebuilding, sleeping in the back of a van, and begging for sponsors. And this man could still make her feel twelve years old with a single sentence.

She leaned toward her own microphone and smiled. A real smile this time, small and sharp.

"That is fair," she said. "I understand why he is nervous."

A beat of silence.

"Nervous?" Ethan asked.

"Of course. Last season he won because there was nobody on this team who could challenge him." She turned and looked him straight in the eyes. "This season there is."

The room erupted.

Flashbulbs. Shouts. A journalist near the front actually stood up. Ethan's smile faded for half a second, and something moved in his grey eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or something else, something she could not name.

Then the smile came back, slower this time.

"We will see, Morgan."

"Yes," she said. "We will."

By dinner, the clip had thirty million views. By midnight, the internet had given them a nickname. The Cold War.

The garage was her refuge. After the conference, Lena slipped out the back door, down a polished corridor and into a long room of gleaming cars and quiet machines. It smelled like rubber, oil and metal. For the first time all day she took a full breath.

A voice spoke from behind her. "You are standing on my floor."

She spun around. A woman in a Valkyrie race suit, with a headset around her neck and long box braids tied into a bun, was grinning at her over a laptop.

"Nina Okafor," the woman said, holding out a hand. "Your race engineer. Also your new best friend, if you want one. That was the best thing I have ever seen in a press conference."

Lena laughed, the first real laugh since Portimão. "I think I just started a war."

"Honey, the war started six years ago. You just showed up to it." Nina tapped her laptop. "I have been studying your onboard footage from the junior finals. That brake fade save was either genius or insanity."

"Both."

"My favorite combination."

Lena liked her immediately. Nina walked her through the garage, past rows of engineers who nodded politely, past a wall of trophies that stretched on for ever. At the far end, a big man in a grease stained cap bent over an open engine, swearing quietly at a bolt.

"That is Dom," Nina said. "Chief mechanic. He is grumpy, brilliant and has been here longer than anyone. Dom, come meet the new driver."

The man straightened and turned.

He was broad and heavy shouldered, with a shaved head, tattoos up both forearms and a face like a locked door. He wiped his hands on a rag and looked at her.

"Dom Reyes. Lena Morgan."

The rag fell from his hand.

"Morgan," he repeated.

The color left his face so quickly that Nina stopped smiling. "Dom? You okay?"

He did not answer. He stared at Lena as if she were a ghost, his eyes moving over her face, searching for something. His lips parted.

Then he looked past her, toward the corridor, and his expression changed. Fear, raw and sudden.

"Excuse me," he mumbled. He picked up the rag, turned and walked away without another word.

Lena watched him go. "What was that?"

"I have no idea," Nina said slowly. "I have never seen him like that."

They finished the tour in an awkward silence. When Nina finally walked her to the driver's lounge, Lena almost felt relieved. Her locker was marked with her name in clean white letters. She pressed her thumb on the scanner and the door clicked open.

Inside hung a fresh race suit, a helmet bag and a pair of gloves.

And taped to the inside of the door, a single photograph.

She peeled it off with trembling fingers.

It was old, faded at the edges. Three men stood in front of a garage, laughing, arms around each other's shoulders. In the middle was her father. Younger than she had ever seen him, with a streak of oil across his cheek and the same crooked grin she saw in the mirror every morning. On his left, a young Richard Cole with dark hair. On his right, a young Marcus Vale.

They looked like brothers.

She turned it over. On the back, in handwriting she did not recognize, someone had written four short lines.

Trust no one in this building. Not even him.

Lena's breath stopped.

Somewhere behind her, the lounge door clicked softly shut.