A race for love

Searching him

*Esme*

Carlos opens the apartment door before I get the spare key in the lock.

Coco launches himself from my arms straight onto Carlos's lap, where he turns twice and wedges himself against Carlos's stomach like he has spent the evening surviving a war.

Carlos looks at the dog. Then he looks at me.

"You were gone forty-eight minutes."

"I know."

"You look like you fought a fence."

I step inside and shut the door. The deadbolt slides home with a click that is too small to make me feel safe. My knees are scraped. My jacket has dust streaked down one sleeve. My hands have stopped shaking, mostly because I am holding them tight at my sides.

"Coco got scared," I say.

Carlos waits.

The lie is right there. Easy. A huge dog. A loose leash. A stranger. It has enough truth inside it to pass inspection if I do not look directly at him.

"Somebody had fireworks near the mill," I say. "He bolted. I found him under a loading dock."

Carlos's expression goes blank in the way that means he is thinking too hard. "At the mill."

"Near it."

"Esme."

"He is okay."

"You went near the mill after hearing cars race there."

"I took him for a walk. I did not plan a felony tourism excursion."

Coco makes a faint offended sound from Carlos's lap. Carlos strokes his back without taking his eyes off me.

"What scared him?" he asks.

I picture yellow headlights. The gray car shoved sideways. The dark-haired stranger crouched beside me in filthy shadows, asking before he took my hand.

"A loud car," I admit, without telling the full truth.

Carlos's hand stops.

It lasts only a second, but I see it. His fingers against Coco's fur. The old wound opening behind his face.

I hate myself for bringing it home.

"It didn't hit us," I add fast. "Nothing happened. Coco ran, and a guy helped me find him."

"A guy?"

"Just somebody from there."

"From the race?"

My silence says too much.

Carlos leans back in his chair. His jaw tightens. "You saw racing."

"I saw people being idiots with cars. It is Los Angeles. That narrows it down to half the city."

"Esme."

"He helped us." The words come out sharper than I mean them to. I take a breath. Softer, I say, "He made sure the other car left. Then he crawled under a disgusting loading dock to get Coco out."

Carlos glances down at the dog. Coco has begun to settle, his eyes drooping despite his heroic suffering.

"Did he give you a name?"

"No."

"Did you give him yours?"

"Not exactly."

Carlos looks at the silver tag hanging from Coco's collar. His mouth twists. "Ah. My dog gave him your government name."

"Traitor runs in this family."

"That isn't how genetics work."

"Do not start with me."

"I am not starting. I am observing that you are unusually defensive about a man you met in garbage."

Heat creeps up my neck. Ridiculous. I am twenty years old, not fourteen, and Carlos is not allowed to notice things.

"He was a stranger. He helped. That is all."

"Mm-hm."

I limp toward the kitchen because the apartment is warm and familiar, and I need my hands to have a job. I fill a glass at the sink, drink half of it too quickly, then start wiping up a tiny wet paw print near the door that nobody asked me to wipe up.

Behind me, Carlos says, "Was he driving the gray car?"

I stop.

The dish towel hangs limp in my hand.

"You knew there was a gray car?"

"You told me before you left. Gray and green at the mill."

"That was a different race."

The second I say it, I know I have said too much.

Carlos goes still.

I stare at the countertop. Cheap laminate. Small burn mark near the toaster. A place I have seen a hundred times. I count three exits even though there are only two.

"Esme," he says quietly.

I turn around.

His face has changed. Not accusing. Not scared for himself. Scared for me, which is worse.

"I am fine," I say.

"You always say that when you are not."

"I got Coco home."

"You did."

"And some stranger helped."

Carlos watches me for a long moment. Then he reaches for the leash and begins untangling it from Coco's harness, careful with each small buckle.

"Thank goodness for good Samaritans," he says.

The words should feel like permission to stop lying.

Instead they make my throat hurt.

"Yeah," I whisper. "Thank goodness."

Later, after Carlos falls asleep with Coco curled against his legs, I sit on the edge of the couch with my phone in my hand.

I search the nickname I heard shouted across the street.

Shadow, street racing, LA.

It takes less than a minute to find race clips, grainy posts, comments full of speed worship and bad spelling. One video shows a gray coupe cutting through a warehouse yard. The driver gets out afterward, tall and dark-haired, his face caught for one clear second beneath a broken floodlight.

The stranger from the loading dock.

The caption reads: SHADOW STREAK, HALE CUSTOMS, VAN NUYS.

I save the video before I can think better of it.

Then I look at his face again, at the man who drove straight toward me and then put himself between me and another racer.

Shadow Streak.

Wyatt Hale.

I do not know what he is to the people at the mill. I do not know why the yellow car wanted him badly enough to risk a stranger's life.

But I know where his garage is.

And I know I am going to find out what kind of man saves you from the thing he belongs to.