Chapter 9 #2
Bree glanced back over her shoulder toward the Red Dragons’ area. “I didn’t like the way Marcus looked at me.”
“Then you’re in good company,” Carmen said. “I don’t like the way he looks at anybody.”
Hank watched her expression closely. “He didn’t say anything else?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Bree’s jaw firmed. “He wanted to know if I was with you. I said I was here on my own.”
That stung more than it should have. He nodded anyway. “Probably safer that way.”
Her gaze snapped to his. “Safer?”
“He likes to make trouble,” Hank said. “If he thinks there’s a connection he can exploit, he will.”
He didn’t say: He’s already thinking about how to use you. He didn’t need to. Bree wasn’t stupid.
Her fingers tightened on the sketchbook. “I’m not part of this pissing contest.”
“I know.” He bumped her shoulder gently. “But you’re walking through the middle of it, so you’re going to catch some spray.”
Carmen snorted. “That’s one way to put it.”
They reached Hank’s pit. Brian looked up, sunglasses pushed on top of his head, gaze flicking from Bree to Hank to Carmen and back like he was cataloging everyone’s emotional state.
“You made friends,” he said.
“Temporary alliances,” Carmen replied. “Don’t get excited.”
“Too late,” Brian said. He offered Bree his chair. “You want a seat?”
“I’m good, thanks.” Bree glanced around, taking in the neatly organized tools, the bike on its stand, the calm rhythm of their work area. Her shoulders eased. “This is… very different.”
“From the circus down there?” Brian grinned. “We aim for less chaos, more control.”
“Chaos is where the accidents happen,” Colby added. He’d set the laptop aside and was checking tire pressures again, his movements efficient. “Respect for the machine, respect for the track. Anything else is asking for trouble.”
Carmen nodded. “That’s what I keep saying. Heidi calls me boring.”
“Boring keeps people alive,” Hank said.
Bree’s gaze drifted past him again, back toward the Red Dragons. Their music had kicked up. One of the crew revved a bike hard, the sound rough and ragged. Another guy tossed a wrench from hand to hand like he was juggling.
Near the edge of their line, a man in a black T-shirt crouched by a frame.
He wasn’t part of the noise; he was apart from it.
Dark hair cut close, lean build, hands moving with precise efficiency as he adjusted something under the seat.
He had headphones in, the big over-ear kind that blocked everything else out.
“Is that Einstein?” Bree asked.
Hank followed her line of sight. “Yeah. Nate Eisen. Nobody calls him that to his face, by the way.”
“He looks… focused,” Bree said.
Focused wasn’t the word Hank would have used. Intense. Controlled. Dangerous in a way Marcus never managed to be.
“Those guys clown around,” Hank said, nodding toward the rest of the crew. “He doesn’t. In the last hour, every time something weird happens around them, he’s been touching the bike.”
Carmen looked toward the hotel, then to Bree. "I'm heading back to my room to change for dinner. I'll see you later?"
Bree nodded, "Sure."
Hank watched Carmen walk toward the hotel, avoiding the direction of the Red Dragons. He shook his head slightly, then turned toward the Red Dragons once more.
Brian folded his arms, watching Einstein. “You still think they cheated last year.”
“I know they did,” Hank said quietly. “Proving it is another thing.”
Bree shifted a little closer. “How would someone even cheat at this? I mean, in a way that matters.”
Brian leaned a hip against the trailer. “Hidden nitrous, illegal mapping on the fuel injection, modified injectors, traction control tricks. Stuff that gives a burst of power when you need it.”
“That sounds… complicated,” Bree said.
“Einstein complicated,” Colby added.
Bree watched him for another long moment. The way his fingers moved along the frame. The way he checked the same section twice. The quick glance over his shoulder, like he was making sure nobody was too close. He didn’t see her; he probably didn’t see anything except the machine in front of him.
A little shiver ran through her.
Hank saw it.
“You cold?” he asked.
“A little creeped out,” she admitted. “He’s so still. Everything around him is chaos, and he’s just… zeroed in. It’s like watching a surgeon who doesn’t care what happens to the patient, only that the cut is clean.”
Brian raised his brows. “Remind me not to show you any surgical dramas.”
“It’s not that,” Bree hurried to say. “It’s just a feeling.”
“You should trust those,” Hank said. “They’re usually right.”
She looked up at him. “What’s yours say?”
He thought about lying. About soothing her, telling her everything was fine, that the race was safe, and the worst thing she had to worry about was sunburn.
“They’re desperate to keep winning,” he said instead. “Desperate men take shortcuts.”
Colby blew out a breath. “And shortcuts get people hurt.”
“Not if we can help it,” Brian said.
He said it lightly, but Hank knew that under all the jokes and flirting, Brian watched everything. People, patterns, angles. The SEAL in him never really clocked out.
Bree hugged her sketchbook closer, then loosened her grip. “Maybe I should come down here tomorrow. Paint from the pits instead of the balcony.”
Hank’s first instinct was to say no. To tell her to stay in her room with the door locked, to watch from a safe distance where Marcus and his crew couldn’t touch her.
But she wasn’t a fragile thing to put on a shelf. She was a grown woman who’d survived losing her sister, who’d chosen to come here to try to live again. He didn’t get to cage that because it made him feel better.
“You can,” he said slowly. “If you want to be in the middle of it.”
Her chin tipped. “I don’t want to hide in my room. I’ve done enough of that.”
He nodded once. “Then we’ll make it safe.”
Brian looked at him. “How?”
“We put her here.” He gestured to a clear space between the trailer and the cooler. “Back against the wall, out of the main traffic. You or Colby walk her to the bathrooms or the concessions if I can’t. No wandering alone. You stay with her if you come down.”
Brian didn’t argue. “Deal.”
Bree blinked. “You’re all very sure I need guarding.”
“You’re new,” Brian said. “You don’t know which idiots to avoid yet. That’s all.”
“And Marcus already put a target on you by sniffing around,” Brian added. “He likes to poke at anything Hank cares about.”
Bree’s gaze swung back to Hank. “Do you?”
“Do I what?” he asked.
“Care,” she said softly.
The question hung there, suspended between engine noise and gull cries and the distant crash of waves.
He didn’t look away. “Yeah. I do.”
Her breath shivered out, a tiny hitch he felt more than heard.
“Okay,” she said. “Then I’ll trust you.”
It wasn’t just about walking through the pits. They both knew that.
Colby cleared his throat. “On that note, we’ve got a riders’ meeting in twenty. Hank, you need to read the updated grid.”
Hank nodded, but his attention stayed on Bree a second longer. “You going back to the hotel?”
Bree glanced toward the hotel. “I probably should. I'll see if Carmen is alright. She loves her sister but hates the drama surrounding her connection with the Red Dragons.”
Bree shifted closer. “You’ll text me later?”
He hadn’t asked for her number yet, but somehow that didn’t surprise him. She reached for his phone, fingers brushing his as she took it, entered her number, and handed it back.
“There,” she said. “Now you can send me the telemetry or dog pictures or whatever it is race guys share.”
He smiled. “Race guys share split times and gear ratios.”
“Thrilling.”
“I’ll throw in a dog picture for you,” he added.
“Now we’re talking.”
On impulse, he reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. She stilled, eyes locked on his. For a second, the pits, the heat, the smell of fuel, all of it fell away.
He could have kissed her. He wanted to. Her mouth parted on a small inhale, like she’d read the thought.
Not here, he told himself. Not with Marcus watching from across the row and rumors ready to flare.
“I’ll see you later,” he said instead.
Her smile told him she’d heard all the words he hadn’t said. “Later,” she agreed.
She turned and headed back toward the path. Heidi was waiting just inside the Red Dragons’ area, arms folded, mouth already moving. Bree listened, then answered calmly, her chin up. Heidi’s eyes flashed; she tossed her hair and sauntered away, hips swinging as she cut a path directly to Marcus.
She stopped in front of him, pressed a hand to his chest, and leaned in to say something that made him laugh. She soaked up the attention like the sun, head tipping back, throat exposed, every inch of her body language screaming Look at me, not at her.
Marcus obliged, his gaze sliding to Bree once Heidi had his attention, a smirk touching his mouth.
Einstein never looked up.
He stayed crouched by the bike, hands working under the seat, focus locked on whatever he was wiring or adjusting. Only when one of the other crew members walked too close did he lift his head, eyes sharp and cold as he said something that made the guy change direction fast.
Hank filed that away.
“Problem?” Colby asked quietly at his shoulder.
“Not yet,” Hank said. “But it’s coming.”
He could feel it in his bones, in the way the air felt charged, like the seconds before a storm broke.
He rested a hand on Julie’s tank, the metal warm under his palm, and let his mind run through tomorrow’s grid. His line, his braking points, the spots where someone might try something dirty.
He wasn’t just racing for a Cup anymore.
He was racing with a painter on the edge of the track, a woman who trusted him to keep her safe while he chased the last big win of his life.
And as much as the thought scared him, it lit something in him too; something sharp and focused and very, very clear.