Chapter 11
Hank came out of the riders’ meeting with a headache starting behind his right eye.
Gearing charts, fuel windows, last-minute schedule changes; they all rolled through his brain in tight formation. The late light off the water bounced off the trailers, sharp enough that he had to squint as he stepped back into the pits.
Noise wrapped around him; engines coughing and clearing their throats, an air gun barking in short bursts, Brian’s laugh carrying over the clatter for a second before it got swallowed up again.
He checked his phone out of habit.
No new messages from Bree.
He’d texted her during the meeting, thumb moving quicker than his brain had any right to, asking if she was headed to the balcony. Telling her to stick with Brian or Colby. Promise me.
She’d promised.
He slipped the phone into his back pocket and scanned the pits, that automatic sweep he’d never quite shaken. Bikes, tools, crew, fans leaning over the fences; all the moving parts that turned race weekend into something alive.
His gaze snagged on a splash of red and black.
The Red Dragons’ hauler, glossy as ever, their pit taped off like a stage. Music pumped low from a truck, some driving beat that vibrated underfoot. Heidi stood near the center, waving her arms at a man with a tablet. Marcus hovered at her shoulder.
And just off to one side, near the edge of their taped line, stood Bree.
She held her sketchbook to her chest, fingers white-knuckled around the spine. Carmen stood beside her, the two of them a little island of denim and bare legs in all that branded red and black.
Something in Hank’s chest pinched.
She was supposed to be with Brian or Colby. She was supposed to be up on that balcony with her pencils and that ocean light she liked so much.
He could hear his own voice from earlier in the week, teasing. This is the lion’s den.
It felt a lot less like a joke now.
He watched her for a beat. Her posture was wrong; she wasn’t just observing for art reference. Her shoulders were tight, eyes too focused. Not drifting like an artist soaking in color and line, but tracking something. Calculating.
She took a step; then another. Carmen said something, touched her arm; Bree shook her head and peeled away, moving with purpose through the open lane between trailers.
His hurt, stupid as it was, bled out under something heavier.
She looked scared.
Hank started toward her without thinking. The world narrowed down to a corridor of noise and movement with her at the end.
She turned her head slightly. Even from across the pits, he saw the moment she spotted him.
Her face changed. Relief flooded it so fast, it hit him like a physical thing.
They met near the back of his trailer, in the sliver of shade that cut across the gravel. Up close, the tightness around her mouth and the strain in her eyes were impossible to miss.
“Hank,” she said, voice low but steady. “I need to tell you something.”
He wanted to say a dozen things first; You promised. What were you doing over there? Are you okay?
What came out was, “Come on, honey. Let’s get you out of the crowd.”
He jerked his chin toward the narrow space between his trailer and the next one. It wasn’t much, but it was quieter by a few decibels and out of the line of most cameras and curious eyes.
She followed, fingers flexing restlessly around the edges of her sketchbook. When they were tucked into that little pocket of shadow, engine noise muffled by steel and fiberglass, he leaned one shoulder against the trailer and really looked at her.
Her cheeks were a little pale under the sunburn from earlier. A tiny muscle ticked in her jaw.
“You all right?” he asked. “Anybody bother you?”
“No. I mean, not like that.” She took a breath, tried again. “I saw something. I think I saw them cheating.”
The word snapped the rest of his focus into place like a safety being flicked off.
Hank’s jaw tightened. “Tell me from the beginning. Start with why you were over there.”
Guilt flashed in her eyes. “Carmen came to my room. Heidi wanted another opinion on Marcus’s suit; she’s melting down over the design. Carmen swore it’d be quick.” She swallowed. “I know I promised. I thought if I went, it’d just be fabric and attitude. I’m sorry.”
He let himself feel the sting and let it go. There wasn’t time for that right now.
“Thanks for being honest,” he said. “Now talk me through what you saw.”
Bree pulled in a slow breath. He watched her do that thing he’d seen on the balcony; sorting through impressions, lining them up like colors on a palette.
“While Heidi was yelling at the manufacturer rep, everyone’s attention was over there,” she said. “Marcus, the crew, some girls by the truck. Even the kid working on the chain stopped to watch. No one was looking at the bike you’ll actually be racing against.”
Hank’s muscles went tighter. “Marcus’s primary bike.”
She nodded. “Einstein was at it. He’d switched to earplugs, no big headphones.
He opened a compartment along the inside of the frame, just under where the rider’s knee would sit.
It’s not big; long and thin, like it was made for wiring.
But I watched other guys wipe that area down. It was empty before.”
Hank pictured the Dragons’ main bike, the minimalist frame, the way they loved to brag about how clean it was. “Okay.”
“He pulled something from a tray. A cylinder.” She lifted one hand, thumb and fingers about three inches apart. “About this long. Metal. Dull silver. There was a small valve stem at one end with a hose already attached. It looked heavy when he shifted it; his glove dipped a little.”
“Gauge?” Hank asked.
“Yes.” Her eyes lit with the sharp relief of being understood. “A small gauge near the valve. He turned it, counted under his breath, then slid the cylinder into that channel. It fit too perfectly. Like it’d been designed to go there.”
Hank’s stomach went cold.
“Go on,” he said quietly.
“He laid the hose along the frame, pinning it under existing wiring so it looked like part of the loom,” she said.
“Then he ran it up toward the front of the bike, under the tank. It came out again near the handlebars. He looped it around a bracket and connected it to a small device wired into the horn assembly.”
“The horn,” Hank repeated. His mind filled in the gaps. “Not the starter, not the kill switch. The horn.”
“He pressed the horn button once,” she said.
“No sound. He adjusted something, pressed again. Still no sound, but the gauge on the cylinder flickered. He looked satisfied; then he closed up the frame so you’d never know anything was there unless you knew exactly where to look.
He smoothed his hand over the metal, like he was proud of it. ”
She stopped, breathing a little harder. “Everyone else was still watching Heidi. No one saw him. Except me.”
Hank stared at her for a second, his mind hauling years of mechanical knowledge and a decade of war stories into the same space.
Hidden cylinder. Pressurized. Hosed to the front. Horn-triggered. Gauge jump.
You want a hidden boost? You hide a shot of nitrous. You trigger it off something no marshal will think to check.
His molars ground together.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
Bree’s fingers curled tighter around the sketchbook. “You think it’s nitrous.”
“I can’t say for sure without looking at it, but it fits,” he said.
“Pressurized gas, gauge, hose routing; using the horn as a trigger is smart if you’re a coward.
No one expects the horn to do anything on track, and tech inspectors don’t always test buttons if they look wired right.
You could hide a short burst in a straight and gain a couple of bike lengths. Easy.”
She swallowed. “Is that the kind of cheating Brian was talking about when he listed tricks?”
“Pretty much,” Hank said. “And if they’re running extra pressure in a frame not meant to hold it, or playing with timing maps to compensate, they could blow the whole thing apart.” His voice flattened. “You put unexpected stress on a structure at speed, it doesn’t just fail; it shatters.”
For a second, he wasn’t looking at Copper Moon’s pits at all; he was staring down at twisted metal and sand, at the aftermath of somebody else’s bad call. Smelling burnt rubber and worse.
He shoved the image away and focused on the woman in front of him.
“You did good, Bree,” he said. He kept his tone low and calm, even though his pulse had picked up. “You saw something nobody else saw.”
“Because they were watching the show,” she said. “That suit fight was deliberate, wasn’t it? A distraction.”
“My money says they’ve used that routine before,” Hank replied. “Heidi and Marcus throw a fit, everyone looks, Einstein plays surgeon in the corner.”
Her mouth tightened. “So what do you do now? Tell someone? Get the officials to look?”
His instincts yelled yes, but another part of him ran the odds. The Dragons had money, sponsors, and history. He had suspicion and the word of a woman the paddock barely knew.
And that wasn’t what scared him most.
“You realize,” he said slowly, “if I march over there and accuse them, the first thing they’ll ask is how I know. Who saw what? How somebody got close enough to spot a hidden bottle in a frame channel.”
Color drained from her face. “You think they’d come after me.”
He saw again how alone she’d looked in that pit. Not in a crowd of fans; surrounded by their people. Their crew. Their security.
“The kind of people who cheat like that and build a whole circus to hide it aren’t big on leaving loose ends,” he said. “You saw what they didn’t want anyone to see. That puts a target on your back, whether we say something or not.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she protested, but there was a tremor under the words.
“I know that.” He stepped closer, needing her to feel the certainty in him. “You didn’t; you did exactly the right thing. You saw something off, you got out, and you came straight to me. That’s textbook.”