Chapter 11 #2
Her eyebrows flicked. “Textbook what?”
“Textbook field work,” he said. “You stumble into something dirty, you don’t confront the guy kneeling over the bomb; you back out, you tell your team, you let the people with the right gear handle it.”
Her eyes searched his. “You’re scared.”
“Yeah,” he said, because there wasn’t any point lying. “I am.”
The admission cost him, but not as much as the thought of her walking through that pit again with Einstein’s eyes on her.
“You’re good at reading people, Bree,” he said. “Did he see you watching him?”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. He glanced over once when the argument got louder, but I was standing near the edge. He rolled his eyes at Heidi, not at me. He never stopped working.”
“Okay,” Hank said. “That buys us time.”
“Time for what?”
He exhaled, long and slow. “Time for me to put some things in motion and for you to stay somewhere they can’t reach you.”
Her spine straightened. “I’m not a package you can store in a locker, Hank.”
“I know you’re not.” He met her gaze head-on. “You’re the only reason I know what they’ve done. You’re sharp and observant, and you walked into a dangerous place, and you walked back out with intel. That doesn’t make you a liability. It makes you an asset.”
Something flickered in her eyes, something like pride fighting with fear.
“But assets have to be protected,” he went on quietly.
“If they realize you saw what you did, you’re vulnerable.
You don’t know this paddock like I do. You don’t know who’s on whose payroll.
I can’t go out there and do my job if I’m picturing you walking around while the Dragons are looking for a leak. ”
Her throat worked. “So what are you asking me to do?”
He could’ve softened it. Could’ve dressed it up as a suggestion. Instead, he gave her the respect of honesty.
“I’m asking you to stay inside tomorrow,” he said. “Race day, I want you in the hotel, door locked. No boardwalk, no pits, no balcony. Not until the Cup race is over and the bikes are back in the tech barn. After that, we can reassess.”
Her eyes widened. “All day.”
“All day,” he confirmed. “I’ll make sure you’ve got whatever you need.
Food, sketching supplies, and a live feed of the race on your TV.
Brian and Colby will know you’re off-limits.
If you need anything, you call me or one of them; you don’t open the door to anyone else, not even if they say they know me. ”
Her fingers tightened on the sketchbook. “I came here to paint. To see the race. To watch you do the thing you love. And now I’m supposed to sit in a room like a kid in time-out.”
He hated that it sounded like that. Hated it more because he understood.
“I wish like hell I wasn’t asking this,” Hank said. “But this isn’t just about a dirty bottle and a crooked mechanic. The Dragons play rough. Marcus plays rough. If they think you’re a threat, they’ll push back. I’ve seen what that looks like off-track.”
She watched his face, really watched it, and he knew she saw more there than he usually let anyone see. Old dust, old heat. The kind that clung to your lungs no matter how many years passed.
“How bad,” she asked softly.
“Bad enough,” he said. “In the desert, it was explosives on the side of a road or a kid with a phone and a detonator. Here, it’s a bike that mysteriously malfunctioned or a woman who tripped on a set of stairs when no one was watching. Different stage, same play.”
Her breath hitched. “You really think they’d go that far?”
“I think people who cheat at a level that can kill someone are already comfortable crossing lines,” he said. “And I think you’re important to me. That’s not a variable I’m willing to risk.”
The last words slipped out before he could filter them.
Her eyes went dark and soft all at once.
“Important to you,” she repeated quietly.
“Yeah.” His voice came out rough; he didn’t try to clean it up.
“You are. I’ve had maybe three months where my head shut up and the noise dropped to something livable; one of them was here, with you.
I can’t walk into turn one tomorrow wondering if the Dragons have decided to send a message to the woman who caught them with their hand in the cookie jar. ”
A quiet beat stretched between them, full of engine rumble and shouted orders from the far side of the trailers and the pulse of his own heart.
Bree’s chin lifted a fraction. “So this is about your focus.”
“It’s about your safety,” he said. “And yeah, it’s about my focus, because my focus is one of the things that keeps me alive on a bike. I’m better on track if I know you’re behind a locked door than if I think you’re out here trying to get perfect reference photos in a war zone.”
Her mouth twisted. “When you put it like that, you make Copper Moon sound very un-touristy.”
He almost smiled. “Tourists don’t normally stumble into performance-enhancing sabotage.”
She looked down at the sketchbook, then back up at him. Conflict flickered across her face; the artist who’d come for light and motion, the woman who’d just seen the underbelly.
“I hate feeling useless,” she admitted. “Like my job is to stay out of the way while the grown-ups handle it.”
“You’re not useless,” he said. “You’ve already done more than you know. You’re giving me a way to protect my team and level the field. But sometimes the bravest thing you can do is sit tight and let the people with muscle and experience take the hit.”
“And you’re the muscle,” she said.
“Among others,” he replied. “I’ll loop Brian and Colby in. I’ve got a buddy working tech in the regional series; I’ll see who’s around on this crew that still gives a damn about clean racing. We’ll be smart.”
Her gaze searched his, looking for cracks. “And what if they find another way to cheat?”
“Then we’ll keep watching,” he said. “But we can’t be everywhere. We start with what we know.”
She exhaled, long and slow. “You’re asking a lot.”
“I know.”
Silence fell again, thicker this time. She stood close enough that he could see the fine spray of freckles on her nose, the tiny smudge of graphite near her thumb where she’d apparently rubbed at something without thinking.
He realized he had braced his hand against the trailer beside her head at some point and leaned in, angling his body toward hers as if gravity had shifted.
Her eyes flicked to his mouth, just for a second, then back up.
The fear in her gaze hadn’t disappeared, but something else lived there too; a warmth that had been growing in stolen mornings and late-night texts and quiet walks in the dunes.
“You’re serious about this,” she said. “You’re not just being a caveman.”
“I’ve been accused of worse,” he said, half a breath from her now. “But yeah, I’m serious.”
“If I promise to stay in my room tomorrow,” she asked slowly, “do you promise to be careful out there? No extra risks, no proving-a-point bullshit. Just you and the bike and whatever clean race you can get.”
He almost laughed at the way she mirrored his terms. Almost.
“I’ll do everything I can to bring her home in one piece,” he said. “And me with her. That’s already the plan.”
Her throat worked. “Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll stay inside,” he pressed, needing to hear it.
“Okay.” She nodded once. “I’ll stay inside. Hotel room, door locked. No balcony, no boardwalk. I’ll draw from memory and the TV feed. I’ll text you when I’m in and when I’m tempted to break the rules, so you can tell me not to.”
Relief hit him so hard he had to close his eyes for a second. He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been wound until that knot loosened.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
When he opened his eyes, she was watching him with a softness that punched through his ribs.
“Don’t thank me like I did you a favor,” she said. “I’m doing it because you’re right. And because I don’t really want to find out what happens when cheaters feel cornered.”
He lifted his hand from the trailer, hesitated only a heartbeat, then cupped her cheek.
Her skin was warm from the sun, softer than he’d imagined the first time he’d watched her on that balcony. She leaned into his touch without seeming to realize it, her eyes fluttering closed for a second.
He didn’t plan the kiss.
One second, he was looking at her, at the worry in the set of her mouth and the stubborn tilt of her chin; the next, he was leaning in, driven by an impulse as old and simple as breathing.
Their mouths met in a collision of pent-up fear and something sweeter. Her hand shot out, fingers catching his T-shirt at the shoulder, holding on.
He kept it slow at first, letting her feel his intent, not just his adrenaline.
The brush of his lips over hers, the taste of coffee and salt, and the faint citrus of whatever soap the hotel stocked.
She made a small sound in the back of her throat that went straight through his chest and settled somewhere beneath his sternum.
Her lips parted on a breath. He deepened the kiss, angling his head, letting his hand slide back into her hair. It was still damp from her shower, curls catching against his fingers. His other hand found her hip, thumb stroking the curve there through soft denim.
She came up on her toes without breaking contact, closing the last inches between them. The sketchbook pressed into his chest between them, edges digging in. He didn’t care. Her fingers tightened in his shirt, anchoring herself.
The noise of the pits faded to a dull roar. For a heartbeat, there was only the two of them, the scrape of his stubble against her skin, the tiny hitch in her breathing when he licked gently into her mouth, the way she answered with her own tentative stroke that had his knees threatening to buckle.
He pulled back slowly before he forgot where they were entirely. Her eyes opened, pupils wide, cheeks flushed with something that had nothing to do with the sun.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he said, equally shaken. “That about covers it.”
She let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t sounded so unsteady. “You picked one hell of a moment.”
“I’ve been trying to pick a good one for a while,” he admitted. “Turns out there isn’t a good time to kiss the woman who makes your heartbeat jump when there’s a race and a cheating scandal hanging over your head.”
Her mouth curved. “You could’ve led with that, you know. ‘Hey Bree, I’m terrified the Red Dragons might kill you, also I really want to kiss you.’”
“Yeah, I’m not putting that on a greeting card.”
She leaned her forehead briefly against his chest, drawing in his scent like she was memorizing it. When she straightened, some of the panic had settled into something more solid.
“I meant what I said,” she told him. “I’ll stay in tomorrow. I’ll lock the door, keep my head down, pretend the outside world doesn’t exist until you knock.”
His gut tightened in a different way at that image. “Careful. You keep talking about me coming to your room like that, and I’m not going to be able to think about apexes.”
A slow, shy smile touched her mouth. “Maybe you can think about it as a reward for not dying.”
“High stakes,” he said, and it came out more intimate than he’d intended.
She sobered. “You’ll be careful.”
“I will,” he promised. “And if anything feels off, if you hear or see anything weird from your window, you call me. Or Brian. Or Colby. In that order.”
She rolled her eyes lightly. “Yes, Sergeant.”
Somewhere beyond the trailer, Brian shouted his name. A bike revved, the note familiar; Julie clearing her throat.
Duty called.
Hank brushed his thumb over Bree’s lower lip once, unable to help himself. “I’ve got to get back.”
“I know.” She angled her face into his hand for one more second. “Go do your thing. Break physics in a legal way.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “I’ll try.”
He stepped back reluctantly, already feeling the absence of her warmth. “Text me when you’re in your room tonight. I’ll sleep better.”
“You sleep,” she said. “I’ll be the one chewing my nails.”
“I’ll text you too,” he amended. “We can chew together.”
She smiled, small and real. “Deal.”
He watched her walk away toward the hotel entrance until she disappeared past the line of trailers. Only then did he turn back toward his pit.
Brian was waiting with a torque wrench in hand, eyebrows raised.
“Everything okay?” Brian asked. “You were MIA for a minute.”
Hank glanced once toward the gap where he’d last seen Bree, then back at his crew chief, his friend.
“Not yet,” he said, taking the wrench. “But we’re working on it. I need to talk to you and Colby tonight; we’ve got a problem with the Dragons.”
Brian’s grin faded, his expression sharpening. “How bad.”
“Bad enough,” Hank said. He looked out across the pits toward the gleam of red and black. “But we’ve got eyes on it. And we’ve got something worth fighting for.”
He thought of Bree, hands shaking around her sketchbook, still walking into the lion’s den because her friend had asked.
He thought of the way she’d kissed him back.
Yeah. Worth fighting for.
He dropped into a crouch beside Julie, mind already shifting gears as he reached for the next bolt.