Chapter 13
Bree told herself she was going to behave.
She sat at the foot of the bed with her sketchbook open and the TV on, the broadcast already cutting between shots of the grid and sweeping views of Copper Moon’s shoreline.
Her phone lay beside her thigh, screen dark for now, but she knew that if Hank could grab ten seconds between obligations, he would use them to check on her.
She wanted to be able to answer honestly.
You still in your room, honey?
Yes. I’m here.
Door locked. Just like you asked.
She had meant that when she typed it earlier. She still meant it in theory.
Then the network cut away to a pre-race montage: crowd shots, kids with homemade signs, couples in Copper Moon Cup T-shirts. The camera lingered for a few seconds on the north grandstand, packed from end to end, a slow wave of people fanning themselves in the sun.
Something in her chest pulled hard.
She could almost feel the heat coming off that many bodies; hear the rise and fall of real voices instead of the tinny echo through hotel speakers. She imagined the smell of hot asphalt and fried food and salt, the way the engines would vibrate underfoot.
Here, in the room, the air conditioner hummed steadily. The carpet was soft. The curtains, drawn mostly shut, turned the day outside into a pale blur.
Safe, she reminded herself. You promised. This is safe.
Safe felt a lot like trapped.
Her brain flashed an image so sharp she had to close her eyes. Plastic chairs. A narrow waiting room. A TV turned to a channel no one watched. Bryn somewhere beyond a set of double doors, unreachable. Every sound distorted, every minute stretched.
She had waited then, because there had been no other option. She had waited and waited until the waiting ended in the worst possible way.
Now she was supposed to sit and wait again, while someone she loved did something dangerous out of sight.
Her hands went cold.
She set the sketchbook aside and stood, pacing once between bed and dresser.
On the screen, the cameras were on Hank’s pit; the sound was off, but she saw him clearly.
Helmet dangling from one hand, he listened to Brian, nodded once, then looked up, straight into the closest lens.
The director cut to a wider shot, but not before she saw it, the tiny tilt of his head that said he knew she would be watching.
He was down there, sealed in his world of torque settings, tire choices, and brake markers.
She was up here, staring through glass.
Her gaze slid to the hat on the back of the chair. Wide brim. Neutral color. The sunglasses she had bought on her first day in Copper Moon sat beneath it, folded neatly.
You’re not a child, she thought. You are not helpless. You know how to be careful.
She walked to the door and checked it again, deadbolt, security bar. Both in place. She picked up the hat and glasses and hesitated, listening.
Somewhere outside, far below, an announcer’s voice rolled over the speakers toward the boardwalk. The words were indistinct from here, but the excitement in them was clear. The engines that had been idling during warmups had shifted; more focused now.
“Twenty-four riders on the grid,” the commentator said a second later as the broadcast sound rose. “All eyes on local favorite Hank James, starting from pole in his Copper Moon Cup repeat.”
Bree’s heart knocked into her ribs.
The safest place for him is on a bike, he had told her. The safest place for you is behind a locked door.
Both statements could be true. So could the bone-deep need in her to see him fly with her own eyes.
“I’ll stay away from the pits,” she said quietly. “I can live with that.”
She grabbed her room key and slid it into her pocket with her phone, and tucked her hair under the hat. In the mirror, she looked like one more tourist who had underestimated the sun and overcompensated with accessories.
She paused one last time, palm pressed to the door.
“I am so going to tell you the truth about this,” she told the empty room. “Please still want to kiss me after.”
Then she opened the door and stepped out.
The hallway felt cooler than the room; the carpet muffled the sounds of her sneakers.
A couple in matching team shirts walked past, debating tire compounds like it was a normal conversation, which, here, it probably was.
She kept her head down, brim low, and moved toward the service stairwell at the far end.
Yesterday, she had noticed that door on her way back from grabbing ice; a plain gray exit with a laminated sign that said staff access. No one had yelled when she used it then. No one yelled now.
Inside, concrete steps and stark lighting greeted her.
The air was warmer, tinged with detergent and grease.
She moved quickly, trusting memory to guide her: down two flights; out through a nondescript side door that had opened, last night, onto a small service lane between the hotel and the first vendor tents.
Today, the lane was busier, but still not crowded. Two men pushed a dolly stacked with soda cases toward the concession area, a teenager in a volunteer T-shirt took a drink of water and checked his watch.
“General admission access?” she asked when he saw her, pointing toward a walkway marked with a banner and an arrow. “North stand that way. You’ll get a decent view of the back straight and the start.”
“Thanks,” Bree said, pitching her voice a little lower.
He looked right past her, eyes already moving to the next cluster of people. She took that as a good sign.
She merged into the flow heading toward the stands; families and couples and groups of friends, all in various stages of sunburn. Someone had a radio clipped to a belt; the same broadcast she had left behind in the room crackled from it, a slightly delayed echo of the PA system.
Around her, the air vibrated with engine noise and anticipation.
When she reached the base of the north grandstand, a woman with a lanyard checked wristbands. Bree held up the bright strip the ticket booth had given her earlier in the weekend when she had come down with Carmen to watch a support race. The woman barely glanced at it before waving her through.
Up in the stands, she chose a place near the end of a row, not too high, not too low. From there, she could see the front straight clearly, the start grid painted bright, and the sweeping turn by the dunes in the distance. The giant screen across from the stands showed what the cameras saw.
Her heart thudded so hard it felt like a drum in her ears.
Down on the grid, Hank swung a leg over Julie’s seat. He settled into position like it was the only place in the world he belonged. The sun glinted off his helmet, off the small Copper Moon emblem near the base of his visor. Brian crouched beside the bike, last words lost in the roar of the crowd.
The commentators’ voices rose. “Riders are clear. Fifteen laps to decide the Copper Moon Cup.”
The light sequence started.
Red. One. Two. Three.
Bree’s lungs forgot how to work.
The lights went out.
The bikes launched.
Sound became a living thing, slamming against her chest, echoing through the metal under her feet. Hank held the lead into turn one; his start clean, his line perfect. The pack behind him jostled and shifted, two bikes nearly touching into the second corner before sorting themselves out.
The first lap blurred by in color and noise and flickers of the timing tower.
H. JAMES – P1.
MENDES – P2.
KROLIK – P3.
Bree’s fingers bit into the aluminum bench.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Do what you do.”
She had thought watching the tech inspection from the safety of her room that morning had been nerve-wracking.
This was something else. Every time Hank disappeared behind the dunes, her heart stopped; every time he appeared again on the front straight, alive and flowing and in control, her heart restarted with a lurch.
On the third lap, Mendes closed in.
He took a fraction more curb through the fast sweeper; his bike twitching, correcting, the gap shrinking on the screen’s little timing graphic. By the end of the back straight, he had tucked into Hank’s slipstream, so close Bree could barely see the space between their bikes.
“Don’t you dare,” she muttered.
Hank did not flinch. At the next braking zone, he held his line with almost stubborn discipline; did not lock up; did not run wide. Mendes tried the inside; he had to back out or risk contact.
People around her jumped to their feet and shouted. A boy a few seats down waved a handmade sign with twenty-four scrawled across it, the ink slightly smudged.
It went on like that, lap after lap. Mendes attacked; Hank responded. Sometimes the gap grew; sometimes it shrank. The commentators filled the spaces with analysis, tire degradation, fuel loads, and the mental game.
Under it all, Bree felt that same low hum of dread she had carried for so long. The knowledge that things could go wrong in an instant, that someone else’s recklessness could still undo skill and caution and preparation, or by a bit of bad luck.
Only this time, someone had already removed the worst odds from the table. She had seen to that. The Red Dragons’ stolen advantage was sitting in an evidence locker somewhere, not hidden in a frame.
It helped. Not enough to make her calm, enough to keep her from folding in on herself.
Halfway through the race, a gust of wind kicked sand across the far section of the circuit. Several bikes wobbled; one ran wide, through the runoff, then rejoined safely.
Julie stayed planted.
Hank changed his line by inches, not feet; the adjustment so precise it looked almost casual. His body moved with the bike, loose but connected; a rider in harmony, not fighting for survival.
Bree let out a breath she'd been holding.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay, you’ve got this.”