Chapter 11 Out of Control
Out of Control
The impact struck her first.
Pain shuddered up her spine. There was a sickening crunch, followed by a whipcrack of her neck.
Spots exploded in front of her eyes. The world wobbled and then righted itself, reappearing in fireworks of golden sand and blue sky.
Someone was calling her name from a distance, accompanied by the slap of footsteps.
“Marchmont!”
Dominic was flushed and breathless, sporting goggle marks around his eyes. It would have been funny, she thought, if her head didn’t hurt so damn badly. A firm hand wrapped around her arm.
“Marchmont? Can you hear me?”
She closed her eyes. “I’m fine.”
Dominic’s voice was urgent. “Did you injure anything?”
Just my pride. Juliette squeezed her eyes until the burn faded. She was painfully aware of the click of cameras, followed by Ranya’s low tones. Trying to do damage control, no doubt. And maybe it was her bruised ego, but she found herself saying, “Why? Hoping I threw my back out?”
He stilled. “Do you really think I’m that much of an arsehole?”
She hoisted herself out. “I know you’re that much of an arsehole.” Her muscles gave a whine of protest, and she hid a grimace. “If you’ve come to gloat, I’d prefer that you wait until I’m out of the smoking car. Just personal preference.”
Something flashed across Dominic’s face, but it was gone so quickly that she wondered if she’d imagined it. “Oh, I never gloat. It’s very undignified.”
“Really?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Then what would you call gloating about your lack of gloating?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I’m not—”
“Forget it.” She scanned her body. No injuries, thankfully. “Don’t worry, Hastings. All the cameras are off. You don’t need to pretend to be nice to me.” She had the feeling that Ranya had threatened the camera operators with bodily harm if they recorded any of this.
“What a relief,” Dominic said dryly. “I’ll just go back to kicking puppies and stealing birthday presents from sick children then, shall I?”
“Marchmont,” Ranya called.
She was spared a response by the sound of approaching footsteps. Juliette took off her helmet. Only Ranya, she thought, could walk toward a burning car and look like the heroine of a Hollywood heist film.
Ranya surveyed her. “You’re okay?”
Juliette wiped blood from her mouth. “Fine. Sorry.”
“I told you to take it easy today.”
A stone settled in her stomach. “I know.” Oh, god, was she getting sacked? She felt like she was getting sacked.
“We have a few weeks until the first race. You can practice in the mornings.”
Relief filled her. Not sacked. That was a good start. “I’ll get better.”
“You’ll have to,” Ranya said bluntly. “We won’t stand a chance of winning otherwise.” She turned to Dominic. “You’ll help her.”
Juliette spun. It was hard to say who was more alarmed by this idea: herself or Dominic. He stared at Ranya as if she’d proclaimed that the flying spaghetti monster was real, and she intended to set up a shrine made of Bolognese.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Ranya said.
Chewing gum appeared in her hand, seemingly from thin air. Dominic stared. “How the hell do you keep doing that?”
Ranya ignored this, popping a piece of gum into her mouth. “You were runner-up in the championship last year. And you’ve mentored Marchmont before.”
Dominic shook his head. “Only for a month.”
“I can learn on my own,” Juliette said. “I don’t need him.”
Scorching heat beat down on the track. Someone had brought a fire extinguisher and was blowing white foam over the car.
Juliette’s heart was beating so fast that she wondered if it might catch fire too.
She couldn’t work with Dominic. She would rather drink gasoline.
Like, directly from the nozzle at a petrol station.
“Hastings?” Ranya prompted.
Dominic held up his hands. “I can’t teach an unwilling pupil.”
Juliette resisted the urge to scoff. Brilliant. So he was making this her problem then. Surprise, surprise.
Ranya leaned on her cane. “Do you know what today’s incident just cost us?”
Dominic said nothing. Juliette looked at the crumpled car. Five hundred and thirty thousand. Maybe slightly less, if the endplate had held up.
“Five hundred and twenty-five thousand,” Ranya said, without waiting for a reply. “We’re a midfield team. We don’t have that sort of money.” She gestured to the car. “This crash is all you get. You might be new, Marchmont, but I expect results.”
Juliette’s chest tightened. “I’m sorry.”
Ranya grimaced. “Stop apologizing. Look, I had to fight to get you on this team. There were plenty of people who told me it was a bad idea.” The cane was in the air again. “You see that man over there?”
Juliette followed her gaze to where a middle-aged man stood by the cooler. He was whistling softly, an eerie, lilting tune that reminded her of a child’s wind-up toy, and the hair on the back of her neck rose.
“Yes.”
“Do you know who that is?” Ranya asked.
That was like asking who Voldemort was. “That’s Robert Von Galen. Our head strategist.”
Ranya dropped her voice. “I’m going to tell you something that I shouldn’t.
When I put you forward as a candidate to the board, just under half thought it was a bad idea.
Robert Von Galen led that charge. He despises women in motorsport.
He sees it as the liberal agenda gone mad and thinks that you’re a PR hire to make us look better. ”
Juliette tensed. “That’s not—”
“I don’t agree, obviously,” Ranya said, “but some of the board members do.”
“What are you saying?”
Ranya held her gaze. “I need you to finish in the top ten during the opening race. Do you understand?”
Juliette turned her balaclava over in her hands. She was painfully aware of Dominic standing there, his dark gaze burning into her. Unsurprising. He was like the opposite of a good luck charm. A backward horseshoe.
She stuffed the balaclava into her pocket. “He wants to replace me with Baz, doesn’t he?” It made sense. Baz was the Taurus reserve driver, which meant he was already in the family. All it would take was a phone call.
Ranya’s mouth puckered. “Robert wants to replace you with anyone.”
“Any man, you mean,” Juliette said, and she couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice this time. Ranya’s face tightened, but she didn’t deny it.
“Accept Hastings’s help.”
So they were back to this. “And if I don’t?”
Ranya shielded her eyes. “I don’t want to replace you.
But if you continue performing like this, there’s only so long I can defend you to the shareholders.
Look, I’d train you myself if I could, but…
” She gestured to the cane. “I know you and Hastings have history, but he’s an exceptional driver. You could learn from him.”
“He,” Dominic said, “is standing right here.”
He was looking down at her, and heat prickled along the back of her neck. He’d always looked at things with that sort of singular focus: cars, recipes, a new camera…it was as if he could unravel it just by looking at it.
Dominic sighed. “Don’t look at me like that, Marchmont. This one’s on you. What do you say?”
She grimaced. “We’ll kill each other.”
Ranya frowned. “You’ve gotten along before, haven’t you? Found some…er…” She seemed to be treading carefully. “Common ground?”
Juliette glanced at Dominic. She hated that they were thinking the same thing: about the day at the academy with that stupid coq au vin. Ranya was right. They had found common ground before. They could do it again, surely? Just for a few weeks?
“Fine,” she muttered.
Dominic’s mouth turned up. Just a little. “Fine?”
Juliette ground her teeth. The arsehole was really going to make her say it, wasn’t he? “I’d like your help.”
“Good,” Dominic said. “We’ll start tomorrow.”
Juliette looked at the car. A thin layer of white foam covered the body. Smoke drifted up like steam from a kettle. When Dominic had last been her instructor, it had ended in a public blow-out and they hadn’t spoken in two years. She supposed that—this time—it couldn’t be any worse.
Probably.