19
Music thrums through the street, and it’s packed with people bent over the hoods of cars and hanging off each other with their tongues down their throats.
Riggs would kill me if he knew I came tonight with everything going on but I couldn’t help myself, and we needed the money.
Even in a pair of cargo pants and a tank top I’ve got eyes on me.
I can feel them burning holes between my shoulder blades.
“Get your hands off that,” I snap to some idiot who’s leaning through the window of my car.
He stands to his full height, looks me over and laughs.
He opens his mouth to say something and I stop him.
“Before you insult me by saying something stupid and following it up with a pickup line, save your breath and fuck off.”
His flirty expression turns cold.
I smile at him while he tries to figure out if I’m the girl he wants to play with tonight.
I can feel the knife clipped to the back of my pants as my hands find my hips, and thankfully most of the people around know better than to mess around with me, but every once in a while a new face decides it’s worth their life to push too far.
He steps forward and I get ready to pull it out, but someone starts hollering from down the line and it catches his attention.
He wanders away, not even bothering to look over his shoulder, and I relax a touch, moving back toward my car.
My phone vibrates, and every time it does I’m expecting a text from an unknown number, but there's nothing, and it shouldn’t… but it pisses me off.
I hate feeling like prey. It’s rattling more than I care to admit. I slip into my car through the window, pausing on the frame to look out over the crowd one last time. If everything is normal why do I feel so uneasy?
“Bird!” I hear my name and turn to see Jake waving me toward the line. The nice thing about it all is being back to racing. As much as Riggs hates it, it’s in our bones and he should never have asked us to stop, or at the very least been stupid enough to think we actually did.
He’d be happy to drive straight down the highway until his gas tank burned, but not me.
There’s no stakes in that, no challenge.
The feeling that he gets from pushing his car to the max is the same one I get from beating a bunch of pretentious dickheads and boys who think that sinking a quarter of a million dollars of their daddy’s money into stock sports cars makes them untouchable.
It’s a high you can’t get anywhere else.
I want to take their money and their pride.
I hand Jake my share as he leans into the window. “I heard that Cress was back.”
My head snaps to meet his eyes and I narrow them on him. “Yeah? From who?”
“Zayde and Sweets were talking about her at the last race. I didn’t think she’d ever circle back around after what Riggs did.” He swallows tightly. Even here, even now, Koa was a hero and Riggs would always be the villain to these guys. They don’t know.
“Crazy, right?” I feign enthusiasm and it comes off as cold, hard sarcasm that Jake laughs at. “If you're done gossiping, I have money to take from idiots.”
“Probably should have never started.” He taps the frame. “Four rights and two lefts,” he warns me, pointing out to the street. “The last one is tight.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to win, Jake.” I shake my head and check the line to my right. Nickie, Twi, and Pema Westfall at the very end. “You didn’t tell me there was a Westfall in this race.” I slap my hand around Jake’s wrist before he can disappear.
“He showed up last minute and doubled the pot.” Jake shrugs like it’s not a big deal but the Westfalls like to cause trouble when things don’t go their way.
When he walks away my eyes drift to the end of the line again and Pema winks at me like it’s nothing. It works its way beneath my skin and I roll my shoulders back. My phone vibrates again, and this time when I look down I inhale sharply.
Unknown
Don’t lose.
The noise that leaves me is a combination of laughter and frustration.
“Now you choose to be vocal?” I snap, flipping it over in my seat.
I hit play on my dashboard and let the music consume the noise around me with heavy bass as Jake moves to the front of the line.
I do my check and wrap my hand around the stick, looking in my rearview mirror only once.
Doesn’t do anyone any good to keep your eyes on the past. Always look forward.
The delay between Jake lowering his arms and the Skyline pulsing forward doesn’t exist. I’m off the line faster than anyone else and they know it.
Nickie panics instantly. I can see it because he’s fluctuating like he can’t pick a speed.
Twi is playing it safe, keeping tight to Pema who’s keeping pace but is about a tire behind.
He’ll wait, I know that. It’s a good habit against most racers. But most are greedy, they only care about the finish line. They spend the entire race dreaming about what they’re going to do once it’s over instead of appreciating the race while they’re in it.
“Idiots.” I roll my eyes, let the music roll down to my toes, and urge the car faster with the lightest of touches.
It purrs, pulling ahead of them by a whole length as I drift around the first corners.
Pema tries to catch up but I glide around the second and completely lose him from my sights with a smug smile on my face.
“That’s it boys,” I laugh, as they all whip around the corner one by one, their cars fishtailing from the sloppy maneuvers, all three unable to cope with losing to a woman.
Watching them fight amongst themselves is better than winning.
Pema is furious and it shows because he slams on the brakes causing Twi to serve, but he overcorrects and slams into the back bumper of a parked car just before the lights.
As I take the next right I see Twi climb from his car in a fit of rage as Pema battles with Nickie for dominance on the main chunk of road. I shift again and speed up, knowing that it’ll make the corner nearly impossible, but the challenge makes me giddy.
I see the bikes blocking off the road up ahead, closing off the straight away, and I coax the Skyline right.
Her back bumper slides neatly across the line of parked cars with a millimeter to spare.
My teeth sink into my bottom lip as I straighten out and shift into the last gear, creating an impossible gap between myself and Pema.
I watch his stock struggle to even keep the lead on Nickie, who’s closing the distance. The first left is nothing, it’s wide and there’s nothing for a quarter of a mile ahead of us, but the last one is tighter than any of the ones before.
“Thank you, Jake,” I whisper, hitting it hard but with such precision that the Skyline barely slows as I whip its back end around the bend and straighten it without batting an eye. Nickie is not so lucky—his car sputters and crashes into the barrier leaving only me and Pema for the last mile.
The Skyline doesn’t stutter, not for a second as I push her a touch faster. Pema tries but there’s not a chance of catching me once I hit the gas, it flings me forward and across the line, securing the win.
Jake comes around the window of my car as I roll it to a stop in front of a forming crowd. “Told you that corner was nasty.” He smirks at me, chunks of honey blond hair falling across his face while handing me an envelope of cash.
“You just want credit. I would have hit that with or without you.” I take it with an equally cheeky smile.
“Clear out before Pema blows a gasket.” He nods quickly, backing away from my car as Pema screeches into the crowd, practically running over some girls.
I don’t have to be told twice. I’m in no mood to take on that attitude and I have no back up in case he decides to cause trouble.
I shift the Skyline back into drive and take off out of the area, parking down the street from Soundwave to count the cash.
After a race like that I need to clear my head and there’s nothing like music so loud it drills through my brain to help me do that. I toss the extra cash in the glove compartment, let my hair down from my hat, and climb from the car.
A low whistle nips at my ears and I turn just in time to have a fist catch my face.
It causes me to stumble backwards and at first I think it’s Pema, he must have followed me, but when I manage to refocus my eyes I realize it’s not and I’m very outnumbered.
“You guys are sneaky for your size.” I cough out a glob of dark red blood.
It hits the ground with a nasty slap as I roll my shoulders back.
There’s two of them, which usually wouldn’t be an issue, but I’m not prepared and they are the size of bears.
They’re triple my weight class and I’m wearing the wrong shoes.
The first guy steps forward and I step back, creating space before crossing over with my hand and hitting the other guy coming for me. It doesn’t even faze him and I realize that I need to be looking for a way to get out of this, because fighting isn’t going to keep me alive.
Pride or not.
There’s a gun in the glove compartment, but reaching it is a long shot and the pocketknife I’m carrying will deal with one problem, but not both.
I grab for it and the bigger of the two lunges out for me, smacking me across the face, but the motion gives me a chance to throw my weight into an arching slash that catches him across the chest deep enough for him to cry out in pain.
I swing again as quickly as I can, but the other one steps backward out of my range too swiftly for me to catch him.
His partner recovers quickly, and before I can move out of his way his hand is in my hair.
I scream out and he’s quick to cover my mouth, but that’s exactly what I expect.
I sink my teeth into the callused skin of his hand, and when they break the surface with a squishy click, blood pools around my lips.
He pushes me forward, slamming my face into the side of the Skyline.
I feel the crack of my bone across my cheek and the vision in my left eye flickers black and turns fuzzy.
I need to get out of here.
“Quit making this hard,” he grunts, and his hand closes around my throat, squeezing the air from my lungs with practiced ease. His nails dig into my skin, and he lifts me so my feet have no purchase, my toes sliding across the ground.
Do not fucking die here, I snarl at myself.
Think. Move. I drive my knee up, just trying to get one more second of air and catch him in the balls.
Using the distraction I slash forward, catching the closest one with the blade and brace myself for heartbreak as I flip the knife around in my palm.
Forgive me, baby. I use all my strength to blow out the corner on the front window.
The sound of it shattering eats part of my soul, but the alarm blares out into the night sky.
Both of them hesitate from the sudden sound and I don’t give them a second to recover before I’m running. I can feel every bruise forming on my face and neck. The one at the base of my scalp where he had my hair feels wet and I know he ripped skin.
Just keep moving.
I stumble over my own feet and I can hear them yelling but I don’t stop. I just keep running.