“Hey, Perry,” she said to one of the other team owners. “You seen my driver around?”
“Last I saw he was in the driver’s meeting.”
She nodded, turning back toward her hauler. The crowd roared; Becca looking up in time to see a large American flag pass by, the red, white and blue fabric suspended high above a flatbed truck. The wind dragged at the ends, causing it to snap and crackle, the sound still audible over the spectators’ yells. She closed her eyes, trying to let the familiar sound soothe her. Didn’t help.
Tonight she would find out if her program had a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, or if she should just throw in the towel.
Things had gotten that dire.
“You looking for me?” a slightly amused voice said, and when Becca opened her eyes, Adam stood there, his dark blue firesuit hugging wide shoulders, hair slightly mussed, a tiny smile lifting the edges of his mouth.
“I am,” she admitted. Crew members ebbed and flowed around them, last-minute preparations under way. A hand truck of tires rolled by, filling the air with the bitter smell of rubber, the scent mixed with oil and race fuel, burning her nose.
“What’d you need?” he asked.
She remembered their last conversation, remembered his kindness even though she told herself not to. Business. She needed to keep her mind on business.
“I wanted to congratulate you on qualifying fifth.”
“Thanks.”
“And to tell you how much I hope—” She swallowed, trying not to sound too anxious. “How much it would mean to Newman Motorsports if you did well tonight.”
“Just Newman Motorsports?”
She nodded.
He didn’t say anything, just crossed his arms in front of him. Becca thought she saw a hint of disappointment in his eyes. Or maybe anger. Or maybe that was just his game face. Becca didn’t know. All she knew was that having him standing there, clothed and ready for battle, tripled her anxiety.
“You missed Lindsey,” he said.
“She called me on my cell phone.”
“Did she?”
Becca nodded. “She told me if I didn’t show up tonight she’d disown me as a friend.”
“Oh, yeah? Sounds like Lindsey.”
“Look, I’m ah…I’m going to watch the race from on top of the hauler.”
“Not the pits?”
John came up behind him. “Adam, they’re calling the drivers to their cars.”
“I don’t like watching races from pit road.”
John shot her a look of incredulity, not surprising since she was usually seen atop a pit box on race day.
“But good luck,” she said, reaching out a hand and patting him on the arm.
He looked amused by the impersonal gesture.
She turned to John. “Tell the team to have a good race.”
“Why don’t you tell them yourself?” John said, still baffled.
“I’ll tell them when I get on top of the hauler,” she said. “Have a great race,” she told John.
But even though she told herself not to look back, she couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t seem to keep from taking one last look. Adam stood there, watching her, John saying something, although by then she was far enough away that she couldn’t hear.
She lifted a hand. He nodded.
And that was that.
“THAT WAS ODD,” John said as she walked away.
“Yeah?” Adam asked.
“She’s usually in the pits with us,” John said, his crew uniform nearly matching Adam’s firesuit. TravelTime Hotels was scrawled across both their chests, the gold lettering looking brown beneath the klieg lights.
“I guess not tonight,” Adam said, watching as she walked away.
“You nervous?” John asked.
Adam shook his head. Maybe he was still too green to be nervous. Maybe it was because this all still felt like a dream, but whatever the reason, he felt as calm as could be. Whenever he glanced up into the stands, he couldn’t help but think that those people were there to watch
him
race. Well, him and about forty other drivers. But just one quarter section of a grandstand would probably fill the seats of his old track. Heck, it’d probably make it standing room only.
Unbelievable.
He glanced toward Becca again. She’d disappeared between the haulers that were set up in the garage, their backs open so that crew members could pull out equipment. “Nope,” he said. “Not nervous at all.”
“Good, because it’s time to get into your car,” John said after lifting one side of his headphones to listen to whatever someone had said. “And I gotta warn you again, Jason’s going to be all over you. That cat’s probably pissed as hell you qualified better.”
“Well, that cat’s gonna realize soon enough that I specialize in short tracks,” he said.
John smiled, the two of them walking toward his car. It was a night race, which should have made things seem more familiar to him, but of course it didn’t. And maybe that was why he didn’t feel nervous. He felt way out of his league. Chances were he would blow it tonight, but John had told him that was okay. Nobody expected him to win, not like they did some of the other drivers who walked by, faces Adam had only ever seen on TV. Since the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series cars were racing the day after tomorrow, more than one driver was doing double duty this weekend. As such, some of NASCAR’s biggest names would be out on the track with him. Forget Jason Ingle. Adam would have his hands full with names like Waltrip, Schrader and Biffle.
“Wait,” he heard a voice yell just as he lifted a leg to crawl inside his race truck.
Adam turned.
Lindsey flew toward him, loose red hair flicking from side to side behind her, blue eyes wide. Becca’s assistant, Connie, raced behind her. “Daddy, wait!”
“Lindsey,” he said in surprise. Kids were allowed on pit road just before the race, but Lindsey was supposed to be up in a suite watching the prerace show.
His little girl threw herself into his arms. “Good luck, Daddy.”
Her tiny arms wrapped around him and suddenly Adam knew why it was all right. It didn’t matter how he finished today. Didn’t matter if he never raced again. As long as his little girl could wrap her arms around him, that was all that mattered.
“Thanks, kiddo,” he said, bending down so he could inhale the scent of her hair. It was something he’d done at least a thousand times before, but he never got tired of her baby powder and apple smell.
She drew back, looking into his eyes. “Go kick some butt.”
“I will,” he said.
“Time for her to leave,” a NASCAR official warned.
“I know,” Adam said to the man. Then to Lindsey, “Go.”
She smiled once, a big smile full of confidence and pride. “See you in Victory Lane.” Connie reached for Lindsey’s hand, and the two turned back to the suites.
He smiled back, shook his head and turned away. John helped him get in, handing him his helmet and his HANS device. He slipped his ear-pieces in, then positioned the metal safety device over his shoulders. His newly painted helmet came next, the one that matched the colors of his truck. Lastly, he plugged in his mic.
“Check, check,” John said, squeezing the on/off switch on the side of his headset.
“I’m here,” Adam said.
“Good,” he heard the crew chief say, his voice popping into his ears. He tapped the top of his cab. “Good luck.”
Adam lifted a hand in acknowledgment, and suddenly the calm he’d felt earlier while holding Lindsey in his arms disappeared. His heart began to beat against his chest so hard he would bet it vibrated his firesuit.
Calm down.
For the first time in his life he understood what it felt like to be on the verge of an anxiety attack. Blood rushed through his ears and sweat beaded his brow, the foam insides of his helmet absorbing the moisture.
“One minute,” John said.
Adrenaline crashed though his body. His fingers began to tingle, not from the rush of blood, but from his grip on the steering wheel. Out of the corner of his eye he could see pit crews moving around the stalls, fidgeting with equipment, sweeping out pit box, standing on the wall. But he couldn’t move. He was strapped into his race car like a fighter pilot about to take off down a runway.
“Start ’em up.”
He had to blink the sweat out of his eyes in order to focus. He took a deep breath to calm himself before reaching for the toggle.
Vaa-room.
There was no sound like it in the world. The reverberation caused by 358 cubic inches slammed into the air, rebounding against his chest.
Adam glanced at the NASCAR official standing near the hood of his truck. Her white firesuit seemed to glow beneath the overhead lights, the woman’s arm up, her eyes firmly fixed on the other officials. But then that arm dropped and the field of cars rolled off.
This was it.
No going back. This would be the test. The test of whether or not he had the goods.
“Check your gauges,” John said.
“All good,” Adam replied after a quick scan of his oil, water, fuel pressure and voltage meters.
“Okay, they’re saying five laps. Copy that? You should be green to go in five laps.”
John sounded so perky that Adam almost smiled. “Roger that,” Adam said, his voice surprising even to him given the panic that had threatened to choke him.
First gear. Second gear. He cycled up, shifting the steering wheel left and right as he went along.
Thirty-six degrees of slope made the truck seem like it might tip over, the track’s grandstands rising up so high Adam felt like he was inside a giant bowl. In less than half a minute they made a lap, and then another, the roar of the field echoing off the high banks to his right. His tires had warmed and the truck was sticking to the asphalt, the stench of rubber leaching beneath his helmet and filling his nostrils with its burnt-oil smell.
“One to go,” his spotter, Brian said. “They’re telling us one more. Pace truck should be ducking off now.”
Adam didn’t answer. His breaths came faster and faster, the air inside his helmet thickening. The visor started to steam up. He squinted his eyes, trying to calm himself by focusing elsewhere. He fixed his gaze on the truck in front of him, eyeing the Buzz brand paper-towel logo on the tailgate. The white cylinder was supposed to look like paper towels but it resembled a toilet paper roll instead, Adam thought. And who’d come up with that particular shade of green? It looked like nose snot.
“Green, green, green,” Brian said calmly.
He released a breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding, the instant rush of oxygen that flowed to his brain sharpening his mental process. Everything suddenly clicked as the part of his brain used to the routine of going fast switched on. Adam mashed the pedal to the floor.
He’d passed the truck in front of him by the end of the first lap, John coming on the radio and saying, “Take it easy there, hot rod.” But amusement hovered in his words.
“She feels good,” Adam said, his head tipping sideways as he entered a turn, his HANS device straining against his shoulders. “Maybe a bit tight, but not bad. I think I might be able to knock off a few more in a lap or two.”
“Forty,” John said the next lap around. “Leader’s a ninety-one.”
And those tenths of a second were adding up. In a matter of minutes he had the leader firmly in sight. Adam was shocked to realize he might actually lead this thing.
“Seven truck’s coming fast,” Brian said.
“Who’s that?” Adam asked because the truth of the matter was, he didn’t have all his fellow competitors memorized.
“Todd Peters.”
NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series driver. Series champion two years ago. “What’s he running?”
“One-seventeen flat.”
That was good. Better than him, Adam thought as he worked on catching the leader. They’d caught up to the tail end of the pack, the slower cars making it more difficult to pass.
“Where’s my buddy Jason?”
Adam heard the tail end of a chuckle. “He’s dropping through the field like a sack of bowling balls.”
“How far back?”
There was a pause and then, “You’re about ready to lap him. He’s coming to the line right…” Another pause. “Now.”
Shit, Adam thought as he came to the start/finish line a few seconds later. That wasn’t that far ahead. With his luck he’d catch the bastard and then have a real battle on his hands. Or maybe not. Maybe Jason had left his attitude at home.
Yeah, right.
But to be honest he wasn’t all that worried about it. The longer he ran, the better he got.
“They’re talking about you on TV,” John said.
“Are they calling me a handsome devil?”
Another laugh caught midchuckle. “No, they’re calling you seriously deluded.”