Chapter 5 Chapter 5

Isolde

Julian's list arrived at eleven that night, along with a garment bag delivered by a courier who looked at my apartment like he was worried it might be contagious.

Inside were two pairs of navy coveralls with CROWN DYNAMICS stitched across the back in gold and a small gold crown over the heart. Under them were black T-shirts and slacks for what the list called office days, and a box of safety gear: gloves, glasses, and steel-toed boots that still smelled like the factory. The note pinned to the coveralls said, in tidy printed letters, Hair up. No hoodies on premises. Simulator, 5:00 a.m.

At four-fifteen I zipped myself into a pair of the coveralls and stood in front of the bathroom mirror. The fabric was stiff and new, and that little gold crown sat right over my heart like a brand. Bobby Smith's daughter, wearing Macaulay Ruiz's name across her back. Dad would've laughed himself sick or cried, and I didn't know which would've been worse.

"Sorry, Dad," I whispered.

I left his hoodie folded on the bed and felt its absence the whole drive in, the way you keep touching the gap where a tooth used to be.

The simulator was the best hour of my week. I ran the Crown circuit forty times until I knew every curb by feel, and when I climbed out, the engineer at the console was staring at his monitor with his mouth open.

"That's the second-fastest sim time this year," he said.

"Who's first?"

"Strider." "He's been running it for three months."

I'd been running it for one hour. I was still enjoying that when I walked into the shop.

It was bigger than Dad's whole garage, all white floors and blinding lights. I'd barely made it past the first lift before a broad man with a shaved head stepped in front of me. The name on his coveralls said JOHN, and under it, FLOOR MANAGER. He held out a pair of safety glasses and gloves.

"Morning, Red.Glasses on, gloves on, every minute you're on this floor."

I stared at the gloves. "I've been wrenching since I was six. I can't feel a bolt through those."

"Rules."

"They're stupid rules."

"Then take it up with Mr. Ruiz." He was already walking away.

I grimaced and jammed my hands into the gloves. I'd rather lose the feeling in all ten fingers than spend one minute more in Macaulay Ruiz's presence than I absolutely had to.

"Morning, Miss Smith."

The universe had never done me a favor, and it wasn't starting today. Mac walked in through the open bay door with his hands in the pockets of a black rain jacket. Under the jacket he wore a fitted black tee that clung to his chest and shoulders, and his jeans had been worn soft in places that made me look somewhere else fast.

He hadn't shaved. The stubble made the scar through his eyebrow stand out, and in the flat morning light he looked rougher than he had in his office, like the expensive polish had been scraped off and the street racer he used to be was showing through.

My stomach did a slow, traitorous flip. I told it to knock it off.

Beside him walked a woman in a camel coat and heels that had no business anywhere near a racetrack, her blonde hair pulled back so smoothly it looked lacquered. She held a tablet and looked at me the way you'd look at a dent in a car you'd just paid for.

"My stepsister, Sophie," Mac said, without looking at either of us. "Our CFO. She signs off on every car you'll ever touch."

"Lovely to meet you," I said.

Sophie's eyes moved from my bun to my steel-toed boots. "Each of those cars costs more than your father's garage is worth, Miss Smith. Try to remember that."

Then she went back to her tablet like I'd evaporated.

"Your sim time was decent," Mac said.

Decent. I'd come within a few hundredths of his lead driver on my first try. "I'd like to take a car out."

"No."

"You hired me to drive."

"I hired you to sit where the board wants you and smile where the cameras want you." He finally looked at me, and his gaze went over the coveralls with something that wasn't quite approval. "Women behind the wheel make good press, Miss Smith. You're the face of a brochure. A gimmick. You won on Victor's streets because nobody on them can drive, and a sim time doesn't change that."

A couple of the mechanics stopped working. One of them laughed under his breath.

My face went hot all the way to my ears. Two years of hearing the same thing from men who couldn't hold my line through the cannery dogleg, and now here it was in a nicer voice, from a man who'd once been everything I wanted to be. I wanted him to watch me drive and choke on every word.

Mac's phone buzzed, and he walked off toward the offices with it pressed to his ear, Sophie clicking along beside him.

The sky had gone the color of wet cement. Rain wasn't far off, maybe sleet.

Three cars sat by the open bay, prepped and gleaming. The nearest one had its door open.

"Don't even think about it, Red." A gray-haired man with GUS stitched on his jacket stepped into my path. "That's Strider's car, set up for tomorrow. And that weather's going to turn this track to glass. Nobody goes out in that."

"I'll be quick."

"Miss Smith..."

I was already moving. I kicked out of the coveralls and dragged on the spare fire suit hanging by the door. It was too long in the legs. I didn't care. By the time Gus started shouting for somebody, I had the helmet on and the engine awake under me, deep and smooth, nothing like my 47.

The first lap was pure joy. The car did everything I asked before I'd finished asking, and I laughed inside my helmet like a lunatic.

Halfway through the second lap, the first drops hit my visor, and the radio in my ear crackled.

"Smith." Mac's voice, low and flat and so close it sounded like he was sitting beside me. A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold. "Bring it in. Now."

I gripped the wheel and kept my foot down.

"Smith. That is not a request."

The rain came harder, smearing the track into a gray blur. I knew it was stupid. I knew it the way you know a stove is hot while your hand is still reaching for it. But he'd called me a gimmick in front of his whole crew, and I wanted one more lap. One lap he'd have to watch.

"You're going to kill yourself in my car," he said, and for the first time his voice wasn't flat at all.

Third lap. The hairpin at the bottom of the hill came at me through the rain, steep and tight, and I braked where I'd braked in the sim a hundred times.

The back end stepped out.

I caught it, or thought I did, and then the tires let go of the wet track completely, and the world spun. Sky, wall, grass, sky again, the car whipping around so fast my head slammed against the side of the seat.

"ISOLDE!"

His voice was the last clear thing I heard before the barrier came at me sideways.