Page 83 of Fast & Reckless
So far he’d been running through the out lap pretty much on instinct. Weaving, slowing, gradually speeding up, letting the tires heat up until the engineers were satisfied with the specs. But qualifying starts were staggered and other drivers were out on the track already running at full speed, or in the middle of a cooldown lap. All he needed now was to stumble into someone else’s path and pile on yet another penalty on top of whatever was coming.
He held up on the weaving, allowing René Denis to scream past at full speed. As soon as the engineers gave the all clear, that would be him, and he couldn’t afford to be less than one hundred percent on his game. As he entered the last turn, he could feel it. The tire grip was perfect. He didn’t even need Tae’s confirmation that they were in the sweet spot of the engineers’ target window.
“All clear for your push lap,” Tae said, and Will smoothly applied the throttle as the car swung wide to the exit of Turn Eleven, starting his push lap.
On the straight, he opened the car up to the maximum, well north of three hundred kilometers an hour, and felt himself unclench slightly now that he was back in the zone. There was no traffic headed to the first turn, and he smashed the brakes and dropped down the gears, navigating the slow and clunky chicane. He smoothly applied the throttle on the way out, and then full energy as he headed toward the next turn.
It was an easy one and he found the absolute limit on the exit, trying to maximize the time on throttle as he eyed the traffic around him on the track, now on cooldown laps. It had become a game with some drivers to wait till the last second to get out of the way, or to casually narrow the entry and exits for those on push laps. Not enough for a penalty, but more than enough to steal a tenth or two from a competitor, which was sometimes all it took.
Before he knew it, he was flying through the straight, flanked by trees, and coming up on the high-speed chicane. Tae was barking stats in his ears, which just confirmed what he already felt in his gut. Despite the shitty start to today’s qualifying, he was dropping the hammer, laying down a time that would once again secure him pole position in tomorrow’s race.
There was a slow-moving car ahead and to his right, in the midst of its cooldown lap, but he’d pass it easily well before he had to swing out for the approach to the final turn. As he gained on it, he registered the flash of the car’s green livery. Brody. Of course.
But then the gap between him and Brody wasn’t narrowing at the pace he’d expected. Was that fucker actuallyspeeding upon his cooldown lap, just to get in his way? Fine. He wanted toplay it like that? Will would turn it around on him, and draft in his slip stream all the way up to the turn, using him to claw back a few more tenths of a second.
With the two-hundred-meter board in sight Will pulled out from behind him, but then, milliseconds before he began to pass, Brody twitched his wheels ever so slightly to the right. It was tiny, a wobble so slight it was impossible to say if it was there or not. But Will felt that wobble in his gut, as surely as if Brody had just thrown another punch at him. His body registered Brody’s movement even before his head did, and he moved to the outside edge of the track to avoid a collision. Motherfucker. But it was done now, he’d passed him. He could still save this. In his mind, he envisioned his best approach to the turn from his current, less-than-ideal starting position and angled the car into it, still flying at three hundred kilometers an hour.
That’s when he felt it.
Tink.
The sound of his back tire clipping Brody’s front end, because the motherfucker wasstill accelerating.
It all happened so fast. A shudder. A shriek of rubber on asphalt. A bank of flashing lights from the control panel. Just enough time to register a blown tire, and then he was spinning out, straight toward the wall. The sound was deafening: screeching tires, Tae shouting on Race Radio, and then the collision, the impact rocketing through his body as it slammed through the car, metal and fiberglass crumpling all around him. His head snapped hard against his HANS device as the car spun again, slammed against the wall again, and finally came to a stop. And then there was just silence.
36
“Why is it taking so long?” Mira gripped the sides of her chair to keep herself from exploding into hysteria.
She and Violet were sitting side by side on hard plastic chairs in the medical center waiting room. Will was in the back, still being examined.
She might never recover from the horror of that moment, watching Will’s car spin into the track wall, the sparks, the flying debris, the smoke and flame, and then the awful stillness after. It had felt like an hour, but it was just seconds before she’d seen him moving inside. Still alive. In that moment, that was the only thing that mattered.
He’d climbed out of the car by himself, which was a good sign, but his in-ear accelerometer had gone off, which meant he’d sustained a serious impact and required a mandatory medical workup.
Now he was off in back and her father was in there with him, and there was no way any of this was going to end well.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Violet said. “You know they have to check him out if the accelerometer goes off.”
“I know,” she muttered numbly.
In her initial panic about Will, she’d forgotten all about the fight with Brody and what it would look like to her dad. To everyone else. Now it was all coming back and panic of a new kind threatened to overwhelm her. But she didn’t have time for that now, not until she knew that Will was okay.
“I’m sure they’re just being really cautious,” Violet said again. “X-rays and CAT scans and all that. You know that stuff takes forever.”
“Yeah, I know.”
They sat in silence for several more minutes, Violet scrolling through her iPad, Mira staring at a scuff on the opposite wall and trying not to cry.
“Shit,” Violet muttered.
“What?”
“Shit shit shit.”
“Violet, what is it?”
Wordlessly, Violet handed her the iPad. The article was from a British gossip website. The British ones were always the worst. Right at the top, there was a slightly blurry photo of Will and Brody, Brody pinned to the side of Will’s motor home and Will’s hand gripping his race suit.
