When lap forty brought out another caution flag, Buster called her into the pit.
Buster spoke from behind the barrier wall through her headphones. “Davis didn’t stop. He needs the lead to gain Nextell Cup points and he probably knows that’s the only way he’ll get it. He’ll have to stop in the next ten or fifteen laps or risk a blown tire. So, don’t bust your balls trying to pass him.”
Jamie barely had time to smile at his choice of words. Dunn roared out of his pit after only fifteen seconds, and Jamie was right on his tail, taking the third position behind Dunn and Davis. Riker pulled up to sixth.
After twelve laps with no flag, Davis was forced to pit, just as Buster had predicted. Jamie moved back into second.
Quint observed Stephen with utter disbelief. His young cousin came to his feet repeatedly, shouting or swearing at one driver or another. His actions were so comical Quint actually started to relax.
“Hot damn, that lady can drive.” Stephen cried, when she passed Dunn and took the lead for the second time that day. He groaned loudly when she lost it back to Dunn six laps later. “No. No. Damn. You gotta hang onto that lead, baby. Then you’ll have nothing to worry about. Let them pile up behind you.”
Quint saw the wisdom in that. The lead car was unaffected by everyone else’s daredevil attempts at passing each other. “How fast are they going?” he asked, wondering why he wanted to know.
Stephen sat back down and pulled a pack of Dentine out of his pocket. “It’s such a short track, they can’t get much speed. Hell, they need to brake as often as accelerate. Takes a lot of skill to keep the brakes from burning out.”
Tim, who was watching with them and being as verbal as Stephen, said, “They can probably get to a hundred and fifty on the back stretch, but the front has a nasty bow to it. It’s shaped like a big D. Between curve four and one is where skill comes into play and the men are separated from the boys.”
Virgil chuckled. “Or in this case, the girl from the boys.”
“When she’s out there,” Tim said, laughing, “she’s one of the guys.”
“I’ll agree with that,” Virgil said. “From what I can see none of them have any advantage over her in strength or skill.”
After nearly an hour of no excitement, Stephen suddenly came to his feet as the tenacious snake of speeding cars rounded turn one for the three hundredth time, and the seventh car in line, hit the wall. It careened back onto the track and was pummeled by three other cars. Four more slammed into the flying debris before they all came to rest after scattering parts across the track like chewed-up bits of color crayons.
This time Quint came to his feet too. His eyes searched frantically for Pink Mink’s number thirteen. She had come to a stop behind Dunn, and he realized all traffic had come to a halt, acknowledging the red flag.
His heart slammed into his ribcage like an out-of-control bongo drum. His throat felt like he’d swallowed dust. He’d seen the same type of carnage before on Jamie’s Indianapolis tape. Even though Jamie wasn’t in the midst of this one, the sight and sound, and smell of death, brought haunting memories slamming to the surface. He tried to stop them. He couldn’t. “Jesus,” he whispered. “How many do you think were killed?”
“Can’t see. Too much smoke,” Stephen said. “I wonder what caused it. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“That’s what happens when you go so many laps with nothing eventful going on,” Tim said.
Quint realized he had actually taken his eyes off the track too. He suddenly understood what Jamie meant about people coming to see action on the track.
“The bad news is Riker escaped,” Tim said. “He’s parked three cars behind Jamie. Watch the screen, they’re replaying the crash.”
They all stared wordlessly at the monitor while the grisly scene played over and over.
“It was Davis,” Tim said finally. “He came into the turn too fast and couldn’t hold it. What a mess. The fans are getting their money’s worth today.”
“Bunch of fucking gladiators,” Quint mumbled under his breath.
Both Stephen and Tim laughed. Virgil just shook his head.
From down below they could hear Buster giving Jamie a play by play. Tim commented that drivers hated the red flag. It broke the momentum.
Quint grunted something inaudible. He thought they should have been glad for the brief rest. They had been driving for over two hours, alternatively braking and accelerating at high speeds with only fifteen to sixteen-second pit stops. He couldn’t even imagine the tension on the body as well as the mind. Then he watched in disbelief as one by one all the drivers climbed out of their cars and walked away. No one even so much as limped. One of the drivers tried to take a swing at Davis but was held back by his teammates. The commentator had a heyday with that. He clearly had no love for Talon Davis.
It took ten minutes for a scurrying cleanup crew to clear up the track and restart the race.
A short while later, with only fifteen laps to go Riker moved up to third, a quarter lap behind Jamie and Dunn. The consensus was he didn’t have a prayer of catching them.
Three laps later, Jamie jammed into third gear—seriously abusing the engine—and out-accelerated Dunn to slide past him on the inside.
A hundred and fifty thousand fans came to their feet in one vaulting roar when she reclaimed the lead.
Jamie knew better than to start thinking about Victory Lane
. Dunn, a tenacious driver, wouldn’t make any foolish mistakes. He had the skills and car capable of overtaking her at any given moment.
Two laps from the finish, the crowd was on its feet as Jamie continued to hold the lead. One of the cars ahead of her was in the process of sliding to the outside to allow her to pass when its damaged left rear fender spun loose of the car and slammed into Jamie’s grill. It violently jarred her car, giving her both a physical and mental shock. She managed to keep it on the straightaway without going into a slide, but the piece imbedded in her radiator made it difficult to steer. She gripped the wheel and jammed her foot on the gas, trying to keep Dunn at bay.
Dunn came up beside her with half a lap to go. Her engine rattled like an out-of-control jackhammer and black smoke spewed out from under the hood, seriously impairing her visibility. Helplessly, she watched Dunn overtake her as Riker closed the gap from the rear.
Buster ordered her, in no uncertain terms, to pull over.
She kept her foot on the accelerator, ignoring Buster, ignoring the flames that licked over the hood, squeezing every last ounce of horsepower she could out of the damaged engine.
Dunn took the checkered flag just as her engine blew. She watched Riker come up fast behind her. She just had time to brace herself before his car, instead of passing her, slammed into her rear bumper, pushing her over the finish line ahead of him.
Jamie got a quick glimpse of the checkered flag at her side before she turned to the inside and brought her car to a skidding stop. Flames shot through the floorboards, a grimy haze of soot showered the windshield. She jerked at the window net that prevented her escape when hands from the outside released it and pulled her out. Those hands belonged to Clay Riker.
In the seconds that followed, a fire truck sprayed chemicals on the car, and Buster, along with the other crew members and a medic, arrived on the scene.
Buster was irate. “Goddamn it, Jamie, a win isn’t worth killing yourself. I told you to pull over and bail out. Don’t you know when to give up?”
“I’m fine,” she yelled back at him. “Relax, you’ll give yourself a coronary.”
“It’s not me giving myself a coronary, it’s you.”
The entire Pink Mink crew stared in awe as Buster threw his arms around his daughter and gave her a bone-crushing hug that literally took her breath away.
Chapter Sixteen
Jamie was tired. Her face and clothes were plastered with soot, her hair a helmet-tangled disaster. The last thing she wanted was an interview, but she knew the fans would be waiting t
o hear from her, so when Matt Hurley pressed a microphone in her face she tried to keep from scowling at him.
“How do you feel about the race today?” he asked.
“Better than last week.”
He looked surprised. “Really? You seem to be having a major streak of bad luck. How do you feel about that? Is somebody out to get you?”
Inwardly Jamie bristled, but she refused to feed the gossip media. She shrugged. “Some days you have good luck. Some days you have bad luck. It’s all part of the game.”
“You have to be disappointed you didn’t win!” he persisted.
At that Jamie laughed. “Show me a driver who isn’t disappointed when he loses, and I’ll show you a driver who will never win.”
There was a second of silence before Hurley chuckled. “I’ll hand you one thing, Ms. LeCorre, you know how to wriggle your way around a question. Maybe you should run for a political office.”
“No, thanks. I couldn’t handle the stress.”
Hurley snorted. “Right. What about Clay Riker? This is the second week in a row he seemed to have deliberately targeted you. Any comments about that?”
For a moment Jamie stared blankly into the camera. She wasn’t ready to share her feelings about Clay’s actions on that last lap. She wasn’t even sure she fully understood them.
She flashed him a diabolical grin. “No.”
Hurley sighed. “Well, Jamie LeCorre, you ran a terrific race today. You have a respectable standing in the Nextell Cup challenge, and you’re an inspiration to women all over the world. You—”
“Are you buttering me up for something?”
The reporter grinned. “Those things are all true, but yes, I was. I just don’t want you to walk away with a one-finger salute when I ask my next question.”
Jamie sliced Matt Hurley a warning look.
Hurley pressed on. “I just thought you’d like a chance to publicly explain the picture Cynthia Harman aired on her show the other night. Were you really too drunk to walk?”
“That question doesn’t deserve an answer,” she said. “But as long as you brought this subject up, I would like to suggest to Ms. Harman that she stick to photographing black cats and warty toads because that’s more up her alley.”
Hoots and raucous laughter came from the crew behind them.
Jamie was more than happy to oblige when Quint offered to drive her car back to the hotel. Virgil and Stephen followed in their rented SUV. She had reserved a room for them adjoining hers since Stephen would be setting up his video equipment there.
Right now she had two things on her mind, a hot shower and food, in that order. Virgil had offered to take all of them out to a nice restaurant but she’d declined. Instead, they decided on a pizza place a block from the hotel, after Jamie had a chance to clean up.
An hour later, when they were seated and had placed their order, the subject of Clay Riker came up. The men decided it was bad enough she’d had the misfortune of not winning because of a fluke accident, but to have Riker slam into the back of her was inexcusable.
“I say we string him up cowboy style,” Virgil said. “It’s no less than he deserves.”
“I’ll supply the rope,” Quint muttered.
Stephen held up his hand, frowning. “Just a minute. I smell something fishy about that whole ordeal. It didn’t make sense. Why didn’t he try to pass instead of ramming her?”
The waitress set a pitcher of beer on their table. Quint lined up four glasses and started pouring. “Don’t you remember last week? He was far more interested in bringing Jamie down than winning. The man should be put out of his misery.”
“Then why did he help her out of the car?” Stephen asked.
Virgil passed a beer to Jamie, who was being unusually quiet while they discussed Riker’s dismemberment. “Because he was the first one there.”
“The only reason he was the first one there,” Quint snapped, “was because he was on her bumper—literally.”
“Professional courtesy?” Stephen asked, directing his question to Jamie.
“Professional courtesy, my ass,” Virgil carped. “He was the one who put her there in the first place.”
“Stephen’s right,” Jamie said finally. “And so are you,” she said to Virgil. “He was the one who put me there, but do any of you realize where he put me?”
All three men looked at her as though she might have bumped her head a bit too hard in the crash.
“He pushed me over the finish line.”
“You would have gone over anyway,” Quint argued.
“Probably not,” she said. “My engine blew. I had zero power when he hit me.”
For the span of several heartbeats they stared at her. It was Stephen who found his voice first.
“Do you think he knew that?”
“I don’t know,” Jamie said. “It all happened so fast, I don’t think anybody knew I’d lost power. If they had, they certainly would have made a big deal about it, especially the media. If anybody knew, it would have been Clay. He was the closest.”
“Did he say anything when he helped you out of the car?” Virgil asked.
“Yeah, he said he owed me one.”
Stephen swore under his breath. “What the hell does that mean?”
“That’s just it,” Jamie said. “I don’t know.”
“I think I’m getting the picture here,” Quint said. “You don’t want to acknowledge anything until you know if he intended to cause you grief or help you.”
“Exactly. I’d appreciate it if the three of you would keep quiet on this until I can decide what to do about it.”
Quint nodded.
Virgil said, “No problem.”
Stephen grumbled. “Shit, a scoop like this and I’m sworn to secrecy.”
Virgil grabbed him by the back of the neck. “You better say nice things, little brother, if you want Jamie to sign those six copies of her centerfold you brought with you.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. Then she laughed.
It was just what they needed to lighten the mood as the waitress brought their pizza out to their table. Stephen ordered another pitcher of beer, saying that as long as Virgil was paying he might as well get drunk.
By the time Stephen had two more beers he was entertaining them with adventures of skydiving. He told about his summer in Europe living on a shoestring budget, sleeping in a tent with a female friend who, much to his chagrin, insisted their relationship remain platonic.
He told about parachuting off the great cliffs in the south of France, and a skydiving competition in Switzerland where he and a hundred and forty-three other divers won a first-place formation trophy.
At a meet in Wisconsin he jumped on a cloudy day, and he and a friend ended up in a National Guard complex. It took four hours to convince the troops he and his partner weren’t enemy spies.
Virgil said only a certified idiot would jump out of an airplane if he didn’t have to.
Quint agreed, vowing that Stephen was loonier sober than he was drunk.
Jamie laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes. She forgot all about the race, being cheated out of first place, and having Clay Riker push her into second when she likely would not even have finished.
The camaraderie between Quint and his cousins was something that she’d always imagined families were like, something she’d only had on a very small scale with T-Roy.
The one and only time she’d ever been drunk was with her brother and his friends. It was her seventeenth birthday. They took her to a seedy little bar on Chicago’s south side. The back room had an illegal bookie operation going on. T-Roy told her if she didn’t drink the guard on duty would know she wasn’t of age and he’d throw her out and she’d have to wait for them in the car. The car was parked in a rat-infested alley so dark you needed a flashlight to find it.
She drank whatever they put in front of her, and had fun doing it. Clay Riker was with them; she remembered him telling T-Roy to quit forcing her to drink
.
The next thing she knew, she woke up at home, in the bathtub, dressed only in underwear because she’d heaved all over her clothes. She was so thirsty she tried to lap water from the tub. T-Roy was tending to her, supporting her head, telling her it was okay, she would live, unfortunately.
In the other room Buster was carrying on, swearing so loud the shingles rattled. T-Roy laughed it off. “Don’t mind him. He just doesn’t think women can handle liquor. I guess you showed him.” T-Roy was right, of course. After all, Buster always rattled the shingles about one thing or another. As far as he was concerned, Jamie couldn’t do anything right. She had managed a weak laugh before she threw up again.
* * * *
Stephen and Virgil’s room, as large as the one Quint shared with Jamie, had plenty of space in the sitting area for Stephen to set up his video equipment. Jamie waited anxiously while he popped her tape in and fast-forwarded to the Indianapolis crash scene.
“There,” she burst out when he passed the section where she went into the slide. “Back up and slow it down.”
“I watched this live,” Stephen said tapping keys on his laptop to reverse the action. “It was spectacular.”
Quint gave his cousin a scathing look as he watched the horrific scene play backwards in slow motion. He was seated on the sofa with his arm across the back behind Jamie’s shoulders. When Stephen came to the right spot, Jamie edged forward in her seat, straining to watch the screen for the exact moment when the object had flown through the air.
“Stop.” she said. “Did you see it?”
Stephen shook his head. “I didn’t see anything. I’ll go back over it again.” He backed it up, clicked forward again going one frame at a time, holding each frame a few seconds until a small dark object appeared between Jamie’s car and Tomas Dunn’s car. He was beside her, about a half car length ahead.
“There it is,” Quint said squinting his eyes.
Secret Sacrifices Page 19
