Callie resisted the urge to peek around her boss. She had no idea what Veronica meant by “take care of him”, but she had a feeling she didn’t want to find out.
“No.” She lifted her chin. “I think I’ve got things under control.” She turned, surveying the debris around her. “I’ll catch a ride with the maintenance crew if you want to take off with Shane.”
Her boss didn’t say anything for a while, prompting Callie to try and glean what Veronica was thinking. Her green eyes were as hard to read as cut glass.
“Just promise you’ll stay away from him.”
Callie nodded and then turned away before Veronica could spot the tell-tale signs that a part of Callie—a surprisingly large part—wanted to do the exact opposite.
A part of her wanted to chase after Derrick and tell him he was right.
She cared for him too.
He should have left.
Derrick woke up the next morning wondering why in the hell he’d stuck around. He should quit XRL. Go back to NASCAR. Forget the whole thing.
One thing stopped him.
He didn’t want to leave Callie.
Damn it, he wanted to be with her. Somehow, she’d snuck under his skin and rather than scare the hell out of him, he woke up excited. Yes, even though she’d flat-out rejected him. For now.
So as he headed to the track, he promised himself he’d give her space. If she wanted to think she didn’t care for him, fine, he’d let her think that way. Sooner or later she’d recognize the truth; crazy as it might seem, they were perfect for each other.
If Friday had been the poster child for California’s perfect weather, Saturday was the bastard step-child. Fog had crept its way up the central valley, turning the world sepia black and white, shades of gray mixed in. He could barely see ten feet in front of him.
“You made it,” one of his fellow drivers teased when he pulled to a stop on pit road. “Thought for sure I’d drive past the entrance to the track.”
Bill or Bob or whatever his name was smiled at him in a friendly manner, Derrick returning the grin even as he scanned the area for Callie. Fat luck. He could barely make out the race cars in the distance. Something new had been added into the mix, however. He squinted. News vans.
“I thought this was a closed session,” Derrick said.
Bill—that’s what his name was Derrick suddenly recalled—shrugged. “I thought so too.” His California accent sounded evident to Derrick’s Southern ears. He had black hair and black eyes and a likeable face.
“Looks like not anymore,” Derrick murmured.
It didn’t take someone long to spot him standing there, although how they recognized him through a thick, grey soup was anybody’s guess.
“Derrick Derringer,” a man said, a camera crew trailing in his wake. Within seconds, another crew headed toward him, then a third. “How’s the test session going so far?” asked someone from the first.
“Fine. Just fine.”
“Are you looking forward to the first XRL race of the season?”
He had no idea what network the guy was from. Maybe local news. Maybe a freelance crew. Either way he hated when cameras were thrust into his face and if he didn’t move quickly, there’d be more questions to answer for the other news reps.
“I am indeed,” and then took off without a backward glance. Bill, however, stayed behind. That suited Derrick just fine. Let the local guy speak to the press.
“Looking for someone?” Veronica purred.
Derrick shook his head. If there was one person on earth he was really starting to dislike, it was Callie’s boss. “Just avoiding the media.” He shot a glance back over his shoulder. “I thought this was a closed test session.”
Veronica smirked. “You can’t control the press.”
Which was BS, Derrick thought. It was easy to control the media. Just point to the door—or the exit as the case may be—and tell them to leave.
“They heard about the tire blowing out yesterday. Obviously, they’re here in the hopes of catching some action.”
Because with stock car racing season over, there was little to report on other than this. Derrick understood that at least.
“Well, hopefully, they came here for nothing.”
He would remember those words later. Once Callie showed up things began to move quickly. She had drivers line up for a safety meeting, though he noticed she never once looked him in the eye. Next she had one of her employees hand out the order of go—he would drive first—telling everyone to, “Stay safe,” before turning away. He almost followed her, almost called her name. Instead he held his ground, though he couldn’t help but feel impotent as he watched her walk away.
“What’s it like to have a woman reject you?” asked a sarcastic voice.
Derrick didn’t flinch when he turned to Shane. “You tell me.”
Shane smirked. “I wouldn’t know. Haven’t had woman troubles since I won my first championship.”
“Lucky you.”
“Veronica tells me you won’t take no for an answer.”
Derrick smirked right back. “Veronica thinks she knows everything.”
The blond-headed driver with an ego nearly as big as the Empire State Building crossed his arms. “Well,” he drawled. “I don’t know. She knew enough to start up this league.”
Derrick immediately bristled. “The X-TREME Racing League was Callie’s idea, not Veronica’s. Callie’s the brains behind this operation. She’s smarter than twenty Veronicas put together, so do me a favor. Get your facts straight before you talk to the media.”
He left before he said something else he might regret later. He didn’t need to cause a scene with the press nearby, and that’s exactly where he was headed if he let Shane get under his skin.
So he kept to himself. So did Callie. They waited a bit for the fog to clear before allowing drivers out on the race track. It wasn’t a long wait. As soon as the day started to warm, the fog made a quick departure, chased off by the sun. XRL crew members made fast work of getting him strapped into his car. From there it was a matter of minutes before he warmed up his tires for the first session of the day.
“Road course crew says the track’s a little wet,” one of the engineers cautioned. “Callie said to take it easy at first.”
Where was Callie?
“Roger that,” he said, knowing she was watching. She wouldn’t be able to keep away, no matter who was driving. So he took a tighter grip on the steering wheel. Determination made his field of vision narrow. He would show her just how good he was. Remind her of who he was.
“How’s it look out there?”
There she was. “Overcast sky. Lots of haze in the distance. Track’s a little wet, but it’s drying fast. Don’t take any unnecessary chances.”
He frowned before opening the mic. “Roger that.” He was tempted to tell her he wasn’t a damn rookie. That was his frustration showing though.
Patience, he reminded himself.
Ten minutes later the track had gone from a steel gray to silver. “I’m going to let her out,” he warned as he approached the start/finish line.
“Are you sure it’s dry enough?”
“It’s fine.” He bit back another sarcastic comment. After spending half his life piloting cars, he ought to know when a track was ready to race on and when it wasn’t. Instead of letting the comment fly, he channeled his energy. One minute he was feathering the gas, the next he’d mashed it to the ground. It felt good.
The first turn was an easy left. Nothing much to it. A narrow apron on his right, one made of loose rocks and dirt and so there was no margin for error. He had to keep the wheels on the track, and he did so perfectly, the engine revving a bit as he traveled up a slight incline. Next he would go right, and then a sharp turn left. Nothing too tricky. The S-turns near the end were the hardest part of the course.
Which was why it seemed surreal when he turned the wheel left…and the car went right.
“What the—?
”
He hit dirt, slammed on the brakes, turned the wheel again. Nothing. Steering gone. He hit a rut. Another. The third one sent his front end flying. The fourth one spelled disaster. His wheels bit into the earth.
“Ah, shit.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What happened?” Callie asked, jumping off pit wall before she could stop herself. All she could see was a cloud of dirt. “Did his car roll? I can’t see.”
Through her headphones she could hear someone calling Derrick’s name. She waited—heart slamming against her ribs—but all she heard was static.
“Quiet,” she yelled to everyone around her. Only when people were silenced did she try to get through to him, her gaze still on the cloud of dirt in the distance. “Derrick, you there?”
“I’m here,” she heard him say.
Her shoulders instantly relaxed. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
Thank God. But the car…was it okay? She spun circles looking for the stupid toolbox with the television screen inside so she could see for herself.
“Car looks fine,” someone called, Callie turning toward to the left. One of her engineers stood near the box—only about ten feet away. She ran to it. The camera had been trained on Derrick’s car, and—oh, thank God—he was in the midst of climbing out. He turned, waved to the camera. Just as he said. He was fine, but the car—well, at least it looked better than Shane’s car yesterday.
“Let’s go,” someone, one of her crew members, advised. She should go with them.
She didn’t.
There was no reason to go tearing off after him. It wasn’t like yesterday when Shane’s car had flipped over. Obviously, Derrick was okay. Yesterday’s wreck had been much, much worse.
She turned away from the television screen.
“What happened?”
“Don’t know.” Callie took a deep breath before facing Veronica. Her boss had been in a bad mood all morning. Callie had begun to suspect Jerry had told her about what he’d seen and Veronica was not happy about it. “Looks like he just lost control.”
“Is he okay?”
The woman had clothed herself in all black today. Black skin-tight leather pants. Again. Form-fitting black jacket. She looked like a Marvel Comics character with her long red hair and dark makeup—the evil villainess.
“Sounds like it.”
“Is the car okay?” Veronica asked next.
“I was watching from the pit road and so couldn’t exactly see, but I don’t think he rolled it. We would have heard that. It looks like he drove straight off the track, almost as if he didn’t even see the curve ahead.”
Veronica shielded her gaze and peered toward the accident scene. In the distance, one could clearly see Derrick’s wrecked car, and then the tiny figure of Derrick standing next to it. A cloud of dust still hung in the air. The ambulance was just arriving. The tow truck wasn’t far behind, its yellow lights spinning.
“Maybe he’s not the driver we thought he was,” Veronica drawled.
An immediate rebuttal rose to Callie’s lips. Who was Veronica kidding? The man was a living legend. A part of racing history. He could drive circles—literally—around the rest of the drivers, including Veronica’s new-found friend, Shane.
“Maybe he’s not,” Callie replied because she knew if she defended Derrick’s driving abilities, she might sound a little too defensive. Veronica would see right through her.
“You going out there?”
“No.” Callie frowned. “I’ll stay here and rearrange the schedule. Gonna need some time to go over the car which means another change to the lineup.”
In hindsight, she should have brought more cars, but it wasn’t a race team she was running. These were prototypes and she was certain Veronica would have given her grief about spending too much money on cars that would never actually see a track other than today.
Derrick eventually returned, Callie doing her best to appear unfazed by his near-disaster. Things didn’t get any easier, however. The rest of the morning one thing after another went wrong. Derrick’s car suffered from broken linkage next. On the car’s next trip out, four of the bolts holding the rear-end together snapped, causing yet another driver to lose control. That wasn’t the worst of it, however. The worst part was the press documented every minute of it. Cameras rolling, keyboards clacking, she could imagine the reports they’d file.
X-TREME Racing League Off to Rocky Start.
X-TREME Racing League EXTREMELY Dangerous.
X-TREME Racing League Extreme Joke.
Take your pick because that’s what’d they say. She knew it, and if she didn’t miss her guess, Veronica knew it too, because her dark mood became more and more prevalent the more the day dragged on.
“This is ridiculous,” her boss bit out when yet another part failed—bolts on a tire this time. “What the hell’s going on, Callie?”
“I don’t know,” Callie murmured as she examined the part in question. It almost looked as if the bolts had been sheared off. Maybe even intentionally, but that was a ridiculous notion. Who would go to such lengths to sabotage a race car? And for what reason? Why? Was one of the other racing leagues out to get them? That idea seemed more ridiculous than the thought someone might be intentionally damaging their cars.
“Let’s get this fixed,” she told them.
It was a long day, made even longer by her interactions with Derrick. When he wasn’t driving, he seemed content to be by her side. At first she tried to ignore him, but as the day progressed, that became increasingly difficult to do.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the steering wheel fell off next,” she heard him mutter at one point. They’d just fixed a loose hose, one which had spewed water all over the engine resulting in a cloud of steam. Dramatic, but not detrimental to the health of the car.
“It’s gotten to the point of being ridiculous, hasn’t it?”
His brown eyes, when they met her gaze, were tinged with concern. “I keep looking for the black cloud, but all I see is blue sky.”
She frowned, nodded. The fog was a thing of the past, the two of them standing beneath the pop-up tent that’d been erected near the start/finish line. Not only had the mist faded, but it’d grown hot. A few of the drivers, those who’d survived today’s test session, had gone home to escape the heat. Derrick could have left also. He hadn’t.
“It’s almost like someone has it out for you,” he murmured next.
She couldn’t help it, she grabbed the sleeve of his Polo shirt. Her glasses had slipped down her nose. She pushed them back up so she could see him better. “It is, isn’t it?”
He didn’t mince words. “A few things here and there, I could see being accidents. But every time your backup car has gone out, something’s broken on it.”
“Yeah, but it is our backup car. It wasn’t supposed to be used during our test session. Things have a way of breaking down when they’ve been sitting for a while.”
“Broken linkage?” he asked, black brows lifting. “Stripped bolts? Cracked rear-end housing? I could understand a hose or two popping off, but the other stuff…?”
In the distance, the car they’d just fixed, revved. The driver, Bill Cavenaugh, was taking it slow. Callie didn’t blame him.
“Thank God there are only three drivers left.” She glanced around. “Lord help us if anything else happens.”
She should put on her headphones, listen in on Bill’s conversations, but Callie didn’t have the heart. Even if nothing else went wrong today, the die was cast. The press would report their news, and XRL would come off looking bad, and so would Callie. She wondered if they’d lose drivers over the whole fiasco.
Suddenly, her view was blocked by Derrick. “Seriously, Callie, do you think someone might be targeting the XRL?”
“Nah,” she drawled, refusing to go down that road. “I mean, sure, anything is possible, but why would someone want to sabotage our cars?”
He didn’t say anything for a
moment, Callie watching as Bill headed toward turn one. “To make you look bad.”
“We’ll they’ve done a good job.” She shook her head. “But we’re not a threat to anyone. We’re a fledgling racing organization with a lot of big ideas. It’s too early to consider us competition.”
“It’s never too early to consider anyone competition, especially in the cutthroat world of racing.”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “You’re kidding, right?”
When all he did was stare down at her, worry in his eyes, she couldn’t help but say, “You’ve watched one too many episodes of CSI.”
“I think today’s just been…strange.”
Compounded by the fact he’d asked her to move in with him yesterday—not that he’d mentioned it today. It was like the proverbial two-thousand-pound elephant in the room.
“When will you have the first car repaired?”
“Tomorrow. We’ll be staying late to fix the body. Mostly cosmetic damage. Engine is still sound, as is the frame. It’ll be nice to have two cars up and running. Maybe we’ll finish up early tomorrow.”
“Maybe,” he echoed. “If you don’t lose another car by the end of the day.”
“Don’t say that.”
As it turned out, nothing further happened. The sun slowly sank into the horizon, Callie having convinced herself by the end that it was all just a coincidence.
“You still sticking around afterward to work on the car Shane wrecked?” Derrick asked as everyone left the track.
“I am.”
“Then I’m here staying with you.”
Here it was, the move she’d been expecting all day.
“Derrick, about yesterday—”
“This has nothing to do with yesterday.”
“No?”
“I want to keep an eye on things.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I do,” he said, slipping closer to her. “Honestly, Callie. Something’s not right.”
Frankly, deep down inside, she thought the same thing too, but she didn’t want him to know that. “It’s all right. We’ve got things under control.”
“Doesn’t seem that way.”
Burning Rubber: Extreme Racing, Book 2 Page 18
