A variety of questions crowded into my brain. I turned to Holly. “Do we tell the police about this?”
“He doesn’t care.”
“But without a name or any proof, why would they believe us? ‘Hello, Mr. Police Officer, someone who says he’s a reporter—who stole the phone of a hit-and-run victim—says that fine, upstanding businessman over there is a crook.’”
“CYA, sugar. Cover you-know-what. Tell the cops. Better they think you’re crazy than you get in trouble later for withholding information. I’ll contact Detective Latham and see if we can talk to him before your stint.”
I pondered while she typed the message. I spoke again when she looked up. “Help me figure out what I need to ask this guy.”
She opened a notepad app on her phone. “Fire away.”
“What happened last night when he says someone tried to kill him? Who told him I’m the only trustworthy one here? What does he mean he wants my help seeing who’s here with that team? Am I supposed to give him names of who I see in their tent? I don’t know people. Besides, how does helping him with his article find the person who hurt Stuart.”
I paused to let her catch up. “Most of all, I want to know how he’s connected to Stuart. And why he cares.”
“That’s the big question.”
“What makes him sure it wasn’t an accident? Why does he think he’d be next? How did he see it happen? How did he know to contact me from Stuart’s phone? How did he know we were dating?”
She looked up. “Basically, tell us why we should help him.”
Colby jerked into motion, moving toward the front of the pit space and pulling on her gloves. I spotted the problem on the monitors: a Viper nosed into the tire wall at Turn 6. As I watched, the car rolled backward a few feet, then rocked forward and stopped. Thirty seconds later, when it became clear the Viper couldn’t get going on its own, the race went yellow—our first full-course caution. Our crew scrambled to ready more tires and prep fuel lines.
Two laps later, as the racecars were finally collected into a line behind the safety car, Holly nudged me. “Detective Latham can’t get to the pits right now, but he wants to know what’s going on—now he’s calling.” She answered her phone and mouthed “I’ll tell him” at me.
I nodded my thanks and stepped around the central pit cart to have a direct view of the 28 car’s pit box. Prototypes went past us, exiting pit lane after their stops. The lollipop waved, ready for our car. I focused on Colby, standing on the low pit wall next to Bubs, our driver-change assistant. I imagined breathing with her. I rehearsed the driver change sequence in my mind, as I knew she did.
Mike pulled the 28 car in and quickly climbed out. Colby was buckled up within ten seconds, and twenty-some seconds later, she was on her way. The crew gave each other high-fives and started cleaning up. I was diverted out to the walkway by a wave from Holly. She grimaced and handed me the phone.
“Detective Latham?” I asked.
“Ms. Reilly, you need to listen to me,” he bellowed. “Do not engage. Do you hear me? Do not engage with this person messaging you. Is that understood?”
“I understand you, Detective. We will contact you the moment we hear anything back from him—if we do. Okay?”
“That’s not quite—”
The noise from a Porsche exiting a nearby pit space obliterated whatever else Latham was going to say.
“We’ll be careful,” I promised. “And we’ll contact you immediately. Now I have to deal with my car.” I shook my head and handed the phone back to Holly. He thinks I need protection from text messages?
I crossed back to our tent, heading to the pit cart. I was one step below Mike as he climbed up the side to report to Jack and Bruce Kunze, our car chief for the 28 Corvette.
“How is it out there?” Bruce asked him.
Mike shook his head. “The traffic never ends—always something, someone, somewhere. It’s a nightmare—but I tell you, I bet the fans love it.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into the wrong kind of show,” Jack muttered.
Chapter Ten
3:50 P.M. | 22:20 HOURS REMAINING
Colby had a quiet first stint—escaping danger by inches when a prototype behind her went into the braking zone for Turn 1 too hot and spun into the runoff area.
I spent the hour with thankfully few interruptions, which gave me time to process the day. I started by checking in with Polly at the hospital—no news on Stuart. I tried to replace the fear and worry I felt for him with visualizations of his successful recovery. Then I mulled over the questions Detective Latham had asked after he broke the news, specifically, who had a grudge against Stuart.
I’d interpreted the question as “who’d want to kill Stuart?” I couldn’t answer that. But “who might be mad at him?” could be easier to consider, starting with anyone angry about not having a role in the new, combined series—whether that was a team owner, a driver, or a member of Series staff.
I sat down next to Holly on a cooler near the food. “I’m thinking about Grand-Am or ALMS people who didn’t make it to the new series and who might blame Stuart for it, since he was so involved in assigning new roles for USCC. Whatever happened to that Shane guy? I haven’t seen him around.”
“He’s here. Went to work for Wicked Oils, which mostly does support race stuff. When I saw him yesterday, he looked great. Said moving to a supplier was the best thing that ever happened to him.”
That’s one off the list. “What about…who was the guy in charge of sponsor stuff from the ALMS?”
“Jonathan Charles. I didn’t tell you about him. There was some last meeting of staff from both series, and—to hear Jonathan tell it—the guy who’d gotten Jonathan’s job gloated nonstop. Got in Jonathan’s face. Taunted him so much, Jonathan hauled off and punched him, then walked off the job then and there.”
“The merger of the two series was more contentious than I thought. Where’s Jonathan now?”
“No idea. You think he could be here?”
“Make a list of names for Latham, would you? Starting with his.”
She pulled out her phone. “We haven’t thought about sponsors or manufacturers.”
“I haven’t heard complaints, have you?”
“Other than the high-level manufacturer politics, nothing but small supplier wins and losses. Except the guy from Elias Tires has been stomping around mad he can’t run his tires this year.”
“He could in GTLM.” That was the only class where teams could choose their own tire supplier. All other classes ran a specified brand.
“He can’t find a partner there like he did in the ALMS GTC class last year.”
“That’s a technical decision, not anything Stuart did.”
Holly shrugged. “You asked. That’s all I’ve heard.”
“Back to staff, any idea how Tug accepted working for Stuart?”
“I don’t know, but he came up with his own assistant in record time.”
“Who is she?”
“She was Tug’s junior staffer in Grand-Am Operations last year, doing the grunt work. When Stuart got the big job, our showy friend Tug was demoted down to grunt, and Elizabeth was out of a job.”
I blinked at Holly. “She was on the spot to step in today. It’s been three or four hours since Stuart was hurt?”
“Guess she was still in town. Not that she looked excited to be back.” She paused. “Tug looked plenty pleased to step into Stuart’s shoes.”
“If he can.”
Holly snorted. “He thinks he can, that’s for sure. Speaking of capable…what do you think about Raul?”
I grinned at her. “What’s his story?”
“Seems like I’d better find out.” She pulled out her phone.
By the time Colby came in for a smooth, green-flag pit stop, collecting new tires and a full load
of fuel, I was ready to focus on the car. The “real” world of angry people and violent acts seemed much more unreal than the race in front of me. I handed my phone to Holly and spent half an hour watching Colby’s view out the windscreen via the in-car camera feed.
On my return from a run to the port-a-potty, my father, James Hightower Reilly III, was waiting for me at the entrance to our team tent. Our relationship was still tentative. It wasn’t something I wanted to deal with on race day.
Raised by my maternal grandparents after my mother died within days of my birth, I’d only met my father three years ago. We’d only become friendly in the last year. He was the twenty-years-older male version of me: short and slight, with black hair, blue eyes, and a pointy chin. But while my uniform was a firesuit, his was a suit and tie.
I spoke before my father could. “I’m in the stop window. I’ve got to get ready.”
“I know. I heard about Stuart, and I wanted to see how you were doing.” As the chairman and CEO of Frame Savings, James represented a major sponsor of the new United SportsCar Championship, and as such, he was up and down pit lane, in and out of team tents all race long.
He followed me to the back corner of the Sandham Swift tent, opposite the food tables, where Holly waited next to some open, plastic shelving. Mike and I usually had small lockers in one of the pit carts, but for this race, all drivers used temporary shelves for our gear, partly because Sandham Swift was fielding a dozen drivers, up from its regular four. In addition, the extra equipment required to service three Corvettes for twenty-four hours straight meant our crew needed a lot more tools and car parts on hand. Those occupied all the locker space in all three carts.
I took the bottle of water Holly had waiting for me and slugged down half of it in one go. I could lose as many as five pounds in sweat during a single stint. Overhydration was vital before I got in the car.
My father studied my face. “How are you handling Stuart’s situation, Kate?”
The concern in his eyes and voice made me feel like weeping for the first time in a couple hours. “Fine. I have to think about the car.” I sounded curt, bordering on rude, but I couldn’t afford to get emotional, not with my shift in the car coming up. I drank the rest of the water and set the empty bottle on my shelf, then inserted my earplugs and put tape over my ears to hold them in.
“If there’s anything I can do, please tell me,” James said.
I nodded at him, before pulling on my fire-retardant balaclava and tucking it into the neck of my firesuit. Despite my own statement, all I could think about was Stuart as I zipped up my firesuit and pressed the Velcro collar closed.
Holly took my head and neck system, or HANS, from me and slid it onto my shoulders. I paused with my helmet above my head. “James, you could find out what’s going on with Stuart. And if anyone knows why. Tell Holly. Please.”
“I’ll find out whatever I can.” He wished me well and left the tent.
I turned to Holly as I fastened my chinstrap. “Don’t tell me anything about Stuart while I’m out there.”
She knew what I meant. “Don’t think about it. It’s all going to be okay.”
Five minutes later, Holly interrupted my visualizations of the driver-change and the track by pointing to the monitors. The track feed showed a prototype high-centered on curbing at the outside of Turn 5. If the prototype couldn’t get off the curb, Race Control would throw a yellow flag to retrieve him.
As I grabbed my gloves, the double-yellow flew in the twilight, bringing out a full-course caution. I hurried across the pit space to Jack for last-minute instructions. Three steps up the side of the command center, and I was eye-to-eye with him.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “You ready to drive?”
“Ready to do my job.”
He looked back at the array of monitors above his head. “Not sure if it’s going to really rain or not.”
“You giving me slicks?”
“Slicks are ready. Racing line’s still dry. Be careful if you move offline.”
I stepped back down to the floor of the pit space and went around to the other side to check with Bruce, our car chief. He assured me the Corvette’s handling hadn’t changed much—only what I might have expected from a couple hours of running and a track growing cooler and damp. “But the traffic is brutal,” he added.
“How’d the prototype go off?”
“Someone must have laid down fluid, because four different cars slid off the road in the infield, but continued. The fifth got stuck.”
“Fluid, not rain?”
He shrugged. “Colby says not rain.”
Our crew was perched on the pit wall, tools and tires in hand. I pulled on my gloves as I hurried to join them. Bubs helped me step up on the adjacent metal bench and then onto the wall in the center of the crew lineup. He handed me my custom-molded seat insert. I took a deep breath then let it out slowly. Cleared my mind of everything but the Corvette C7.R and Daytona International Speedway. Visualized the driver-change process. Breathed deeply again.
The lollipop swung down, and I knew the car was coming down pit lane. I ran through the steps of our driver-change over and over, focusing on the car. Ready to leap into action.
It’s all going to be okay.
Holly had better be right.
Chapter Eleven
5:35 P.M. | 20:35 HOURS REMAINING
Colby stopped the car smoothly, turning off the engine and tilting the steering column up to give us space to get in and out. The car was already up on its jacks and fuel was flowing. She released her belts and hauled herself through the doorway Bubs had already opened. The near tire-changers finished their job as she pulled her seat insert clear of the car. They moved to the right side of the car, and I settled my own insert and climbed inside.
Bubs leaned in to help me fasten my five-point safety harness and plug in my radio cable and helmet air-conditioning hose. I lowered the steering column back into place. The car bounced down onto its tires—tire change done. Waiting on fuel.
Bubs snapped the window net in place and slammed the door shut. I heard Bruce’s voice. “Five more seconds.”
I tightened my belts quickly, ready with both feet on the pedals. Though Series regulations allow teams to keep cars running during pit stops, for safety reasons, we chose to turn off our Corvettes while fuel flows and sparks fly from tire changes. My finger rested on the ignition button.
A tug at the back of the car. The crew member at the front waved me on.
“Clear. Go, go, go.”
I was in motion as Bruce spoke. Push the button. Car starting. Throttle down, steer right out of the pit box. Check mirrors for other cars. Be sure the pit lane speed limiter was engaged. Tighten belts more.
Bruce’s voice in my ear again. “Radio check, Kate.”
I pushed the radio button on the steering wheel with my left thumb as I approached the end of pit lane. “Copy.”
“Great. Easy out of the pits. Remember that exit’s tricky, and you’ve got new tires on damp track.”
We’d seen plenty of drivers be overly ambitious on cold tires and run into the wall of the pit lane exit. I had the possibility of wet pavement on top of that. I was cautious.
Once out on track and in the lineup behind the pace car, I found the drink tube and inserted it into the front of my helmet. Pressed the button to make sure it worked. Pressed the radio button again. “Who ended up around me?”
“Ferrari jumped us in the pits,” Bruce reported. “BMW is P1, four cars in front of you.” I could see the BMW ahead, a couple prototypes between us. “That Ferrari in front of you is P2. You’re P3. Two prototypes behind you. The Porsche-Corvette-Porsche sandwich after them are P4 through P6.”
“Lap times?” I asked, as I turned left through Turn 6 and swung up onto the banking of the oval part of the track.
“Hard to tell fo
r sure with so much traffic, but Ferraris seem to have the speed by a couple tenths, though the Porsches and factory Corvettes have shown flashes. We’re in there. Mike and Colby held their own.”
“Copy, thanks.” I usually knew our competition’s lap times even before I got in the car, but I didn’t get to those today. Not with Stuart in the hospital fighting for his life and text messages from strangers.
Stop it! Nothing but the car! I yelled at myself inside my helmet.
I wove in and out of the Bus Stop. Keyed the mic. “It’s the most damp on the backstretch, but I wouldn’t call it wet.”
A new voice on the radio. Male. “Kate, your spotter here. To confirm, you want ten lengths’ warning of overtaking cars?”
“Yes, please, Cooper.”
“And you want ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ as indicators, rather than ‘right’ and ‘left,’ correct?”
“You are correct, Spotter. Thanks.”
Cooper and Millie had spoken with all of the 28 car’s drivers earlier in the weekend to understand what each of us wanted in terms of warning about other activity on the track. A couple teams had started using a new radar system that integrated with our rearview camera displays to warn drivers of overtaking cars. Though Jack had investigated it, he hadn’t sprung for the new system yet. We were using the original, low-tech spotting method: humans with binoculars, stationed up high.
“Copy that, be careful out there,” Cooper returned. I knew he was standing on top of the ten-story building in the cool air and mist—or even rain—with no cover. It wasn’t only the drivers who worked hard in a twenty-four hour endurance race.
We’d cross our fingers for clear skies and sun tomorrow morning, but first we had a dozen or more hours of cool, and possibly wet, night ahead of us. The stadium lights had been turned on an hour ago and were already helping illuminate the pavement all the way around the track.
Bruce radioed. “Race Control says going green in two laps.”
“I’m ready.” I pulled my belts tighter. “Who’s in the prototypes near me?” I knew the drivers in the Ferrari, BMW, Corvette, and at least one of the Porsches were professionals, but I wasn’t sure about the faster prototypes.
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