Ignoring how he had captured my left arm and was bending it up behind my back, I started swinging low with my right. After a few useless efforts, I tried something else. Pulling forward, I slumped down and pushed my right hand out, my arm almost straight. Then with every bit of strength I could gather, I threw my elbow back—and connected with his throat.
Marcus gave a choking cry and doubled over, releasing me. I couldn’t hear the track noise for the hammering of my heart and the voice in my head shrieking “Run!” I took off without a backward glance, rounding the front corner of the paddock and heading for the ALMS compound—and ran smack into someone. We both went down on the grass in front of the trailer that sold tee-shirts and hats. I was panicked, sure Marcus was still coming after me, and I scrambled to my feet, tripping over whoever it was I’d bowled over and starting to run off again.
Hands grabbed at me. Voices spoke. I batted them away to keep running—and then the fog cleared. I’d found Detective Jolley, my father, and Stuart, who was picking himself up off the ground. I was safe.
“Stuart, sorry—but we’ve—I’ve—” I was incoherent, clutching his arm to help him stand up and pulling him to stand in front of me. “I—he’s coming—”
Jolley stepped closer. “Kate?”
Stuart put an arm around my shoulder. My head knew I was safe, but my body didn’t. I shook, feeling weak and hating it. I could have cried from relief.
“Kate,” Stuart said. “What and who?”
I pointed a trembling finger just as Marcus dashed around the corner of the sales trailer and stopped short in front of us.
Stuart shifted to stand in front of me, a physical barrier. Jolley looked stern and turned to the newcomer.
Marcus made the best of things. He smiled at me, and I was afraid I was the only one to see it was more snarl than warmth. “You’re OK, Kate? You seemed so upset. I thought I’d catch up with you and see if you were all right.” He looked at Jolley and my father and nodded. “Since you’re in capable hands, I’ll just see you later.” He gave a jaunty wave and turned to leave.
Jolley stepped forward and stopped him. “Just a minute, there, son. What’s this about?”
Marcus turned back, grim smile still in place. “Why, I don’t know. I saw Kate take off at a dead run from her pit stall, and I wanted to see if she was feeling all right.”
“I was running from you, because you killed Wade!” I ducked behind Stuart at the look I got in response.
Marcus turned the smile to Jolley again. “She’s obviously hysterical. I don’t understand any of this. Wade was my dear friend.”
They weren’t going to believe him, were they? And let him get away? I knew I sounded as unhinged as he claimed, but I couldn’t stop myself. “He was your friend until he dumped you. Then you killed him because he wasn’t going to give you everything he’d promised.”
Marcus’ color rose, and his smile started to slip, even as he denied my accusations.
I was being cruel, and I didn’t like it—but I remembered the panic of him grabbing me, and I spoke again. “Driving with Wade for Sandham Swift—he didn’t mean that. Telling you that you were a good driver. He was lying to you! He lied to everyone. Wade promised you the world to get back at your father. Stringing you along. You couldn’t handle it, could you? Your ‘dear friend’ was lying to you!”
Marcus cracked. His beautiful face turned ugly as his mouth twisted into a snarl and his eyes narrowed into slits. He lunged toward me, shouting, “You bitch!”
As soon as Marcus moved, Stuart swung me out of the way. My father helped Jolley grab Marcus, and Jolley cuffed his hands behind his back. Marcus still struggled to reach me, ranting. “Just like that lying shit, Wade. Think you can all use me? Lie to my face? Well, I showed him, and I’ll show you, too.”
Jolley got him subdued, though Marcus was red-faced, breathing heavily. Stuart led all of us to the ALMS trailer area, where Jolley held Marcus outside, waiting for an officer and a car to come down from the track entrance. I cowered inside the tented hospitality area. The last view I had of Marcus Trimble was through the back window of the cop car. The pretty face was blank; the eyes burned with anger. I shivered again.
“Kate?” Stuart held a chair out for me. I sat, and my father handed me a bottle of Gatorade. I’d forgotten he was there, and I looked at him in surprise. His expression was somber. Worried? Disapproving? I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t really care. I drank some of the sugary sports drink.
Jolley sat across from me. Stuart and my father sat to my right and left.
Stuart looked at his watch. “We’ve only got five minutes before the race ends, then just three minutes before it’s chaos here.” He gestured to the Winner’s Circle, adjacent to the trailer. I raised my head. The race. I wondered where Mike was. It seemed a lifetime ago I’d been concerned with a podium finish—and a lifetime before that I’d been driving.
“We’ll be quick for the moment,” Jolley decided. “Kate, what happened?”
As Stuart turned aside occasionally to murmur into his secret agent radio, I explained, starting with reluctantly giving up on Jim and Trent as murder suspects, gossip and a video making me think Mike was the murderer, wondering about Jack, and finally realizing it was Marcus. Then, of course, my escape.
Jolley shook his head. “You were guessing?”
“Sort of. Everything I’d learned about Wade indicated he’d never do anything nice for anyone. He was mean and nasty to everyone, in return for real or imagined insults. It didn’t make sense that he was being so generous and helpful to a guy who was younger, more attractive, and had more money. Even if Wade could drive better than Marcus could.”
I could still see the hate on Marcus’ face. “First I saw his expression. Then he knew something only Mike and Wade and the video guy knew—that I’d only heard five minutes before. And something clicked. I didn’t believe it until he started coming after me. Then I ran, and he grabbed me.” I shivered again. “That sealed the deal.”
I wouldn’t ever forget the terror of Marcus, someone who’d taken another person’s life, grabbing me. The rage and murderous intent, aimed at me. I crossed my arms on the table and dropped my head on them. Took three deep breaths, which didn’t help as much as they usually did. Tried not to weep with relief at being safe.
Stuart put a hand on my shoulder.
Jolley sighed. “You really shouldn’t have done any of that, you know, Kate. You could have been hurt.”
I sat up. “I got that. A little late. Sorry.”
“Well, you flushed him out for us, but we were on our way to ask him some questions.”
“You were? You knew for sure it wasn’t Jim or Trent? Jack? Or Mike?”
“Jim and Trent both had solid alibis. We’d cleared Jack, who was here at the time, but only briefly to pick something up. Mike told us he’d been here, and though the circumstances were suggestive, we didn’t seriously suspect him.”
“You knew about Mike? But he didn’t tell me—”
Jolley raised an eyebrow.
“Right. You’re the police, not me.”
He nodded. “We thought Marcus or his father might have a motive, because Paul Trimble’s initials were in Wade’s notebook so many times, and we were checking on the cars the guard at the front gate reported seeing. One of them matched Paul Trimble’s, but we didn’t know yet if Marcus could have been driving it.”
“The second silver Taurus? I didn’t know what they were driving, but he and his father were sharing, and Marcus had it that night.”
“You found out about the cars, and you spoke with them about it?”
I frowned. “I didn’t know they were snakes I was poking at.”
Jolley looked exasperated, then amused. “You might yet make a good detective, Kate, you just need to be more careful—and have some t
raining, maybe.”
I summoned up a smile. “You’re pretty sure now I didn’t do it?”
He laughed. “I think you’re off the hook. And thanks.” He held out his hand for me to shake. “Let’s not do this again.”
Extra loud voices on the PA system and cheers from the crowds signaled the end of the race. I jumped up and ran to the large television monitor in the corner. All it showed was the overall winner, the LMP1, taking its victory lap and workers at each corner waving every flag in their arsenal. Usually, I loved that about the end of races. All those flags waving, corner workers saluting the drivers and teams. But today, damn it, I just wanted to know how we’d finished.
Chapter Fifty-two
Twenty minutes later I stood at the edge of the Winner’s Circle, watching the presentation for the LMP1 prototypes, the biggest and fastest class.
The race had just ended when Paul Trimble arrived. Jolley had moved to intercept him and spoken with him quietly while Paul crumbled, his face in his hands. Shortly after that, Jolley led him away, with a nod over his shoulder for us.
That was the last I’d seen of Detective not-so-Jolley, though he’d called me a week later to tell me my theory was correct. Marcus was retrieving a new helmet from his car when he saw Mike and Wade fight about Wade trying to oust Mike from the team. Marcus saw Mike storm off and pressed Wade to deliver on his promise to add Marcus to the team. Wade laughed in Marcus’ face, told him he had no talent and wouldn’t ever be a real driver. Then told him to get lost.
Marcus couldn’t face the disintegration of his dreams. Enraged at Wade’s deception, Marcus had bashed Wade over the head with his new helmet and driven away, not knowing or caring if he was leaving Wade to die—but aware of the possibility. “In the hands of fate” was how Marcus put it, according to Jolley.
Furthermore, Jolley—after reprimanding me for not telling him about the incident—said Marcus copped to searching my room for Wade’s notebook, stealing the photocopies and money, and leaving the note, as well as trying to get in a second time when he thought I was asleep. All because he thought he was in the notebook. That freaked me out all over again when I heard it. Marcus Trimble: as unstable as he was attractive.
Jolley also filled in the gaps of the Jim Siddons and Trent Maeda story. The two men had bonded months prior over not getting what each felt he deserved. Trent had a gambling and cash-flow problem and felt he should be a partner in Victor Delray’s ECU business. Jim had a “not winning enough” problem and felt he should be getting better rides. Trent wanted payback, plus the kickback he’d get for driving customers to a competitor. Jim wanted the field cleared so he was more likely to win.
After Trent bullied a programmer at Delray to write the code, Jim got his cousin, the SPEED cameraman who looked like my high school friend, to activate it, disrupting the ECUs, affecting the balance of a car already at the limit in a corner, and often making them spin. Not long before his death, Wade discovered their secret and demanded they sabotage cars of his choosing also.
The day of the race, Delray’s engineers and Stuart’s IT guru had monitored networks and found the intruder. When the cops confronted the cameraman, he pointed to Trent. When Trent was arrested, he fingered Jim. The cops, Series, and Victor Delray had all the proof they needed of Jim and Trent’s cheating and sabotage, but the duo was in the clear for murder. I’d discovered that for myself.
Just after Paul and Jolley had left the ALMS area after the race, Jack stormed in, Mike, Tom, and Aunt Tee trailing behind him. He’d been breathing fire and had torn into me, the irresponsible temporary driver who’d run off and left the team. I’d taken it, feeling if I didn’t deserve that dressing-down, I deserved censure for other actions throughout the weekend—like suspecting him briefly of murder. But when Stuart stepped in and explained, Jack turned off the anger in the blink of an eye and regarded me silently. Then he’d put his hands on my shoulders. “Sorry, kid. You did good.” He’d given me a quick hug and yelled at us to get to the Winner’s Circle, pronto.
I’d followed, but only after speaking with two people.
My father approached me as Jack left. “Katherine,” he’d begun, looking at his hands. “I was worried.”
I still didn’t want that the responsibility or burden. But I’d looked at him and seen something of myself for the first time. I put my hand on his arm. “Call me Kate. I’m not ready just yet, but we’ll talk someday.”
He’d nodded at me, smiled, and walked away.
I’d stopped in front of Stuart before I left. “Stuart.”
He held up a finger and spoke into his radio.
I waited.
“Sorry, Kate. A little cleanup.”
“Listen, thanks. For being there.”
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“Don’t give me that look. Thanks for catching me and warning me and having my back.”
He kept on with the look.
I threw my hands up. “Whatever. See you later.”
Stuart burst out laughing and grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Sorry, Kate, it’s so much fun to wind you up.”
It was my turn to look at him blankly. Stuart Telarday with a sense of humor? That was proof: on this Fourth of July weekend, the entire world had officially turned on its head.
Stuart put his hands on my shoulders. “Kate. You’re tough and smart. Just keep being careful.” He gave me a quick, firm kiss on the lips, and I went numb.
He released me. “And you’re a hell of a racecar driver.”
The emcee snapped me out of my reverie when he finished with the LMP2 class presentations and started to call up the GT1s. Our class.
“In third place, after a hard fought battle: the Vance Racing Saleen!” The two drivers and team owner trooped up to the podium, accepted their trophies, posed for photos, and moved to the third step.
“In second place, after a weekend of tragedy and new beginnings: the Sandham Swift Corvette! Mike Munroe and gutsy newcomer, Kate Reilly!”
Smiling so wide my cheeks hurt, I followed Mike to the top step of the podium, waving at the cheering crowd. We accepted our trophies and held them over our heads for the photos. Then we moved to the second step as the Number 63 factory Corvette was called up for first place.
I looked at Mike beside me and smiled. Someday, I’d have to explain to him that for a few awful minutes, I’d suspected him of murder. But that would keep.
The first place presentation was done, and we each shook hands with every other driver. Then we posed for photos with trophies overhead.
Next, Jack was called up for a trophy given to the top private team. It was during those photos that Jack looked down at me. “Whadddya say, kid? Want to do this for the rest of the season with us?”
He laughed at my shock and elation. “Good. Enjoy the champagne.”
It began to sink in as we took the group shot with the flying confetti. I’d done it. Proven myself. Gotten a ride. I looked at the red, white, and blue paper squares flying through the air and thought I was flying higher than any of them.
My euphoria broke loose the second Mike sprayed me with champagne. I’d been slow to grab my bottle, but I made up for it. I picked it up and chugged a few mouthfuls, shoving my arms in the air and yelling. That was my moment. My celebration. My incredible ride, my outrageous weekend, my promising season.
Then I shook the hell out of the bottle and did my best to douse the five guys there with me on the podium. I might be female, but I was no pushover.
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