Burning Rubber: Extreme Racing, Book 2

by Pamela Britton

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said softly, drawing her attention back to him.

  “Am I? See, I think I’m keeping the two of us from making an even bigger mistake.”

  The words were hard to say though. He was her dream come true. A man she’d watched on TV for years. A man who, unbelievably, found her not only attractive, but worthy of love. Alas, she knew she could never have him. Not if she wanted to live life on her own terms. She refused to be like her mother. So many regrets. So many what ifs.

  “Maybe in a few years.”

  “No,” he said quickly and instantly. “I’m not a patient guy.”

  They’d pulled up in front of his hotel. Callie wondered for a moment how he’d get into his room. He didn’t have anything but his firesuit on.

  “Then I guess this is it.”

  Lines bracketed his mouth. “I guess so.” He opened the car door, but before he slid out, he said. “Take care of yourself, Callie.”

  She nodded. “You too.”

  She knew this was it. He was not the sort of man to beg. She knew that, had to look away to keep him from seeing the tears forming in her eyes.

  You’re doing the right thing. You’re saving both of you from future heartache.

  But it was too late, she realized.

  Her heart was already broken.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was all over the news the next morning.

  Callie woke up with her eyes stuck together thanks to a never-ending crying jag. She’d ended up going back to the track yesterday and one glimpse at Bill’s car had been all it took to send her running to the trailer. It hadn’t helped matters that she’d been almost immediately interrupted. The coroner had wanted to talk to her and so she’d been forced to choke back her grief until she’d regained the privacy of her hotel room. The moment the door had closed behind her, she’d collapsed.

  Now this.

  She’d known it might happen. What she didn’t expect was the crowd of media personnel in the front lobby.

  “Callie Monroe, what do you think caused the explosion yesterday?” someone asked, thrusting a recorder in front of her face.

  “Have you spoken to Bill Cavanaugh’s family?” She was nearly blinded by the light on the television camera.

  “Do you think you might be to blame?”

  She almost stumbled. Did she think she might have killed Bill? Yes. There was no use denying it. Sure, it would be nice to blame a faceless saboteur, but that seemed far-fetched. Besides, one of the first rules of engineering was the simplest explanation was usually the answer you were looking for.

  “I have no comment.” Where the hell everyone had come from, and what in the hell did they want with her? Surely they had some real news to report.

  “There you are,” Veronica said, ambushing her from the left, even though Callie had no idea where she’d come from. “We’ll be right back.” She turned Callie toward a hallway with a conference room off to one side. That’s where she’d been hanging out.

  She slammed the door before turning on her. “Why in the hell weren’t you answering your phone?”

  It’s time you started standing up to her.

  Yes, Derrick, it was.

  “I didn’t feel like it.” She tipped her chin up.

  “Ex-cuse me?”

  “I might have killed a driver thanks to something I did wrong. Honestly, Veronica, there was nothing you had to say that couldn’t wait until today.”

  Her boss’s mouth opened and closed a few times. Callie noticed she’d painted it red to match her nails. Actually, she was clothed in a skin-tight suit that just so happened to be red also. Callie thought she looked like a giant flame.

  “Don’t you dare grow a spine on me now,” Veronica all but spat.

  Callie drew back, stunned by the venom in her voice. “Okay, Veronica. When would you like me to grow a spine then?”

  The step Veronica took toward her managed to convey both wrath and determination. “Shut up and listen to me.” She leaned toward her at the same time she crossed her arms. “Yes, you might have caused Bill’s car to explode. But that’s not how this is going to play out with the press. You’re going to claim we’ve been the victim of sabotage. That this wasn’t your fault. That for several weeks now I’ve suspected someone was out to get us.”

  “Have you?”

  She held her hand up impatiently. “But that I couldn’t prove anything. You’re going to tell them that, in your mind at least, it’s been proven, and that the person who did this will pay. If you can add in a few tears, so much the better.”

  “You want me to lie then.”

  “Lying?” she shrugged. “Who said anything about lying? I have suspected a saboteur. So right now I need you to be a team player. Go out there. Express your condolences over Bill’s loss, but do not blame yourself. If you infer that you might be responsible, it will put the X-TREME Racing League in a vulnerable potion. Especially if this goes to court.”

  Whatever else she’d been about to say was interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “Veronica Adams?” a bald-headed man in a black business suit asked. He flashed something Callie couldn’t see. A badge, obviously, but what kind?

  “Yes,” her boss asked, but she didn’t step back from the door.

  “I need to speak to you and Callie Monroe about what happened yesterday.”

  Veronica didn’t say anything at first. Callie stepped forward. “I’m Callie Monroe.” The man nodded. “Sam Mathers.” He flashed a badge. “I’m heading up the homicide investigation.”

  “Homicide?” Veronica gasped.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the man said. “Preliminary tests have revealed the presence of an explosive substance. Bill Cavanaugh’s death wasn’t an accident, it was a murder.”

  Veronica whirled toward her at the same time she stepped back from the door to allow Sam Mathers into the room. “See. I told you.”

  Callie went numb. Murder? “But why would someone kill Bill?”

  “We don’t know, ma’am,” Sam answered, “but I’ll need the two of you to come down to the station and answer some questions.”

  “Sure.”

  “We’re about to give a press conference.”

  “I understand that. I’ll wait until you finish. But if you don’t mind, we’d like to keep a lid on the murder investigation for now.”

  Murder.

  The word seemed so harsh. Like an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence.

  “But why?” Veronica asked. “The press needs to know what’s going on. Bill’s family—”

  “Has been notified,” Sam said. “The media can wait.”

  He wouldn’t brook any arguments, Callie could tell. He withdrew a tiny notebook from his pocket. “But before you go out there, you mind me asking you a few questions?”

  Veronica was all business now. She sat down on the edge of the conference room table and affecting a look of helpful interest. “Sure.”

  “You too, Ms. Monroe,” the officer said.

  “Whatever I can do to help.” Now that the shock had worn off, the relief she felt was almost instantaneous. It wasn’t her fault. Thank God it wasn’t her fault.

  “Do you know why someone would try and kill Mr. Cavanaugh?”

  “No reason whatsoever,” Callie answered, Veronica glancing at her first before nodding in agreement. “But it wasn’t necessarily Bill the killer was targeting.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t have a driving order posted and so nobody could have known Bill would be the first one out.”

  Sam frowned. “Had you posted an order before?”

  “Every day. But I was hoping to get an early start yesterday so I told our team to put in whoever showed up first.”

  Sam wrote something down in his notepad. “And who was first in the previous days?”

  Callie stiffened a little. “Derrick Derringer for one.”

  Could Derrick have been the target? Shock tur
ned to electricity at the notion.

  “And before that?”

  “James Mattos,” Callie provided.

  Sam stopped writing. “So you’re telling me there was no way of knowing for sure who would be sitting in the car that exploded yesterday.”

  She shook her head. “We were running two cars also. Either of the two drivers could have picked a car.”

  The notebook was slapped closed. “Okay, terrific. That’ll do it for now. I’ll want you to come down to the station as well.”

  Both Callie and Veronica nodded. Callie felt like she was in episode of CSI. “Sure.”

  “But like I said, keep the murder investigation under wraps for now.”

  “When can we let the public know?” Veronica said.

  “Tomorrow or the next day.”

  Veronica seemed pleased. Pleased. As if Bill’s death was a part of her master plan, but that was Veronica for you. The woman didn’t have feelings.

  “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to watch your press conference.”

  “No problem,” Veronica added, scooting away from the table to open the door. “We’ll go do that right now. Callie, why don’t you let me speak first?”

  Callie didn’t care who did what. She was still reeling from Sam’s revelation. Some was out to sabotage the X-TREME Racing League. That had to be what was going on because the killer had to know anybody could have slid into the driver’s seat of the rigged car. Anybody.

  What followed was a half hour of pure torture of standing there and listening to Veronica, and then her own turn at being grilled. When she finished, there was no reprieve from the headache quickly building in intensity. She was forced to sit for an additional two hours while the local police department asked the same questions over and over again.

  Who would want the X-TREME Racing League to fail?

  Who had access to the race cars?

  Had she seen anything strange the night before?

  By the time she was free to return to the race track, all she wanted to do was climb into a hole and cry. She didn’t. When she drove through the road course’s entrance, however, she faced a whole other set of horrors. The burned-out hulk of the race car was still in place, yellow crime-scene tape strung around it. A few more reporters were at the track, Callie offering a crisp, “No comment.”

  “This is crazy,” Chet said.

  “I know,” Callie replied.

  “You must be going crazy.”

  “To tell you the truth, I just want to go home.”

  They couldn’t leave, and it was torture hanging around with nothing to do. The police had asked them to touch nothing while they gathered evidence. So Callie hid herself in the front of the hauler. She told herself she needed to hold it together. That she needed to think about Bill’s wife and what she was dealing with. Still, thinking about Bill made her think about Derrick, and her decision to let him go.

  It killed her.

  He was a good man. Kind to both her and race fans alike. He’d looked beneath her tomboyish façade and seen the woman she really was.

  A woman who didn’t want children.

  He’d been devastated by the revelation. If he’d been willing to overlook her other flaws, he hadn’t been able to overlook that.

  So she pushed on, though it took all her strength to get through the next few days. She focused on helping the police as best she could. She was interviewed four more times, and even though she knew she didn’t kill Bill Cavanaugh, every time she sat down with police it felt as if they thought she did. She heard all the drivers were interviewed too, which was probably why drivers started dropping out of the XRL like flies. Who wanted to be part of a racing organization that couldn’t even guarantee your safety off the track? Then, of course, there was Bill’s funeral. She thought long and hard about whether or not she should attend, but in the end she knew she had little choice. Bill had been one of the XRL’s drivers. He’d died while in one of her race cars. She owed it to his family to be there.

  So she went.

  So, too, did half the racing community…or so it seemed. Bill had driven for years on the West Coast and so he had a vast cadre of friends, many of whom Callie recognized from her years trying to work her way into the stock car racing circuit. Still, Callie was shocked to see Derrick there, although in hindsight she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Derrick might be the most recognizable person to arrive at the graveside services, but he didn’t act like it. He shook the hands of his fellow XRL drivers, and when Bill’s wife arrived, he quietly spoke to her, his eyes clearly full of sorrow and compassion. She had to look away.

  It was a crystal-clear day, the kind of morning that dawned rarely in coastal California which was where Bill was from. The sky was a blue so deep it looked almost purple. Around them lay a thick carpet of grass and tall trees in the midst of losing their foliage. Yellow and brown leaves dotted grave sites, in some instances the tops of headstones. Callie knew this because she found herself looking anywhere but at Maria, Bill’s wife. Sooner or later she would need to offer the woman her condolences, but she could hold off for now. Unfortunately, Callie knew all too well how these services worked. Having buried both her parents she’d spent more than her fair share of time beneath similar tents. Knew all too well what it was like to sit in the front row, staring at a glistening casket, all the while trying hard not to cry.

  “You going to sit down?”

  So engrossed had she been at staring at the ground she hadn’t spotted Derrick’s approach.

  “No.” She clenched her hands in sadness. “I think I’ll hang back.”

  She had to take a deep breath before looking into his eyes. She was shocked when their gazes me. Tears. Not right at the moment, but it was evident he’d shed some on Bill’s behalf.

  “I’m so sorry, Callie.”

  She had no idea what he was sorry for. She wasn’t the one whose husband had died. She wasn’t the one who had to deal with the death of a loved one. Who would forever more have to think of that loved one in the past tense. Who would be reminded of that person on a daily basis by the most mundane things. The color of a car. A pair of pants. A photo. Those were the worst of all. She purposely didn’t carry a picture of her mom and dad. It hurt too much. Still. Even though her dad had been dead for four years, her mother for two.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help—”

  “No.” She shot the words out quickly and sharply. “I’m fine. It’s Maria and her children you should be sorry for.”

  He stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the tent and Bill’s relatives, who were in the midst of taking a seat. Someone had placed a bouquet of flowers on Bill’s casket. They reminded her of the ones she’d selected for her mother. Did funeral parlors across the world use the same florist? Or the same floral designer?

  “How are…things?”

  He smelled good. She’d missed that scent, she realized.

  “They’re going fine.”

  He glanced back at the tent, as if ensuring the services hadn’t started yet. “Do they have anyone in custody?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Motive?”

  She shook her head.

  He moved out from in front of her then, faced Maria and her family. “It’s just a damn shame. What kind of sick person kills another human being?”

  Callie had asked herself the same question a multitude of times.

  “And, of course, I’m sure it’s scared off a number of your drivers.”

  “It has.” She wanted to ask if he was one of them, but she was too chicken. If he dropped out of the XRL that was his own, personal choice; she would hear about is sooner or later.

  “And then you’ve got Veronica milking it for all it’s worth. I can barely pass a TV without spotting her on some show or another.”

  He was right. What was even creepier was the way Veronica had insisted tickets to their first race be put on sale that week. Callie had thought she was nuts. But the craziest t
hing of all was the way those tickets were selling. It was almost as if the American public hoped to see another exploding car when they launched the XRL. It made Callie sick. She’d wanted Veronica to cancel their first race, but her boss would hear nothing about it.

  “Where is she, by the way?” Derrick asked. “I would think playing the part of the sympathetic bystander would be right up her alley. I’m surprised she’s not here in a black hat and wearing widow’s weeds.”

  She almost laughed. Almost. Laughter was hard to come by these days. “She doesn’t like funerals.”

  Neither did Callie.

  “You would think she could look past her personal dislikes to support the wife of one of her drivers.”

  “You would think,” Callie said, her eyes fixing on the tow-headed little boy standing next to Maria. William. That was the child’s name. He was clutching a teddy bear as if terrified it, too, would disappear forever from his life.

  Callie’s breath hitched in her chest.

  “It’s just a shame,” Derrick said again.

  “Thanks for coming,” Callie said, turning away before Derrick could see how close she was to losing control of her emotions. She knew exactly how that little boy felt.

  “Callie, wait.” She pulled up, but didn’t turn to face him.

  “I just wanted to say I’m here if you need me.”

  She gave him her profile; she worried about what he might see in her eyes. “Thank you. But I’ll be fine on my own.”

  She set off. He didn’t follow her. Thank God he didn’t follow her, Callie thought as she took position beneath a giant elm tree. Although if she were honest there was a part of her that wished he had followed. That he would stand by her side during the next hour. That he would hold her hand.

  Alas, she was all alone.

  Just how you wanted it.

  Yes, but she hadn’t expected to feel so, so…empty. God, she couldn’t believe how lonely she felt. Even the other drivers gave her a wide berth. As did the members of the XRL who’d shown up: Chet, Kathy, Jerry. They were all with their spouses or families, and for a moment—a brief instant—Callie longed to have a family of her own, but it was a fleeting moment of wistfulness. She was used to being alone. It didn’t hurt as much when people left you if you were alone.