by Claire Adams
“Get in the car,” she says. “It’s on.”
Without waiting for me, she walks around to the passenger’s door. I don’t tell her I just had her bucket seat put in earlier today. Usually, it’s in the shop to save weight.
She gets in and closes the door after her. I can see her through the front window trying to figure out the racing harness, and I can’t wait to see how she’s going to react when we start going.
I open the driver’s side door and get in. While I’m getting my harness on, I’m telling her, “Now, this is going to be a little bit louder than the Galaxie. I’ve got some earplugs taped to where the glove box used to be.”
“You gutted this thing,” she says. “Why?”
“It’s to save weight,” I tell her.
“So it’s an inertia thing, then? If it’s heavier, it’ll take more power to get it moving and keeping it moving?”
“Exactly.”
“What else did you do to it?”
“How much time do you have?”
I notice she hasn’t reached for the earplugs yet. That’s likely to change in about two seconds.
Sliding the key into the ignition, I say, “Are you ready?”
“Wait,” she says, “if the car’s going to be so loud you think I need earplugs, how am I going to hear what you’re saying? This is supposed to be a lesson, right?”
“I’ll slow it down when I need to tell you something,” I answer. “You know, assuming the po-po aren’t coming up my tailpipe. Mostly, I just want you to have a point of reference, so you’ll know what I’m talking about when it’s time for you to get behind the wheel.”
I turn the key and the engine, which took almost a year of winning race after race to afford, roars to life.
Kate’s reaching for the earplugs.
“We’re not going to use the flatbed today,” I tell her. “We’re just going to go. That’s going to make this a lot more dangerous because if anyone sees me pulling out or pulling in here, there’s a good chance they find the car and with the shop next door, there’s a good chance they’d find me. We’re going to need to start out fast. Once we get some distance between us and the junkyard, I can slow it down and we can start.”
She nods and then puts the earplugs in her ears.
“Did you get your harness on all right?” I ask, looking over at her, trying not to spend too much time just looking at her breasts. “Hold on. Right in the middle, right above your heart,” I tell her. It comes off better than breasts would have. “You’ve got that flipped around.”
She fixes the buckle and looks down, checking for anything else. I already know there’s not, so I ease off the clutch.
We go slowly through the junkyard. Right now, the car is loud, but once I give it any kind of gas, it’s going to be waking up roadkill for about half a mile in every direction.
I picked a day when the junkyard was closed, but it’s always possible Davis, the guy who runs the junkyard, is around here somewhere. As far as I know, the only instruction Maye ever gave him on the topic was simply to stay away from that part of the yard.
“All right,” I yell. “We’re about to come out into the open; are you ready?”
Kate wraps her fingers around the front of her harness and nods.
My foot comes down on the gas pedal just as we’re hitting tarmac and the tires spin before biting.
Kate is either screaming or squealing next to me, but I can’t ease off until I’m well out of the area. Maye would kill me if I got caught in this thing so close to her shop.
As soon as I’m on the road and pointed in the right direction, I hit my gas and the speedometer’s showing one hundred mph before we get to the end of the long block.
Right now, I’m on a road heading away from town, but in about three miles, there’s going to be a long curve to the left that will take me back to civilization.
I really am going to show and tell Kate everything she wants—and needs—to know about what’s about to happen. At the same time, though, I’d be lying if this wasn’t intended to give her a decent scare.
Easing off the accelerator, I slow us down for the bend ahead. It’s gradual enough, and I made damn sure the Chevelle has more responsive steering than the Galaxie, but looking down, the needle is sitting right at one-fifty.
I tap the brakes and double-clutch down to third gear as we drop beneath the one-hundred mark.
“A lot of people get into this without knowing what they’re getting themselves into,” I yell, hoping she can hear me over the engine and through her earplugs. “That’s not going to happen with you.”
“What do you mean?” she shouts back.
“Once a cop’s seen your car on the street, he’s going to remember it,” I answer. “You may get one race, maybe even two or three before you roll by a light bar, but nobody does this without getting chased every once in a while. The more you do it, the more cops are going to know your car.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to make some new friends in town,” I answer.
“In town?” she protests.
We’re reaching the end of the long curve and, as the road straightens in front of us, my foot is back on the gas.
I wait until we’re passing one-seventy-five on the speedometer before I glance at Kate out of the corner of my eye. Her knuckles are white, and her mouth is open wide as she lets out a little scream every time I correct course.
That’s probably enough.
I start slowing down, and I’m going over my prepared “don’t feel bad, it’s really not for everyone,” speech when I hear something else.
“What are you doing?” she’s shouting. “Go faster!”
I glance down at the speedometer. The needle’s still on the right side of one-hundred.
It looks like I might have stumbled across the real deal here. I’ve had some pretty hardened guys chicken out way before we got this far.
One of the things that Mick made me promise before he started unloading all of his knowledge on the subject was that if I ever taught someone anything about racing, I’d start with something like this.
For me, it was a run to the state line and back averaging over one-hundred-fifty in Mick’s old Mustang. That may sound like a gentler introduction, but Mick’s never been that good with a wheel. He can press the pedals just fine, but every time he’d even make an adjustment, he’d nearly lose control. It was kind of a relief when he sold it.
Kate’s getting it easy.
There are some things I’ll want to say that are going to require me to slow down a little before we come all the way back around to town, but for now, I decide to indulge her.
As I apply more pressure onto the gas pedal, Kate’s her hands are in the air as she’s howling, “Woo!” I’m just trying to keep a straight face as we hit one-eighty.
When this girl comes out of her shell, she really comes out of her shell.
The turn’s coming up in about a mile, though, so I start slowing down again.
We make the turn doing about forty and I keep it slow for a minute.
“All right,” I tell her. “The first thing you need to do when you see lights behind you is not panic. You panic and you’re going to make a mistake. It’d be better to just pull over at that point.”
“How do I not panic?” she asks. “What’s the trick?”
“It’s just something you’ve got to get used to,” I tell her. “Are you ready for some company?”
She nods.
When we come around the corner and see the building with eight or nine patrol cars in the lot, though, her fingers curl back around her harness. I hadn’t told her we’d be driving past the highway patrol’s station.
“Here we go,” I tell her and I stomp on the gas.
There’s a patrol car just pulling into the station, but as I’m switching into third and coming up on triple-digit speed, I can see him flipping around in the lot. His lights go on and so it begins.
; I’m almost tempted to slow down a little and make the race a little bit closer, but that officer has something I don’t have: a radio.
It doesn’t take a mile before we’re passing cops at cross streets as they join the chase. It takes another mile before we run into our first real hurdle: a road block.
Kate’s screaming as I drive onto the shoulder and around the two patrol cars, still doing at least seventy-five.
We’re back on the road proper, and I’m looking for the nearest place to hide out.
“You don’t want to just run too long,” I tell her. “We’ve got a nice straight here, but cop cars are souped-up enough they’ll be able to keep with you for at least a few miles. A lot can happen in a few miles.” I slam on the brakes, drifting into a sharp, right turn, the Chevelle pitching hard in my direction.
“What do we do?” she asks. I think the fear is finally starting to grip her. That’s good. If she can’t get used to the fear, she can’t overcome it.
Or maybe she’ll decide it’s all too big a risk and she’ll rethink wanting to be a part of it directly. Of course, it’s also possible that she could get so scared she won’t want to even be around me anymore, but there’s no time to think of that now. If I pull over, there’s a good chance she gets arrested, and an absolute certainty that I would.
The road takes us through what racers have taken to calling Ghost Town: the old industrial portion of the city, now abandoned after the collapse in ’08. The bad news is that the cops around here know very well about Ghost Town, but on the bright side, for now at least, I still know it better than they do.
Going about eighty, I drift to the shoulder of the road and continue on that trajectory right through the open fence in front of one of the warehouses in the area. The cops are far enough back they won’t know exactly where I am, but they would have seen me pull off, so I can’t stop here.
There are strategic gaps in the fences around Ghost Town, but even having lost more cops here than most people get pulled over by in a lifetime, they’ve started to catch on. That first gap got me in here, but the next gap has been closed by a new section of fence.
“Hold onto something,” I tell Kate and flip around, facing the opening I came through. The police already have it blocked off.
“Oh my God,” Kate says. “We’re going to get-”
I hit the gas and we’re off, driving first toward the parked police cars, but as the warehouse nears, I go hard left, putting the building between me and the cops. “What’s your favorite color?” I ask.
“What?!” she screeches. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Better hurry,” I tell her. “They’re going to be around that building in less than ten seconds.”
“Violet,” she says. “My favorite color is violet!”
“All right,” I groan. “Violet it is.”
She’s sweating and now she’s yelling, “Wait, why are you-”
She’s cut off as I hit the gas again.
“What do you do when there’s no hole in a fence?” I ask.
“You’re going to ruin your car,” she shouts.
“That’s right,” I tell her, “you make one.”
There’s not a lot of space between the back of the building and the closed gate between this factory lot and the next one, but it’s more than enough to break through the padlock and the chain.
The front of the car jerks left with the impact, but I manage to keep it from spinning out. I’m looking along the fence line of the new lot, hoping they haven’t sealed everything across Ghost Town, but it looks like they have.
I have only one way out, and it’s through the front gate of this factory’s lot. The last one probably still has cops blocking it.
This drive is going to cost me a lot more than a near-miss and a few gallons in gas if I have to keep ramming things to get out of here. On the outside, though, I try to appear calm, fearless.
Make no mistake, though, I’m petrified.
This gate is just a single bar, but it’s a lot heavier than that fence I went through, and it’s going to take a little creativity to get out of here without ending up with it coming through the windshield.
At the last possible moment, I jerk the wheel to the right and clip the bar with the left part of my front bumper, scraping off both a lot of paint and my driver’s side mirror. I like to think I could have made the gap without hitting anything at all, but I’d rather get a little on my side than risk Kate getting hurt.
“Now,” I tell her, as I come onto the road on the other side of the gate, trying to keep the car steady, “we’re in a bit of a mess here, but we can’t go back until we’ve lost them.”
Kate’s not responding. I should probably wrap this up now.
I hit the nitrous and the tires screech beneath us as the speedometer all but falls to the right. Before I knew they’d started patching up Ghost Town, I had planned for this to be a much longer run. Now, though, I don’t know what’s open and what they’ve sealed. I just want to be done with this before people start pulling guns.
Today’s been a hell of a day.
We’re in the middle of Ghost Town, among the taller, closer-together buildings. None of the buildings on the next few blocks have entrances I could fit this thing through, but I haven’t given up hope.
“There!” Kate shouts and points toward a fence on the left side of the street.
The gap is still there.
Without a word, I drive over the curb, just barely hanging onto control as we reach the gravel of the old, empty parking lot. There’s nowhere here to hide, but it looks like they haven’t patched the fences here, so I keep my foot on the accelerator and charge the next gap.
I can’t hear the sirens, but that doesn’t mean the cops aren’t close.
“What about there?” Kate asks, pointing to a ramshackle warehouse.
“The problem with that thing is that it’s an echo chamber,” I tell her. At one time or another, I’ve used pretty much every building that will fit a car. This one almost got me busted once when I thought the coast was clear a little too early.
“So, you go around back so we’re out of sight, turn the car off, and we push it in—or is there not a rear entrance to the building?” she asks.
I answer by hitting the gas.
We go through a gap in one fence and out another before reaching the warehouse. I put the car in neutral and coast around the back before pumping the brakes, bringing us to a stop behind the building.
There’s not a door, but part of one wall is collapsed. It should just be wide enough to fit the car.
I turn off the engine, and I’m out of the car a second later. I’m waiting for Kate to join me, but she’s having some more trouble with her harness.
There’s no time, so I gesture the motion of steering a car and she nods. The car’s in neutral, so I’m not all that worried about it being able to roll. There’s a bit of a lip going into the warehouse, though, and I’m not sure I can push this car’s heavy ass over it.
The sound of sirens in the distance convinces me to give it a shot.
I manage to push the car as far as the lip, and then I have to rock it. I can’t see around the side of the building to tell if the cops are coming this way or not, but the sirens are getting closer. It’s a bad sign.
I rock the car back and forth a few more times before one of the back tires makes it up the lip and then comes back off of it again.
“Come on!” Kate’s muffled voice calls. She’s fumbling with her harness now instead of the steering wheel, but it’s lined up enough that’s not going to be a huge issue. I’ve already got to give the thing a new paint job after those two gates, anyway.
I let the Chevelle come forward a little bit farther than I have been and use the small amount of extra space to get a better start at it.
The sirens are almost on top of us when I get the back wheels over the lip, and I use the distance of the wheel base to get up enough speed for the front. I don
’t stop pushing until the car is well out of sight.
We’re in a long, wide hallway that branches off into different sections of the warehouse. As long as the cops don’t notice the fresh tire tracks, we should be all right.
“Could you help me get this thing off?” she asks in a quiet voice. She’s still tugging at her harness.
“I can,” I tell her, “but I don’t think there’s a way for me to do it without touching your…you know, without the back of my hands pressing against your…”
“Cop a feel if you need to. Just get this thing off of me.”
I lean over and turn to face her as best I can. The harness is tight enough she can’t really turn to give me a better angle. Fortunately, I’m able to unfasten the harness before I’ve stolen too many bases.
What I don’t expect, is Kate removing the now loose straps of the harness, turning toward me, putting her hands on the sides of my head and putting her tongue in my mouth—not that I’m complaining.
“Sorry,” she says, pulling away. “Had a bit of adrenaline there.”
“Yeah,” I agree, “me, too.” I pull her back toward me, kissing her deeply on the lips.
I’ve been racing a long time, which means I’ve been running from the cops for a long time, but this is a first.
I hardly even notice when the sirens fade into the distance until Kate pulls away, saying, “All right, can we get out of here now?”
Chapter Five
Race Night
Kate
I’m just getting home from the hospital when I find my parents waiting for me in the living room.
“Hey,” I greet. “What’s up?”
“Do you see what I’m talking about?” Mom asks.
“What?” I ask.
“Honey,” Dad says, “your mother and I have been noticing some changes in your behavior recently, and we’re a little worried.”
“What do you mean? I haven’t been acting any differently.”
Mom sighs, but she lets Dad do the talking.
“You’re usually so quiet,” Dad says. “From what I hear, though, you’ve been sneaking out of work.”
“I haven’t been sneaking anywhere,” I tell him. It’s nearly the truth, too. “I talked to my boss once a few days ago to see if I could take off a little early because I wasn’t feeling so well, but-”