“Or the drivers,” Hunter whispered grimly. He wasn’t wrong.
The acrid scent of smoke carried to us, and Hunter didn’t even clap when Red came in first across the finish line.
“She did it!”
He nodded and smiled at me but kept glancing back at the burning heap.
Sirens sounded in the distance, and goose bumps prickled up on my arms when I realized they were closer than they should be. They couldn’t be much past the gates of the park.
“Feck, someone must have seen the smoke.” I tugged at Hunter’s hand, but he only looked relieved.
“Hope they can get them out of there,” he said optimistically, and that made me like him more than I already did. The crowd was scattering toward the car park, and the bookies were long gone. They were always the canaries in the coal mine. I should have had an eye on them before now. The sirens grew closer still, and Hunter and I began to run, along with everyone else. Before we could make it to his bike, Corbin screeched to a stop in front of us in the lot with his car, a black-and-orange Mini Coop that did not blend in anywhere.
“No time. In. In,” he said out of his lowered window, gesturing frantically, so I opened the rear door and we piled into the back seat.
“Look, the Russians,” I said as I spotted Markow and gave him a jaunty wave. I didn’t think the mean bastard recognized me, but Corbin cursed a blue streak and reached around his seat to swat at me.
“What about your bet?” Hunter asked softly.
“Someone will deliver the winnings. They know better than to fuck with money owed to an Irishman.”
Hunter cast me a look, and where I’d expected at some point he might be a tad afraid of me, once he saw more of my life, I was shocked to see nothing in his expression except… want. All the adrenaline in my body seemed to drop directly between my legs. I took one of his hands between both of mine and focused on that.
“Fuck, boys, hold on,” Corbin said and slammed to a stop behind a line of cars. I leaned around, but aside from the red taillights, all I could see was a swarm of uniformed cops in front of us. I groaned, but my heart was nearly in my throat.
A cop wandered down the line of cars and stopped next to ours. He glared in at us and tapped on the front window. Corbin rolled it down.
“All of you. License,” he demanded tersely.
There were people dead.Shite.Sweating, I glanced at Hunter, who was containing himself, but barely. His eyes were too wide, and his jaw ticked.
“I got places to be,” I leaned up to say to the cop. He was a big, brutish man with a wide dumb face and a shock of brown hair making its way out from under his navy blue uniform hat. “What can I do for ya, Officer, to move this along?”
He glanced at me, and I thought perhaps recognition entered his eyes. He took a second to fiddle with the camera hooked to the front of his uniform; maybe he’d turned it off. Then, he leaned down.
“Not sure, sir. Whatcanyou do?”
He glanced between the three of us. Corbin reached for his pocket, and I dropped a hand on his shoulder, dragging the rest of the money from where I’d had it stashed at my side. I opened the bag, tugged out the cash, and held up the wad. The cop smirked, the bastard. They were probably shaking down every person trying to get out of here.
“You’re right. You do look busy.”
I handed over the bundle, figured I’d still come out ahead with my winnings, so it was the price of playing with fire.
“That was a lot of money,” Hunter whispered to me in a panic.
I shrugged.
The cop rolled the cash and stuffed it into a pocket on his utility belt. He stepped back and tapped the roof of the car. “Go around the line,” he said to Corbin, and then yelled, “This car’s clear!” to the rest of the cops ahead of us. Corbin carefully pulled to the side, and Hunter shrank against me as the cops we slowly passed glared at us.
“We could have given them our IDs. I don’t have warrants out.”
“This race is illegal as fuck. We don’t want or need our names on any cop lists,” Corbin said from the front seat. “Good thinkin’, Jamie. This was an expensive date.”
Hunter let out a tiny, unhappy moan.
I laughed and jostled him. “Would spend double for time with ya.”
Hunter ducked his head and smiled.
