This time, when she looked toward Hank’s pit, she saw movement.
Hank. Tall. Focused. Eyes scanning automatically for her even before he saw her.
And when he did see her, he started toward her without hesitation.
Relief flooded her so fast her knees almost gave out.
She tightened her grip on the sketchbook and met him halfway.
“Hank,” she said, keeping her voice steady by sheer force of will. “I need to tell you something.”
And she knew, with complete certainty, he was the only person she could trust with it.
Chapter 11
Hank came out of the riders’ meeting with a headache starting behind his right eye.
Gearing charts, fuel windows, last-minute schedule changes; they all rolled through his brain in tight formation. The late light off the water bounced off the trailers, sharp enough that he had to squint as he stepped back into the pits.
Noise wrapped around him; engines coughing and clearing their throats, an air gun barking in short bursts, Brian’s laugh carrying over the clatter for a second before it got swallowed up again.
He checked his phone out of habit.
No new messages from Bree.
He’d texted her during the meeting, thumb moving quicker than his brain had any right to, asking if she was headed to the balcony. Telling her to stick with Brian or Colby. Promise me.
She’d promised.
He slipped the phone into his back pocket and scanned the pits, that automatic sweep he’d never quite shaken. Bikes, tools, crew, fans leaning over the fences; all the moving parts that turned race weekend into something alive.
His gaze snagged on a splash of red and black.
The Red Dragons’ hauler, glossy as ever, their pit taped off like a stage. Music pumped low from a truck, some driving beat that vibrated underfoot. Heidi stood near the center, waving her arms at a man with a tablet. Marcus hovered at her shoulder.
And just off to one side, near the edge of their taped line, stood Bree.
She held her sketchbook to her chest, fingers white-knuckled around the spine. Carmen stood beside her, the two of them a little island of denim and bare legs in all that branded red and black.
Something in Hank’s chest pinched.
She was supposed to be with Brian or Colby. She was supposed to be up on that balcony with her pencils and that ocean light she liked so much.
He could hear his own voice from earlier in the week, teasing. This is the lion’s den.
It felt a lot less like a joke now.
He watched her for a beat. Her posture was wrong; she wasn’t just observing for art reference. Her shoulders were tight, eyes too focused. Not drifting like an artist soaking in color and line, but tracking something. Calculating.
She took a step; then another. Carmen said something, touched her arm; Bree shook her head and peeled away, moving with purpose through the open lane between trailers.
His hurt, stupid as it was, bled out under something heavier.
She looked scared.
Hank started toward her without thinking. The world narrowed down to a corridor of noise and movement with her at the end.
She turned her head slightly. Even from across the pits, he saw the moment she spotted him.
