“Time for what?”
He exhaled, long and slow. “Time for me to put some things in motion and for you to stay somewhere they can’t reach you.”
Her spine straightened. “I’m not a package you can store in a locker, Hank.”
“I know you’re not.” He met her gaze head-on. “You’re the only reason I know what they’ve done. You’re sharp and observant, and you walked into a dangerous place, and you walked back out with intel. That doesn’t make you a liability. It makes you an asset.”
Something flickered in her eyes, something like pride fighting with fear.
“But assets have to be protected,” he went on quietly. “If they realize you saw what you did, you’re vulnerable. You don’t know this paddock like I do. You don’t know who’s on whose payroll. I can’t go out there and do my job if I’m picturing you walking around while the Dragons are looking for a leak.”
Her throat worked. “So what are you asking me to do?”
He could’ve softened it. Could’ve dressed it up as a suggestion. Instead, he gave her the respect of honesty.
“I’m asking you to stay inside tomorrow,” he said. “Race day, I want you in the hotel, door locked. No boardwalk, no pits, no balcony. Not until the Cup race is over and the bikes are back in the tech barn. After that, we can reassess.”
Her eyes widened. “All day.”
“All day,” he confirmed. “I’ll make sure you’ve got whatever you need. Food, sketching supplies, and a live feed of the race on your TV. Brian and Colby will know you’re off-limits. If you need anything, you call me or one of them; you don’t open the door to anyone else, not even if they say they know me.”
Her fingers tightened on the sketchbook. “I came here to paint. To see the race. To watch you do the thing you love. And now I’m supposed to sit in a room like a kid in time-out.”
He hated that it sounded like that. Hated it more because he understood.
“I wish like hell I wasn’t asking this,” Hank said. “But this isn’t just about a dirty bottle and a crooked mechanic. The Dragons play rough. Marcus plays rough. If they think you’re a threat, they’ll push back. I’ve seen what that looks like off-track.”
She watched his face, really watched it, and he knew she saw more there than he usually let anyone see. Old dust, old heat. The kind that clung to your lungs no matter how many years passed.
“How bad,” she asked softly.
“Bad enough,” he said. “In the desert, it was explosives on the side of a road or a kid with a phone and a detonator. Here, it’s a bike that mysteriously malfunctioned or a woman who tripped on a set of stairs when no one was watching. Different stage, same play.”
Her breath hitched. “You really think they’d go that far?”
“I think people who cheat at a level that can kill someone are already comfortable crossing lines,” he said. “And I think you’re important to me. That’s not a variable I’m willing to risk.”
The last words slipped out before he could filter them.
Her eyes went dark and soft all at once.
“Important to you,” she repeated quietly.
“Yeah.” His voice came out rough; he didn’t try to clean it up. “You are. I’ve had maybe three months where my head shut up and the noise dropped to something livable; one of them was here, with you. I can’t walk into turn one tomorrow wondering if the Dragons have decided to send a message to the woman who caught them with their hand in the cookie jar.”
A quiet beat stretched between them, full of engine rumble and shouted orders from the far side of the trailers and the pulse of his own heart.
Bree’s chin lifted a fraction. “So this is about your focus.”
“It’s about your safety,” he said. “And yeah, it’s about my focus, because my focus is one of the things that keeps me alive on a bike. I’m better on track if I know you’re behind a locked door than if I think you’re out here trying to get perfect reference photos in a war zone.”
Her mouth twisted. “When you put it like that, you make Copper Moon sound very un-touristy.”
He almost smiled. “Tourists don’t normally stumble into performance-enhancing sabotage.”
She looked down at the sketchbook, then back up at him. Conflict flickered across her face; the artist who’d come for light and motion, the woman who’d just seen the underbelly.
“I hate feeling useless,” she admitted. “Like my job is to stay out of the way while the grown-ups handle it.”
