Today, the lane was busier, but still not crowded. Two men pushed a dolly stacked with soda cases toward the concession area, a teenager in a volunteer T-shirt took a drink of water and checked his watch.
“General admission access?” she asked when he saw her, pointing toward a walkway marked with a banner and an arrow. “North stand that way. You’ll get a decent view of the back straight and the start.”
“Thanks,” Bree said, pitching her voice a little lower.
He looked right past her, eyes already moving to the next cluster of people. She took that as a good sign.
She merged into the flow heading toward the stands; families and couples and groups of friends, all in various stages of sunburn. Someone had a radio clipped to a belt; the same broadcast she had left behind in the room crackled from it, a slightly delayed echo of the PA system.
Around her, the air vibrated with engine noise and anticipation.
When she reached the base of the north grandstand, a woman with a lanyard checked wristbands. Bree held up the bright strip the ticket booth had given her earlier in the weekend when she had come down with Carmen to watch a support race. The woman barely glanced at it before waving her through.
Up in the stands, she chose a place near the end of a row, not too high, not too low. From there, she could see the front straight clearly, the start grid painted bright, and the sweeping turn by the dunes in the distance. The giant screen across from the stands showed what the cameras saw.
Her heart thudded so hard it felt like a drum in her ears.
Down on the grid, Hank swung a leg over Julie’s seat. He settled into position like it was the only place in the world he belonged. The sun glinted off his helmet, off the small Copper Moon emblem near the base of his visor. Brian crouched beside the bike, last words lost in the roar of the crowd.
The commentators’ voices rose. “Riders are clear. Fifteen laps to decide the Copper Moon Cup.”
The light sequence started.
Red. One. Two. Three.
Bree’s lungs forgot how to work.
The lights went out.
The bikes launched.
Sound became a living thing, slamming against her chest, echoing through the metal under her feet. Hank held the lead into turn one; his start clean, his line perfect. The pack behind him jostled and shifted, two bikes nearly touching into the second corner before sorting themselves out.
The first lap blurred by in color and noise and flickers of the timing tower.
H. JAMES – P1.
MENDES – P2.
KROLIK – P3.
Bree’s fingers bit into the aluminum bench.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Do what you do.”
She had thought watching the tech inspection from the safety of her room that morning had been nerve-wracking. This was something else. Every time Hank disappeared behind the dunes, her heart stopped; every time he appeared again on the front straight, alive and flowing and in control, her heart restarted with a lurch.
On the third lap, Mendes closed in.
He took a fraction more curb through the fast sweeper; his bike twitching, correcting, the gap shrinking on the screen’s little timing graphic. By the end of the back straight, he had tucked into Hank’s slipstream, so close Bree could barely see the space between their bikes.
“Don’t you dare,” she muttered.
Hank did not flinch. At the next braking zone, he held his line with almost stubborn discipline; did not lock up; did not run wide. Mendes tried the inside; he had to back out or risk contact.
People around her jumped to their feet and shouted. A boy a few seats down waved a handmade sign with twenty-four scrawled across it, the ink slightly smudged.
It went on like that, lap after lap. Mendes attacked; Hank responded. Sometimes the gap grew; sometimes it shrank. The commentators filled the spaces with analysis, tire degradation, fuel loads, and the mental game.
