Page 128 of Final Drive

After a minute she says into my shirt, “Twelve millimeters at the pin?”

I close my eyes. “Twelve.”

“Good. Then I’m going to go make you row two thousand meters.”

“Okay.”

She’s almost turned away when I see her arm properly. Four small marks and one larger one are already coming up where Quinton’s fingers were. They’re going to be in Kowalski’s video and the deputy’s report. Probably on camera when Reese gets into the boat.

She follows my eyes. “Jackson.”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you for not killing him.”

“Don’t thank me for that.”

“I’m going to.”

“Reese.”

She takes a step backward toward the boat. “Because you’re the only one out here who had to decide.”

Then she turns and goes back to work.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Eli

Ihave a page in the back of my notebook that nobody has ever seen.

It’s a list of Reese’s calls, race by race, with what I thought she was going to do written beside each one. I started it to learn the boat and kept it because I was wrong often enough that the page turned out to be teaching me about her instead.

Nothing on it accounts for five fingermarks coming up on her arm, or Jackson sitting in three seat with the left side of his face swelling by the minute.

Fifty meters off the dock I stop thinking about the notebook, because the boat is checking badly enough to ignore everything else. Every recovery throws me half an inch toward the stern, and instead of running out beneath us the shell sits down in the water.

Power isn’t the problem. We have more of it than we’ve had all season. The problem is that eight men are hurling themselves up the slide because it’s the only thing they’re allowed to hurl anywhere this morning.

I have about a stroke and a half to work out how to say that without sounding like I’m presenting findings.

I don’t have to.

“Way enough,” Reese says.

Eight blades come off the water and the shell glides. We’re less than fifteen minutes from the start of a national championship heat, and our coxswain has just stopped us in open water where every crew on the lake can watch.

“Reese,” Gray says.

“Ratio’s gone. All of you. You’re coming up the slide before the run’s finished and stopping the boat with your own body weight.” Her voice comes through the speaker beside my knee, flat and controlled. “You’re rowing like you want to hurt somebody. Understandable, but it’s costing us about four seconds.”

Four is generous. I’d have said five and a half.

Nobody argues.

“Bo. Half pressure, quarter slide. Eyes closed.”

“Eyes closed?”