Banging Wheels (11 page)

Drake rolled his eyes. “Okay. Anything else?”

“Yes. You’d better win this damned championship after all this. If you can’t win a championship with the best car and your nearest rival hobbled, then you may as well go home. You’re a good driver, Drake, but we certainly won’t welcome you back.”

Drake had thought about this — even with the deal they’d struck, it was still a big risk. After all, Daniels was still a real threat to him, so it was by no means sure that he’d win the championship even with Callie dealt with. And it wasn’t only other drivers that were a threat. Mechanical failures, a lapse of concentration, an error of judgment and a thousand and one other variables meant he could still miss out very easily, despite having practically bought the damn thing.

Still, the deal was done now. It was what it was.

Down in the canteen, cutlery clanked onto trays and hot plates of food were handed over. Drake was in a daydream, looking through the glass at the metal containers of spaghetti Bolognese and the like. Was it him, or was there a strange atmosphere? Drivers didn’t normally hang about in the headquarters, like he was today, and when they did, they normally got a lot of attention from the regular staff. Today it seemed like everyone was avoiding him.

“G’day, champ.”

Drake looked up — it was Callie’s chief engineer coming past — Ozzie. What was that supposed to mean? Drake shook it off and ignored him. He slid his tray onto a table and sat down. Upon which the light darkened as Ozzie sat down opposite him, with a tray of his own.

“So, champ,” he said, “I hear you’re going to be the champ, champ.”

Drake ignored him and shoveled food into his mouth.

“Must be great to know you’re champ without even having to race or anything, eh, champ?”

Drake continued to eat. Fucker. What did he know about what it took to be successful?

“Spaghetti, eh? Is that the dish of champions, is it?”

“Look — what’s your problem?”

“Nothing, mate, just thrilled to be able to sit with a real-life champion.”

Drake ate silently until there was enough gone to realistically claim he’d finished.

“I’m going off to the simulator,” he said, standing up.

“No need, mate,” said the engineer. “Just give it some money and tell it to let you be quickest.”

That evening Drake relaxed back in his apartment, flicking through his favorite music. He couldn’t stick to one song. He’d be twenty seconds in and he’d change it to another. Then he was up and about walking around.

He picked through the book of motor racing greats he kept on his coffee table — the one that inspired him so much. These guys — they were his heroes. He could always take solace in them. He’d looked up to them since he was just a kid, throwing his pedal powered go-kart around in the back garden, slamming deliberately into the fence and pretending to have accidents. But winning, always winning at the end of it — crossing the line as a hero, and being loved by everyone, his arms aloft.

He flicked from page to page, the scent of glossy paper filling his nostrils. He always liked to imagine his own face in there. Some of the people were dead, some still alive, but all of them were hallowed company. But he got a strange feeling looking at these guys this time. He felt like he couldn’t look them in the eye. If he were to be in their company now, all chatting about their feats of derring-do, he’d feel like he was hiding something. He felt like he didn’t belong there.

This was crap, though — it was only ruthlessness that got these people to the top. Why should he feel bad about being ruthless? And hey, politics was all part of it — he wasn’t doing anything wrong! This was a flawed argument, though, and he knew it. Paying another driver to not compete with you crosses a line from ruthlessness into an admission of not being good enough to compete, this despite the fact that he was surely plenty good enough. It was a cowardly act.

He kept searching his mind for solace in some thought, but nothing stood up to scrutiny. At least this way he’d be champion, he told himself. But then that Aussie fucker had been right about that, too — if he had to pay to win, then what was it worth? Bill was cool with it, though, wasn’t he? And he was a winner. But while Bill might have been a winner, he was the worst kind of competitor. Was that how you ended up if you started out this way? As a twisted, hateful old guy who sees everything as an opportunity to get one over on others?

Which brought Callie to mind. Beautiful Callie. Sexy Callie. Sassy Callie. She was such a good driver. A damn good driver. And as much as he liked to tell himself he was better than her, all the evidence said it was at the very least incredibly close. Damn it. That was the other casualty of all this. He really liked her, wanted her, respected her. Why did he have to choose between her and the championship? Why couldn’t she be just a bit slower than him? He tried to imagine her, imagined himself gazing into those beautiful eyes of hers. But every time he pictured her, all he could see was a look of disgust.

He sighed a deep sigh. It was too late now — he’d made his bed, so now he had to lie on it. He’d take the title and move on. Put this whole sorry episode behind him.

CHAPTER TEN

“Hi,” came the voice.

“Hi,” she said back, instinctively, then looked up and realized it was him, and immediately cursed herself.

What an asshole. His way of playing it wasn’t just going to cost her the championship, but her whole damn career. It would be back to a normal, pedestrian life doing God knows what, and back to the family dinner table, and the “I told you so” sighs from that god awful auntie of hers who was so damn convinced she knew better.

The mere thought of the tedium of normality was crushing. Why couldn’t she just want an everyday, boring life like anyone else? It wasn’t something she’d ever understood, but in a way it was irrelevant. That was the way she was wired. If she couldn’t make a living out of this, then what could she do?

“I know it’s easy for me to say,” said Ozzie. “But don’t let that idiot grind ya down.”

“Yeah, it is easy for you to say.”

He stopped, looked up and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “I know it’s not your fault. I’m just feeling like my career might be over. And not because of anything I’ve done.”

“Maybe, but you still need to put on your best show. He’s a right little wanker, doing what he’s doing, but you’ve got no control over that. You’ve got to do what’s right for you. You can come out of this looking like a professional or like a big cry-baby. It’s your choice. Besides, if you finish a minute behind him, no-one’s going to say ‘Oh, it was team orders’. You’ll just look like you’re much slower than him.”

What Ozzie was saying made a lot of sense, but it was hard to motivate herself knowing that heads or tails both gave the same result.

She walked out into the pit lane just to get some air. It was an overcast day, and probably lighter in the garage than outside. She jumped up onto the pit wall, and pondered the black asphalt — the blank canvas against which so many of her colorful battles had taken place.

The more she thought about it, the more right she realized Ozzie was. She had to drive at her best, and not just for the sake of pride — there was another element to this. She HAD to be able to say that she was forced to slow down. Make the jerk use those team orders. Make him feel the burn of knowing that she was faster than him, and that he only won because of his wallet.

If she gave up now and drifted through the remaining two races, then it would look like he was the deserving winner anyway, and the team orders would look like insurance. In fact, no-one else would even know they’d existed. All they’d see was a driver finishing way behind their teammate and conclude that there was a gap in talent between them. No, she had to gird up her loins. Wipe the floor with him. Let everyone know what the score was.

Renewed, she walked back into the garage, her head held high.

“Right,” she said. “Let’s rip this circuit a new one.”

“Atta-girl.”

Two hours later, and she had pole position under her belt.

“You know, that’s one of the best single laps I’ve seen you do while you’ve been with us,” said Ozzie. “I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve seen some mega-talented drivers fail to make the grade, purely because of their attitude. That’s a proper good attitude you’ve got, right there.”

If pretty much anyone else had said that to her, she’d have spat back out the line she’d said so often to guys who accosted her after the race, who patronized her as a way of showing that they were somehow still the experts, despite the fact that she was the racing driver and they were just beer-guzzling spectators: “I don’t need your approval.”

They never came up and said it to Drake — or any of the other guys for that matter. Just her. But Ozzie was different. His opinion
did
matter. She liked him and trusted him, and she knew he wasn’t gaming her.

“Thanks.”

“Now you go out there and nail that marker so high he’ll need a stepladder to reach it. Or at least an even bigger sackful of cash.”

She smiled and offered him a high five.

“Nah. You don’t get that till you finish the job.”

Race day. The tension would be almost unbearable if it weren’t such a foregone conclusion. As it was, she felt maybe the most relaxed she’d been since she’d joined. All the pressure was on him — he’d be desperate not to invoke those team orders.