Dangerous Curves (7 page)

“R
OLLING,
” Lance said, his voice sounding tense, even to Blain’s ears. They were all on edge. Race day, tense under normal circumstances, had reached new levels since Randy’s death, even for his Busch team.

Blain barely heard the escalation in crowd noise as the cars took off. He glanced back at Cece. She stared at the group of cars, a hand lifted to shield her eyes. Her face looked as tense as his own, her concern for him evident every time their eyes met. Just when she’d become a confidante and a friend he had no idea, and yet somehow, she had. Not surprising, he thought, given that she was the only one in the garage who knew what he did: that someone might have tried to kill Randy.

Acid hit his stomach like peroxide on an open wound. He felt like calling Lance back. Felt like going to the nearest official and asking him to call off the race. But Cece was right; they didn’t know anything for certain yet, and after all, the killer’s note hadn’t threatened this league.

Still…

The cars picked up speed, the sound like the roar of a hundred tornadoes. Angry whines that reached beneath his earphones and vibrated his chest cavity. Race day. Usually excitement filled him, but today that thrill was gone.

He motioned to Cece. She mouthed the word, “Me?” as she pointed to herself, blond brows lifted, and despite the tension, despite the acid in his gut, Blain found himself smiling. Cece, his fearless FBI agent, looked reluctant to enter the maw of his pit stall. But just like the Cece of old, he watched her straighten her shoulders and look both ways before crossing though the stream of owners and TV crews that moved up and down pit road. She came up alongside him and he handed her a pair of spare headphones that hung from a toolbox.

“Here,” he yelled, because by now they’d be lucky to hear a DC-10 take off. The roar of the fans—nearly fifty thousand of them—drowned out all sound but that of the cars themselves.

She tugged them awkwardly over her ears and he flipped her mike down, pressing the button on the side of his own headphones. “If you need to talk, just press here and speak.”

“Ah, thanks, honey,” came Lance’s familiar voice, his words syrupy-sweet. “But I’m not in the mood for sweet talk right now. Maybe later.”

Cece’s met Blain’s gaze in shock.

He rolled his eyes and shook his head. Lance
thought himself a comedian. Turning to the track, Blain tried to find his car, the thunder of engines telling him the pack was on the back stretch. The smell of burnt rubber filled the air.

“Lance, cut the chatter. We’re on the air.” By that he meant people listening in.

But his new driver didn’t appear to care. “Ah, honey, you’re always spoiling my fun.”

He met his crew chief’s eyes. Mike Johnson had been in the business as long as Blain, but they were both a little baffled by Lance’s stand-up comedy routine on race day.

“Hey, was it sexy Cece you gave a headset to?” Lance asked, obviously in a conversational mood.

Blain didn’t answer.

“Because if it was, I have a little song for her—”

“No,” his crew chief said. “Don’t—”

Too late. Lance belted out the words to “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” as he swerved his car back and forth to warm the tires.

And then, to Blain’s shock, Cece pressed her mike and interrupted him midstream. “Lance, there’s a pack of dogs following you.”

Which made every member of his Busch team laugh. Blain included, and it felt nice to forget, even if it was just for a second, that there was a killer on the loose.

“Ah, honey,” Lance said, “they’re just following the Big Dog.” And then he howled like a wolf, causing everyone with headsets to clutch at their ears.

Blain rolled his eyes. Cece met his gaze and smiled.

And Blain felt like the sun came out, even though it was already shining brightly in the sky. And he was glad that she was there in the pit with them. Glad she was on his side. Glad she was trying to lighten his mood a bit.

“That’s enough, Lance,” Blain said. “Keep it up and you’ll find yourself in the
doghouse.”

“As long as Cece’s in there with me.”

“Now there’s an offer the lady can’t refuse,” Blain’s crew chief said. “A date in a doghouse.”

“Believe me.” Blain heard Cece’s voice though the headset. “I’ve had worse.”

Which prompted Lance to say, “Does that mean we’re on, honey?”

“Only if I suddenly turn into a poodle.”

“Mmm, doggie style—”

“Lance!” Blain cut him off sternly. The last thing they needed was a fine from the track officials.

His driver seemed to understand, because he went quiet, or maybe that was because they’d been ordered to line up. A few minutes later, Blain heard Lance say, “Houston, we have liftoff,” and the Corvette pace car ducked off the track.

The race was on.

Blain’s tension returned with a vengeance. He and his crew chief turned to the TV monitor mounted on the side of his toolbox. Lance expertly kept his tenth place starting position.

“Feels a little loose,” Lance said.

“Bad?” came his crew chief’s voice.

“Nah,” Lance said. “I’ve felt looser. Usually women, but the car’s okay.”

Which elicited a few more wry shakes of the head.

“One-track mind,” Mike said.

“That’s why Mr. Sanders hired me,” Lance replied. “My mind’s always on a track of some sort.”

Actually, he’d hired Lance because he’d seen promise in the kid’s driving, promise that he hoped would come to full bloom under his crew chief’s tutelage. That seemed to be proving true, judging by the way Lance drove today. Smooth, steady and yet with just an edge of recklessness. No question, Lance Cooper had what it took to be great.

Out of the corner of his eye Blain caught movement. One of his crew members came forward and talked to Cece. With hand gestures and the occasional shout, he did what Blain should have done—helped Cece become queen of the toolbox. He watched as her lithe frame climbed aboard the little seat anchored to the top. Usually he sat there, but it was safer for Cece to be out of the way. Plus, it gave her a better view in case…

But he didn’t want to think about that, and so he didn’t. Instead he concentrated on the race. That was all there was left to do: watch the action. A few seconds of madness when Lance made a pit stop, punctuated by long stretches of cars going round and
round. And as the laps added up, Blain’s tension eased. They ran good, at least until lap eighty-nine, when a bad pit stop put Lance ten spots down.

“And I was having sooo much fun,” Lance quipped as he moved his car into position. Not for this kid the temper tantrums that so many drivers engaged in. Blain liked that about him.

“Clear,” came the spotter’s voice, indicating Lance could move into one of the two racing lanes.

Cece must have realized something was wrong by the look on Blain’s face. She leaned down and asked, “What happened?”

“Bad pit stop,” he answered. She nodded and straightened back up, but not before shooting him a look of disappointment. She liked this, he thought.

The cars picked up speed when the yellow light went out. The crowd roared, his crew stared at the television monitor. Someone tried to pass Lance going three wide into the turn two.

“Uh-oh,” Lance said.

Blain jerked upright.

“Oh, shit,” they heard next.

He turned toward the TV. Cece bolted upright, too, only she stood, hand shielding her eyes as she looked toward turn two. The TV monitor showed the wreck perfectly.

“Left, left, left,” came the spotter’s voice as suddenly spinning cars sent up a plume of dark gray smoke.

But there was no place for Lance to go. Blain
could see that. A car hit the wall, slid down the track. Lance T-boned him.

What came next happened so fast it would take several replays to figure it out, but suddenly Lance’s car went airborne, despite the safety flaps. Metal flew off his car, smoke filled the air. Blain just watched as slowly, ever so slowly, his car came to a stop on the infield grass. Only it didn’t look like a car anymore.

“Lance?” his crew chief asked.

Blain turned to his pit crew. They were standing on the pit wall, trying to get a view of the wreck. Mike stood in the center, his hand never leaving his headphones.

“Lance,” he said again. “You okay, buddy?”

“I’m all right,” Lance said slowly, much to the relief of everyone in the pit, and probably a few million people at home. “But I’m thinking I just blew my chances to impress Cece with my driving skills.”

C
ECE WOULD NEVER FORGET
the look on Blain’s face for as long as she lived. His eyes weren’t filled with disappointment, they were guarded, worried…afraid.

She’d watched him stare at the TV monitor as he watched the network’s replay over and over. She’d climbed down and done the same thing, too. They weren’t looking to see who’d caused the accident, they were looking to ensure that it actually
was
an accident, and the whole time they did, Cece wanted to lay a hand on his shoulder in comfort. She knew that every time he watched his car spin out of control he was reliving the loss of his driver, and worrying that Lance might have been a second victim.

In the end, it looked to be just that, a wreck. But Blain stormed out of his pit as if it were much more.

“Blain,” she called out as he headed toward his Cup car hauler. “Blain!” she called again. He ignored her, Cece growing more and more frustrated as she followed him from the pits.

“Blain, darn it,” she said, finally seizing his hand
by the open glass door at the back of the hauler. The chrome panels on either side gave her a perfect view of the way his face had hardened, of the way his eyes closed for a second before he turned to face her.

“Not here,” he said, tugging his hand from her grasp.

She felt the loss of contact in a way that surprised her. Disappointment was
her
emotion now, and the sadness of a bystander who didn’t know what to do, because she knew how he felt—she’d felt some of the same emotions when she’d seen Lance wreck.

Blain climbed the steps into the big rig. The place was deserted, most of Blain’s Cup crew off doing other things.

“Blain, you’re scaring me,” Cece said the minute the door to his lounge closed.

He ignored her, pulling out a stool she hadn’t noticed before tucked beneath a cabinet. When he opened the cabinet doors, a computer was exposed.

“What are you doing?” she asked, watching as he booted it up.

“Sending Barry Bidwell an e-mail.”

Barry Bidwell, the head of NASCAR. “About what?” she asked, even though she knew.

“He needs to cancel tomorrow’s race.”

She’d known the words were coming, yet she still felt her stomach drop.

“Blain, he won’t do that. My boss already talked to him. Until we have concrete evidence…”

“What more evidence do they need?” Blain
asked, turning toward her. He stood, flicking his stool toward the table in the center of the small room. It flew beneath it and crashed into the black couch on the other side. “All he has to do is watch the replay. Randy’s car explodes. It just erupts. There’s no rhyme or reason, it just does. Anyone who knows anything about racing would know it wasn’t a faulty fuel tank.”

“We don’t know that for certain.”

“The killer sent a note—”

She stepped toward him. The veins in his neck were swollen, his skin flush with fast-moving blood. “The note was received after the accident.”

“It was mailed before the accident.”

“We don’t know that.”

“It had to have been.”

“Blain,” she said, resting a hand on his arm, all the while asking herself why she kept touching him. “Calm down. There’s still a chance Randy’s death was nothing more than a string of coincidences.”

“Coincidence!” he all but yelled, and she could feel him flinch beneath her hand. “You said yourself they’ve found evidence of nitrates.”

“But that doesn’t mean explosives. That’s one of many possibilities.”

“But
you
think it does.”

She stiffened, her hand dropping to her side. She couldn’t deny it.

“We can’t risk it, Cece,” he said, his voice low and calm. “If there’s a chance, even a hint that some
crazy person might be out to blow up a racetrack or a driver, then the race needs to be stopped.”

Without realizing it, she began to slowly shake her head. “It won’t happen, Blain. You know it and I know it. If it turns out the threat is valid, then all that’ll happen is extra security measures. The show will go on, just as it has whenever other popular events have been threatened.”

He didn’t say anything, but she could tell when her words finally penetrated. The Federal Government put a brave face on things. A year ago a direct threat had been harbored against the Super Bowl. They’d had good cause to think it might be terrorists. But all they’d been told to do was alert the media and to step up security. Nobody, not the American public, football fans or the media, had been aware of just how serious a threat it’d been.

Blain turned and slowly sat down on the couch. She told herself to stand there. No, that wasn’t right. She’d been trained to stand still while a victim assimilated facts. But for some reason she couldn’t disconnect from Blain, and so she found herself going to him, squatting down in front of him. To her shock, she saw his eyes were rimmed with red. Blain Sanders, the jock, the celebrity, her high school nemesis, moved to tears.

“Blain,” she said softly, taking his hand.

He didn’t pull away.

“I don’t know if I can do it, Cece.”

And she knew how much that admission must
have cost him, even as a part of her took note of the nickname.

“I don’t know if I can send Lance out again knowing he might—”

Be killed.

He didn’t need to say the words. She gently squeezed his hand. “Lance takes that risk every day.”

“Yeah, but not like this.”

And it ate Blain up. She stared at him and marveled at a side of him she’d never seen. A softer side. Vulnerable. More human. He cared—genuinely cared—about his driver, and the shift from thinking of Blain as a self-centered jerk to a kind and caring human being stirred things she’d rather weren’t disturbed.

“Blain, I have a feeling that even if you tell Lance what’s going on, he’ll still want to race. It’s in his blood.”

Their gazes connected and Cece was rocked by how poleaxed she felt when their eyes met.

“It’s in my blood, too, Cece. I love this sport. I’d do anything to stay in it. But I can’t stand by and let it endanger people’s lives.”

“I know,” she said. She slowly rose to her feet, bending down to kiss him on the top of his head, an intimate, womanly gesture that took her by surprise. Only as she did, his head turned a bit and she ended by kissing his cheek, and the way it felt when her lips connected with his flesh…well, it made her want to kiss something else. She saw the desire that instantly
flared in his own eyes, desire she’d caught a glimpse of last night.

No, she warned herself. She shouldn’t. But something crackled in the air between them, something instant and undeniable, and before she could think better of it, she’d kissed a little closer to his mouth. Cece could feel him tense. She drew back a bit. His breath drifted over her, and the intimacy of inhaling the scent of him, when for so many years she’d fantasized…

“Cece,” he said.

She stood still. This wasn’t a fantasy. This was a flesh-and-blood man.

He reached up and tugged her head down to his own.

“Blain, I don’t think this is a good id—”

He kissed her, pulled her to him, Cece settling on his hard thighs as if she’d done it a million times before—and in her dreams, maybe she had. Only this was so much better than her fantasies.

Then all thought fled. She opened her mouth, her heart thudding so loudly it whitewashed all other sound. And though she didn’t want it, though she didn’t expect it, excitement lit pinpoints of electricity through her body; it made her limbs shake, made her bite back a moan.

Kissing him was nothing like her fantasies. It was better than a fantasy. When he increased the pressure of his lips, she followed his lead and opened her mouth, and that was when it all erupted, when her
body and her mind began to realize that this was an attraction unlike any she’d felt before.

She pulled away out of self-preservation, because she couldn’t, just couldn’t, deal with the reality of kissing Blain Sanders.

“That was a mistake,” she said, pushing herself off him, a part of her mind scrambled beyond repair.

“Cece, that was—”

“A mistake,” she repeated, shocked at what kissing him had done to her insides. Not to mention her unprofessional behavior in letting him—

“Look,” she said, trying to get control of the situation. Control. That was good. When feeling poleaxed one should always appear in control. “Obviously we’re both a little stressed. The race. Lance’s wreck. It’s only natural that we should gravitate toward each other.”

You’ve never gravitated to a witness before.

“I don’t think we should read too much into this…”
mind-blowing kiss,
she mentally finished. Toe-curling, breast-tingling, thigh-burning kiss.

Holy smoke.

“Cece, that wasn’t—”

“Professional.” She cut him off. She had to cut him off because she couldn’t handle this right now—whatever
this
was. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I accept all the blame.”

“Like hell you will.”

She stiffened, not liking the sudden challenge she saw in his eyes. She’d seen that look on masculine
faces before, though usually it was on a gun range. But it always meant confrontation.

“Okay then, fine,” she said in a rush, because she was starting to feel a bit panicked. “It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t have kissed me. I’d slap your face if I didn’t need to call in to the office.” She glanced at the digital clock on the wall. “Wow, look at the time. I need to get going.” And she was already backing toward the door. That alone should have alerted her to the seriousness of her reaction. Cece never, ever backed away from anything. “I’ll check in with you when I get to San Francisco.”

She spun away.

“Cece, wait—”

But she ignored him, the calm, cool FBI agent completely gone as, for the first time in her life, a woman emerged to take her place—a woman who suddenly felt about seventeen years old.

B
LAIN FOLLOWED HER
to the end of the hauler, but without making a scene, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do.

She’d looked panicked.

It was a new expression for Cece’s face. Never, not once when they’d been teenagers, nor anytime since, had he seen such a look. If their kiss hadn’t already thrown him, her reaction to it certainly would have.

“Trouble with the new girlfriend?” his Cup car crew chief, Allen, said from behind him.

Girlfriend? That’s what his crew thought?

Yeah. He supposed they did. Blain never brought women to a race—no time to baby-sit—but his gut twisted like spun rubber at the prospect of telling Allen Cece’s true purpose.

A purpose that had just been complicated by that kiss.

“No trouble,” he muttered.

“Well, if there is, I’m next in line to date her.”

Lance’s words had Blain turning toward the driver. He’d come up between the haulers, a beige butterfly bandage on his head. A look toward Cece revealed she’d made it almost to the end of the garage. It was now or never to go after her. Blain decided he’d leave her be…for now.

He shook his head, looked back at Lance. “They release you from the care center already?”

“Yup. I’m A-okay.”

“Kinda hard to injure a head that already has nothing in it,” said another one of his crew members. His white-and-orange team shirt was too big for his small frame, which made him look even more boyish when he grinned widely.

“This from a man who thought geometry had something to do with volcanoes.”

“I told you,” the dark-haired jackman said, “I just got geology and geometry confused.”

“And he thinks I’m the one with a faulty head,” Lance said, his eyes moving back to Cece. At least that’s what it looked like. Blain followed his gaze. Sure enough, it could only be Cece he was staring
at because the Cup garage was mostly deserted. Only Cece could hold Lance’s eye.

Blain’s hackles rose and he found himself saying, “She’s not your type.”

Lance glanced back at him, lifting a brow as he said, “Hell, by the looks of things, she’s not your type, either.”

Lance crossed his arms in front of him, and Blain found it ironic that the man wore a white T-shirt with Sanders Racing scrawled across the left pocket, and yet he appeared to be challenging Blain over a woman. Unbelievable.

“Cece’s an old friend,” Blain said. “I’m not interested in her romantically.”

Hah! You are, too, buddy.

“I don’t want to see her hurt,” Blain said. “We’ve all seen how you treat women around here.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” his crew chief said. “You do realize you sound an awful lot like you’re fighting over a girl?”

Blain ordered his shoulders to relax. Damn it. When had this thing gotten so out of control? When had his
life
gotten out of control?

His cellphone beeped.

Blain looked down, recognizing the number on the display as the home office for NASCAR.

This couldn’t be good.

I
T WASN
’
T
.

Blain stared around the plush conference room, various PR people, vice presidents and racing officials
staring back at him from one of Phoenix International Raceway’s conference rooms.

“It’s not a gag order,” Barry Bidwell, president of the stock car racing association, said. “We just don’t want any wild rumors started.”

“Rumors, Barry?” Blain asked.

“Yeah, rumors.”

Blain had known the man since Blain was seventeen—a wet-behind-the-ears West Coast kid who had racing his blood. Back then he’d been Mr. Bidwell, and back then racing hadn’t been a billion-dollar industry. Which was why, Blain suspected, they’d flown in to see him today. Wouldn’t do to start a panic.

“The thing is, Blain, the FBI doesn’t even know if the letter we received is connected to Randy’s death.”

Blain just stared at him. The man had gotten heavy in recent years. The fat of good living clung to his jowls and neck. Thinning black hair looked to have been recently plugged near the front, his suit the kind Barry wouldn’t have been caught dead in twenty years ago. Hell, twenty years ago Barry couldn’t have afforded the thing. Back then he’d been a smooth-talking Southerner with a vision of what stock car racing could be. The only thing that remained of that man was the accent.