Chapter 5 Frequency
Agnes POV
The thing about being a documentarian is that you learn very quickly when to pull a thread and when to leave it alone. Pull too early and you unravel something before you understand the weave. Leave it too long and it disappears into the fabric entirely.
I needed more time before I touched this one.
So I went to practice.
Ace was already at the coffee machine when I walked into the motorhome kitchen.
I didn't know when this had started exactly — him being there in the mornings, me arriving and neither of us announcing it or making it into something. It had just settled into the shape of the day without either of us deciding that it would.
He handed me a cup without turning around.
It was black, as usual.
“You know most people ask before they assume someone's coffee order", I said.
"You've had the same thing every morning for six days."
"Maybe I wanted something different today."
He looked at me then. Just briefly, with the expression of someone who was not going to dignify that with a response.
"Did you?"
I took a sip. "No."
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile but close enough that I noticed it and looked away first.
He leaned against the counter, cup in hand, eyes back on his phone. I looked out the window. The garage was already alive outside, the crew moving between the motorhomes and the pit lane.
"Do you always come in this early?" I asked.
"Do you?"
I opened my mouth and closed it.
What was wrong with you Agnes?
He glanced up with that almost-smile again, quicker this time.
He left first, he set his cup down and walked out without a word and I heard the garage door open somewhere down the corridor.
I finished my coffee alone and tried to remember what I'd been planning to think about before I walked in here.
On the radio, he was asking Dae to check the tire delta on the medium compound before committing to a strategy.
Dae checked. Ace had already formed his own opinion and was explaining it back in the flat precise language of someone who processes data the way other people breathe. By the time Dae confirmed the numbers, Ace had already moved on.
I replayed that exchange.
Then I replayed it again.
I told myself I was studying his communication style for the documentary. I was going to use this for the documentary. That was definitely the reason I had now listened to forty seconds of radio communication four times.
I put my headset down with a sigh.
Who was I kidding? I was going down the trope of being attracted to a guy who didn't even know if I breathed properly
Tch
He set a flying lap in the final minutes of the session. The kind that makes the timing screen go purple across all three sectors and causes the engineer beside Dae to actually stand up from his chair.
The whole team burst into a loud uproar and cheers.
“And winning again is the Corvus' Raven, Ace!” The commentator intoned.
In the celebration that rippled down the pit wall, I had my camera up, catching the crew, Dae's rare open smile, and the car coming back in.
Then I caught something else.
Ace climbed out of the car, pulling off his balaclava, already being swarmed by his team. And in the middle of all of that - quick, easy to miss, he looked up at the pit wall.
At me.
For two seconds he held my gaze. Then someone said his name and he turned away.
I lowered my camera.
That evening I went back through the footage with the playback slowed down.
I watched it three times.
He looked. It was real. It was also over so fast that I could have convinced myself it wasn't there if I hadn't been the one behind the camera.
I closed that file and opened the one with Reid's byline photograph.
I spent two hours going through his publication history the way I go through everything — slowly, backwards, looking for the pattern underneath the pattern.
He'd moved around. In different outlets, different beats, occasionally different names in the contributor credits but the same writing underneath. The kind of prose that had a specific kind of tone to it regardless of what it was covering.
I traced each publication back as far as it went.
Holding company. Parent company. Acquisition records. Editorial group.
Every single one.
All roads went back to the same place.
I sat back in my chair, tapping my cheek with my lightpen.
Manny Plosfeid's name was sitting at the top of every masthead if you went back far enough to find it. It was not always visible but it was there.
Reid hadn't moved between publications. He'd stayed in the same house the whole time, just in different rooms.
I had two things now. The man who ran when he saw me. The woman who called to say she wanted to protect me. And a thread connecting them that I still couldn't explain.
I wrote: Why was he in that garage?
Underneath it: And who sent him?
I picked up my phone and called the number.
It rang four times and went to voicemail. A calm, unhurried voice asking me to leave a message.
Margot knocked and came in holding two cups of latte and cream.
“Oh my gosh, thank you Margot”, I said with a mock cry of relief.
She chuckled and settled into the chair next to me.
“What are you up to?” She asked, looking at my laptop.
“Nothing, just studying my notes”
“Found anything yet? Sherlock Holmes”
“Nope”, I replied with a smile, “only that the coordination amongst their team feels weird”
“Weird?’
“I don't know how to explain it”.
“Yeah I get”, she replied and sipped her tea.
“I overheard the team members talking about a Ms. Plosfeid coming over. They were talking about it in hushed tones and well you know me I eavesdropped”.
“Really?”
I froze momentarily and then I opened the team portal on my laptop and pulled up the weekend's accredited guest list. I scrolled through it slowly. Sponsors. Media. Officials. Hospitality guests.
I went through it again.
Manny Plosfeid's name was not on it.
