Chapter 13 Thirteen

Three weeks out from the championship, Kane made his first move.

It came at six in the morning on a Tuesday, while I was under the Ducati running a pre-session check on the front forks. The compound gate alarm went off, two short bursts, which Tank had told me meant an unregistered vehicle on the perimeter road. Not inside the fence. Just outside it, moving slow.

I slid out from under the bike.

The tank was already at the garage door, looking toward the gate. Santos was crossing the yard on a jog. The perimeter men had moved to the fence line, hands at their belts.

The vehicle stopped outside the gate for about forty seconds. Then it moved on.

Nobody relaxed.

Dax came out of the main building two minutes later, phone in her hand, jacket on like she'd been up for a while. She looked at Tank first, then at me.

"Black SUV," Tank said. "No plates. Drove the full perimeter and left."

"Kane running a visual check," Dax said. "He wants to know our numbers, our setup, who's coming and going." She looked at Santos. "Double the perimeter from tonight. Nobody moves in or out without me knowing."

Santos nodded and walked away.

Dax looked at me. "Track session in an hour. We go out the south exit today."

She went back inside.

Tank watched her go, then looked at me. "She slept three hours last night," he said. Not a complaint. Not gossip. Just a fact, laid down the same way he laid everything down now, straight and without decoration. Something had changed in Tank since the night in Dax's office. The hostility was gone completely, replaced by a directness that was almost easier to deal with.

"Does she always like this?" I asked.

"When it matters." He turned back to the garage. "Get your check finished. She won't wait."

We went out the south exit and rode the championship course twice before the city woke up properly. Clean passes, no pushing, Dax riding behind me this time instead of alongside, watching my lines from a different angle. When we got back she sat across from me in the office and went through both passes corner by corner.

"Mile four," she said. "You're braking fifteen meters too early going into the right-hander."

"The surface is broken on the left side. I've been avoiding it."

"Venom doesn't avoid it. He uses the broken surface to his advantage on the exit." She drew the line on the notepad. "If you brake later and run slightly left, the exit opens up and you recover the time you lose on entry." She pushed the notepad across. "Try it next session."

I looked at the line. "That's a late apex."

"Very late. It'll feel wrong the first time."

"And the second?"

"Less wrong." She took the notepad back. "That's how you know it's right."

I looked at her. "How do you know all of this? You don't race."

"I used to." She said it without looking up, in the same tone she used for everything, like it was a fact with no particular weight attached to it. But she didn't elaborate and I knew better than to push.

She closed the notepad. "Kane's SUV this morning. He's escalating the pressure, trying to make us nervous enough to move before we're ready." She looked at me. "Don't let it change how you work."

"It won't." "I know." A pause. "I'm saying it anyway."

The second move came four days later and it was less subtle than a black SUV.

I was on the course alone for the first time. Dax had approved it, one solo session on the back half of the route, mile four to mile eight, while she handled a club matter at the compound. Tank had wanted to ride with me. She'd said no, that I needed to learn the second half of the course without someone else's rhythm interfering with mine.

I was coming through the technical section at mile five when I saw the bike.

Parked on the shoulder, maybe two hundred meters ahead. Black, no markings, engine running. The rider was sitting on it, not moving, watching me come.

I didn't slow down.

At a hundred meters I recognized the bike. The same blacked-out Kawasaki from the photograph on Dax's desk. The one next to the Death Dealers bike. The one Cage rode.

He let me pass without moving.

I rode the remaining three miles, came around, and he was gone.

I called Dax from the end of the course.

"Where are you?" she said.

"Mile eight. Cage was on the shoulder at mile five. Sat and watched me pass."

Silence on the line for two seconds. "Did he follow you?"

"No."

"Come back now. South exit."

I rode back and she was at the south gate when I came through, arms crossed, already knowing from my voice on the phone that this was a message, not an accident.

"He wasn't there to do anything," I said. "He was there to make sure I knew he could find me."

"Yes." She turned and walked toward the office. "That's exactly what he was there for."

Inside, she pulled up the map on her laptop. The two red dots that had circled the compound the night we found the listening device were gone, replaced now by a single dot sitting stationary on the east road.

"He's been there since this morning," she said. "Watching the south exit."

"He knew I was going out alone."

She looked at me. "Which means he has another source inside this compound or he's been watching the exits long enough to learn our patterns." She closed the laptop. "Either way, solo sessions are finished. You ride with a Tank from now on."

"That's going to affect my time."

"A compromised rider affects it more." She said it flat and final. End of discussion. "Three weeks out, Zed. Kane is trying to get in your head. The SUV, Cage on the shoulder, all of it is pressure. He wants you to make mistakes on the course because you're looking over your shoulder instead of looking at the road."

I sat back. "Is it working on you?"

She looked at me for a long moment. "What do you think?"

"I think you haven't slept properly in a week and you're running this whole operation on coffee and three years of anger and I think if Kane knew how close you actually are to the edge of this thing he'd be more scared than he is."

The room was very quiet.

Dax looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen before. Not the controlled, assessing look. Not the flat delivery of hard facts. Something that sat underneath all of that, something that existed before she'd learned to keep everything behind glass.

Then it was gone.

"Get some rest this afternoon," she said. "Session tomorrow at five AM before the compound is fully awake. Tank rides with you." I stood up.

"Zed." I turned. She was looking at the closed laptop, not at me. "What you said. About being close to the edge." A pause. "You're not wrong."

She said it like it cost her something to say.

I nodded and walked out and didn't make it into something it wasn't, because that was how Dax needed it to be and I was starting to understand that some things she gave you were more significant for how small she made them sound.

That night I was in the garage working late when Tank came in and sat on an upturned crate near the Ducati. He didn't pick up a tool. He just sat there for a minute in the way Tank did things, without preamble, working up to whatever he'd come to say.

"She used to race," he said. "Before VP. Before Marcus died. She was fast. Maybe as fast as you." He looked at the floor. "The Dutch made her stop. Said a VP couldn't be on a track, too exposed, too much risk. Dax didn't argue." He paused. "She never argued with the Dutch about anything back then."

I looked at him. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because she gave you the line at mile four that she used to use when she rode that course." He met my eyes. "She hasn't told anyone about that line in six years."

He got up off the crate and walked out.

I turned back to the Ducati and sat with that for a while.

Three weeks.

Whatever this was between me and Dax Steele, it had stopped being simple a long time.