It was an apology more profound than any she’d ever given, deeper and wider in its pain and regret than two quick syllables could ever express. An apology for everything: for how she’d been, how she was, what she’d done.
That was how it was between them. One word, and all was forgiven.
Shiara let go of her hand. Cassica faced forward. She turned the key, and the car coughed, chattered, and died.
“You’ve got to be frickin’ kidding me,” Cassica said.
Across the forecourt, painted faces swiveled toward them. The Howlers had heard the engine. One screeched and pointed; another ran off toward the bus by the gate.
Cassica tried the engine again. It stuttered and refused to turn over. Shiara clambered over into the backseat as the Howlers came racing toward them. She picked up the shotgun, smashed out a window with the butt and aimed into the forecourt. She’d grown up with four brothers: she knew how to fire a gun.
A Howler had climbed into the driver’s seat of the bus now. Shiara saw his intention. He was going to drive the bus forward, block the gate, seal them in.
Move, she willed the car.
She saw flashes of shrieking shadowed shapes between the cars and trucks, rushing closer. She aimed, ready on the trigger, blood pulsing against the backs of her eyes. They wouldn’t take her alive again. Either of them.
A Howler came screaming at them.
The car’s engine caught and roared. Cassica wrenched it into gear and it lurched forward just as Shiara squeezed the trigger. Her shot went wide; the Howler hit the back of the car and spun away. Tires smoking, they accelerated, Cassica hunched over the wheel as they raced across the crowded forecourt. They heard gunshots and ducked as bullets pinged off the car’s armored flanks.
Through the windshield, Shiara could see they were approaching the gate. The bus had come to life, coughing black smoke; now it lurched forward to cut off their escape, and as they raced toward the narrowing gap Shiara thought they couldn’t possibly get through in time.
They flashed across the front of the bus. Shiara saw its dirty grille looming in the side windows, terrifyingly close, and smelled the stink of oil as it thundered closer. But it was a fraction of a second too slow to ram them; instead it clipped them on the back fender as they shot past, throwing Shiara against the front seat, where she struck her head. The car swerved with the impact, but Cassica turned into the slide, found a straight line, and they were away.
After the tumbling chaos of escape came an incredible peace. They were on the road. Cassica was driving. All was as it should be.
Shiara looked back, amazed at their survival. The bus had blocked the gate, preventing the other Howlers from following. She slumped down in her seat.
“Nice drivin’,” she said.
Cassica got them a few blocks away from the Howlers’ lair before she spoke again. She was bloody and haggard, and on the edge of cracking. Yesterday she’d been almost strangled to death. Today she’d shot someone.
“They were waiting for us,” she said. “They’d been tipped off.”
“The map,” said Shiara.
“What map?”
“Harlan gave me a map, said it was a safe route. I shoulda told you, but … y’know.”
“Harlan,” said Cassica, her voice dull. “I heard him on the radio. He was talking to the Howlers. It was him.”
Shiara felt cold and numb. She ought to feel angry, but what was the point? The odds had been stacked against them from the start. She’d wanted to win on merit, beat their opponents fair and square, but she’d taken that map from Harlan in the end. It didn’t matter that it was a trap: she’d thought it was genuine. She’d cheated. Perhaps they deserved their betrayal.
She’d wanted to show the world what she could do, that she wasn’t just some girl working in her daddy’s auto shop. But winning the Widowmaker was a childish dream and always had been. She realized that now.
“How much time you think we lost?” Shiara asked, fanning the last ember of vain hope.
“Too much.”
The defeat in Cassica’s voice was enough for her. It was over. Both of them knew it. The best they could hope for now was to get out of the city in one piece.
“Hoy,” said Shiara. “Least we’re alive, right?”
“Yeah,” said Cassica flatly, as she took the entrance ramp onto the freeway. “Least there’s that.”
“Where’s Harlan?” Cassica demanded as she stormed into the hotel bar. “Where’s Harlan Massini?”
Her voice was loud in the softly lit room, silencing the murmurs of conversation. She swept the occupants with her eyes, reckless with rage. Men conspired in dim booths; women stared at her from their stools at the bar, drinks balanced in their hands. The barman, young and pockmarked with a flowing mustache, slid along the bar to her.
“Can I help you, miss?”
His patronizing sneer infuriated her. She snatched a bottle off the counter, smashed it against the bar. Alcohol sloshed along the counter; a woman nearby yelped in shock as she was pelted with bits of glass.
“Where’s Harlan Massini?” Cassica snarled.
In the few hours since they’d rolled over the finish line, Cassica had reached a pitch of anger she’d never thought possible. They were dead last on the day, though not in the overall rankings, thanks to the advantage they’d built up on day one. The leaders, Kyren Bane and Draden Taxt, were seventy minutes ahead of them. It was an impossible gap, since neither Maisie nor the stolen Howler car could compete with the expensive sponsored vehicles the other racers had. The Widowmaker was lost to Cassica; instead she sought a reckoning with the man who’d betrayed them.
By the time they’d finished the second stage, Harlan had already gone on to Rattlepan Gulch, where the last leg of the Widowmaker would begin. They followed, riding with the teamsters who were transporting their cars and gear. It turned out to be a bleak, hardscrabble town at the foot of a mountain, with the Blight Lands so close you could feel the weirdness in the air. Only the desperate would pitch up so close to the heart of insanity, the dread land where few dared to venture and fewer still came back from; and this place seemed desperate indeed.
Cassica set out to find Harlan as soon as they arrived. Shiara, infuriatingly, showed little interest in confrontation. She said she’d rather be done with the whole damn mess; yelling at Harlan would do them no good. But Cassica wasn’t the sort to let that kind of thing go, so she went alone.
Once-empty streets heaved with activity as spectators got drunk and crew made preparations for the morning. Every bar she visited sent her to another, increasing her rage each time, until finally she found a man who swore he’d been drinking with Harlan not a half hour before.
Here. In this hotel bar. And yet still there was no sign of him.
She stood there, mad-eyed, a broken bottle in her hand. The barman was no longer patronizing: now he stared at her like she was a maniac. She had a sense that she’d gone too far, but she didn’t care. She wanted Harlan.
“He ain’t here,” said a voice behind her, a slow drawl familiar enough to make her skin creep. She looked over her shoulder and saw a lanky man unfolding himself from a shadowed booth where he’d been drinking alone. His hangdog face was unshaven, jaw greasy with sweat, and he wore a battered porkpie hat. He walked over to her with a gangly lope.
The man who’d had her kidnapped, who’d stolen their sponsorship money, who’d threatened to take Harlan’s fingers. Scadler.
He tossed some coins on the bar. “For the inconvenience,” he told the barman. Then he snatched a bottle from the bar. “And this,” he said. “Gimme another glass too.”
The barman did as he was told, keeping his eye on Cassica.
“Where is he?” Cassica asked Scadler.
“He’s gone. Hidin’ out, I shouldn’t wonder. Man came in a few minutes ago, told him you were in town and gunnin’ for him. Don’t reckon him for a feller big on courage.” He motioned toward the booth with the bottle in his h
and. “Shall we?”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Might be I can explain a few things,” he said. “Put down the broken bottle, though, huh?”
There was something in his manner that defused her anger. It would get her nowhere with him. And at least he was offering something. She put the remains of the bottle on the counter and went to the booth.
Scadler sat opposite her, put the new shot glass down next to the one on the table, and filled both with whiskey.
“I don’t want that,” Cassica told him.
He shrugged, downed one, then downed the other and gave her that gummy, vile grin of his.
“Your problem,” he said as he filled a glass again, “is you don’t know your place.”
Cassica watched him carefully, the folds of his face made deep by the downlights, and waited for more.
“You know how much money they got swillin’ around in a sport like Maximum Racin’? I’ll tell you: it’s a lot. And you know where all that money starts out? People in their livin’ rooms, in bars all over the world, watchin’ their televisions. All the advertisin’, the sponsors, the clothes they put on you and the way you get your hair done, the only point of any of it is to keep people watchin’ those adverts, buyin’ them clothes, copyin’ that style. Widowmaker’s the biggest television event in the world. The opportunity to tell millions of people how they ought to spend their money. Somethin’ that big, that’s too important to leave to chance. Too important to let a couple girls from the boonies mess things up.”
“We weren’t messing anything up! We were trying to win!”
“That is messing things up. The outcome of this race got decided long before you joined it.” He wagged a knowing finger at her. “You two, you’re the plucky outsiders, poor kids done good, meant to bravely fail so we can all say how well you done. But you two as Celestials? Nah.”
“Why not?” she cried.
“Your tech’s chubby and surly. She couldn’t be more dislikable if she tried. And you? You got the looks, but you got a frickin’ temper. All that stuff you said yesterday, how your hometown was a dump and people out there were dumb, that didn’t win you no friends. You backwater girls are supposed to be wholesome.”
Cassica began to boil inside. “Who says?”
“The viewers say,” Scadler told her, with a wicked glint in his eye. He was enjoying putting her through the mangle of his truth. “You gotta be what they want you to be, or they’ll switch over. And Dunbery Hasp, he knows how to give the people what they want.”
“What do they want?” She knew the answer before she even asked the question.
“Kyren Bane.” He sank his whiskey, smacked his lips. “Draden Taxt.”
Cassica wanted to grind that glass into his face. “You’re lying. You don’t know.”
He studied his glass as if reading wisdom in the reflections of light through its angles. “Two boys, perfectly machined for purpose,” he said. “Bad boys who’ll do what it takes to be famous. Dangerous, so Molly can safely dream of danger. Rebels, so Bobbi-Jo thinks she’s a rebel too, and maybe she’ll make Daddy angry. They’re already plottin’ next month’s Celestial Hour, y’know. Already worked out which little starlet Kyren’s gonna get with. Their managers have cut deals, sold ’em to each other, see? ’Cause they know it’ll make headlines, and headlines are the secret to staying on Olympus. Keep the viewers watching. Give ’em what they want.”
“That ain’t what I want!”
“Ain’t it?” He sighed and put down his glass. “I know your kind,” he said scornfully. “You want the bad boys, but you don’t know what bad is.”
Cassica’s head was going light as the rage seeped out of her, leaving her empty. She felt used and cheap and disgusted with herself. She wanted to argue that she was better than that, but she couldn’t anymore. Hadn’t she bought the image of Kyren Bane from the moment she saw him on television? Hadn’t she given herself to him, become the groupie cliché, even though he was an arrogant ass to her the first time they met? All that affected cool: did he even know he was fake, manufactured, designed by others?
Did she?
“It ain’t that way,” she said weakly. “It ain’t.”
Scadler poured himself another shot, talking with the languid rhythm of a man drunk and in love with his own ideas. “It’s all fixed. The world’s fixed. They make it look fair so’s you’ll keep playin’ the game, but it ain’t. All that’s important is that it seems to be.” He raised his glass to her. “An’ they call me a criminal.”
It was all too much. To be told that all their endeavor, all their dreams meant nothing, that it was a fool’s chase from the start. They didn’t fit the story. They weren’t wanted. And yet after what Harlan did, how could she disbelieve it?
“He told me he had a meeting with Dunbery Hasp,” she said.
“Uh-huh,” said Scadler. “That bit of luck you had in the swamp got you so far out in front the bigwigs started sweatin’. So Hasp had a word with Harlan. Gave him a map and told him to make sure you didn’t win. In return, Hasp would put him in line to manage some real contenders next time. That, and he’d get me off his back.”
“How do you know all that?”
Anger passed across Scadler’s face. “ ’Cause Hasp had a word with me too. Some folk you just don’t say no to.” He threw back another shot and gasped as it burned down his throat. “But I’ll tell you somethin’: I’ll be rootin’ for you when you race tomorrow. ’Cause if by some miracle you should win, that deal would be off—and Harlan wouldn’t have no one to protect him from me then.” He gave her a look, long and steady. “An’ I wouldn’t just stop at his fingers this time.”
Cassica felt a chill. In that gaze she saw a man who’d killed without mercy and without thought, and would again. Kyren’s posturing and sulkiness seemed ridiculous, weighed against that stare.
You want the bad boys, but you don’t know what bad is.
She’d had enough of this. Enough of it all. Her dream of winning the Widowmaker had turned into something dirty and tawdry that she didn’t even recognize. Harlan had cheated her of satisfaction by hiding from her, too cowardly to face a teenage girl. The godfather of Maximum Racing had tried to have her killed. And the boy she’d been chasing had been promised to someone else before they’d even met. He’d never been for Cassica: he was just passing the time. She was humiliated at how naive she’d been. The thought of seeing him again made her want to curl up and die.
Everyone was in it together. The only one who’d given it to her straight was this vicious thug, annoyed at being robbed of his bloody prize.
“We ain’t racing tomorrow,” she said. “We’re done.”
“Ah, that’s a shame. A real shame. Well, can’t say I’m surprised. You seem a smart girl.” He touched the tip of his hat. “I think I’ve done about all the preachin’ I’m goin’ to for one night. You take care now, Cassica Hayle. Go on home.”
Go on home. It seemed like the best idea she could imagine right then. So she got to her feet, thanked Scadler for his honesty, and wished him a good night. Then she walked out of the bar, and the whole way she didn’t raise her eyes from the floor.
Sammis Rye lay on a surgeon’s table, surrounded by doctors and nurses, his bruised face hidden by a breather mask and his body sprouting tubes. The bleeping rhythm of his heart punctuated the murmured instructions from the man with the knife. Blood slipped in runnels over skin stained yellow with iodine.
Shiara watched through a window, her arms folded tightly. Next to her stood Dutton Rye, pale with worry. They wouldn’t even have let her in, if he hadn’t seen her and insisted she be allowed.
“He liked you,” Dutton told her. “Thought a lot of you.”
She knew that, but hearing it from his father made it worse.
After the crash, Sammis had regained consciousness long enough to activate his rescue alarm, otherwise they’d have left him there. As it was, he was lucky to have made it back.
His tech hadn’t been so fortunate.
“He’s bleedin’ on the inside,” Dutton said. “They gotta try to stabilize him.”
He spoke in the taut clipped manner of a man battening down his grief. Shiara knew that feeling. She hadn’t dared think of Sammis since the crash. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be here now. If he was to die, she preferred to remember him as the boy who’d helped her fix her car, the boy with the easy smile who’d won her over with his kindness.
“They say he might not walk again if he lives,” Dutton said.
Shiara wanted to comfort him, but she wasn’t good at comforting strangers, so she kept quiet.
“I didn’t even want him to be a racer,” he said. “I knew how dangerous it was. I knew what might happen. But it seemed like what he wanted.”
“He did it to make you proud,” she told him.
He turned away from her then, and she could tell by his breath he was crying.
“Is that you?” said Melly, tears in her voice. “Is that really you, my darlin’?”
Shiara fought back tears herself as she watched her mom on the grainy monitor before her. Melly seemed shrunken, smaller and frailer than Shiara remembered, dwarfed by her husband, who sat with one meaty arm around her.
“It’s me, Mom,” Shiara said. She wanted to say more, but it didn’t feel right. There was a camera filming her from behind the monitor and another cameraman next to her to catch a different angle. Lighting techs and a producer crowded the trailer where she sat in the midst of a makeshift studio.
The world was watching her, hungry for emotion.
“My little girl, my little girl!” Melly was crying openly now. Blane patted her ineffectually. “We thought you were gone! When the cameras went out, we thought … oh!” She turned into Blane’s chest and wept.
“We’re all mighty relieved here,” said Blane. He masked his feelings with a brusque, let’s-get-on-with-it tone. He was as awkward as she in front of cameras. “How’d you do it?”
“Cassica got me out,” said Shiara. She glanced off camera at the producer, who was making encouraging gestures. “I’m gonna do an interview about it at eight, tell the whole story.” The producer kept gesturing. “With Tandy MacKail, only on Channel 3,” she added finally.