Dangerous Curves (6 page)

T
HEY RAN.

Cece kept ahead of him, though Blain managed to catch up to her from time to time. Their first stop was at the entrance to the infield tunnel, and it prompted Cece to reach for a badge Blain hadn’t even known she was carrying. The woman who guarded the entrance waved Cece through. Frankly, she hardly paid any attention to either of them, despite the fact that they’d run up to her, were wet and obviously in a hurry.

“Cece, wait,” Blain said as he moved to catch up.

But she didn’t slow down. By the time they made it through the fluorescent-lit tunnel, Blain was feeling out of breath and grudgingly impressed with Cece’s stamina.

“Which way?” she asked as they emerged into the rain again.

“This way,” Blain said, turning toward the two-story VIP suites blocking the view from the pit road. There was an opening near the end of the building, and Blain wiped the rain from his face as they entered the garage.

Cece stopped abruptly. Blain looked toward where the security personnel had been a few moments before. Gone. He inhaled deeply, his heart pounding to the point that he could see his shirt move in rhythm to the beat.

“Took him away,” Cece said, sounding far less out of breath than Blain.

They had. A lone security guard stood talking to Jeff Burks, crew chief of the number twenty-one car.

“We can go talk to Jeff,” Blain said, setting off again.

But Cece didn’t follow. He stopped, turned. Her hair had collected drops of rain like blades of grass, the team jacket she wore darker on the shoulders. Her chest barely rose and fell.

“You coming?” he asked.

“No.”

His puzzled eyes must have asked the question he didn’t.

“I shouldn’t reveal my presence here,” she answered.

He looked as confused as he felt because she said, “I know I ran down here like I was, but in hindsight, announcing the fact that I’m an FBI agent might not be such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because my boss doesn’t want people to know I’m here. And because this is still just an investigation. If I go around questioning people, it’ll raise flags.”

“So raise them.”

She reached out and touched Blain’s arm. He hadn’t put on a jacket, so it was bare and wet, and her palm was so warm it startled him.

“I was told to keep a low profile, Blain. Flashing my badge around is not low profile.”

He gazed at her in frustration.

“Look,” she said. “I sincerely doubt a bad guy would tinker with a race car in full view of race fans and television cameras.”

Blain turned back to where said bad guy had stood. Jeff laughed at something the security guard had just said and it made Blain irritated with the whole situation all over again. Man, this uncertainty drove him nuts.

“They took the guy into custody, Blain. I’ll get someone to call security and ask what all it was about, but not right now. I’d rather be more subtle.”

“Fine,” he said, glancing back at Jeff and the security guard. They were walking away, the crew apparently satisfied that all was well.

“I’ll call my office and fill them in on what just happened.”

He nodded.

She touched him again. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Blain. I just don’t want to answer the inevitable questions that’ll be raised if word gets out that an FBI agent is snooping around the racetrack.”

And as much as he wanted her to do the exact opposite of what she suggested, Blain found himself saying, “Fine.”

She released his arm. “It’s probably nothing.”

He wiped a hand over his face, rain dripping off the edge of his palm. It probably was.

Damn, but he wished he could believe that.

“Let me make some calls and we’ll find out for sure.”

A
ND SHE’D BEEN RIGHT.
Turned out some overzealous race fan had wanted to stuff a good luck sock into the frame of the car.

A sock.

Ridiculous, but not unheard of, and as Blain returned to his hotel room later that night, he found himself grateful that Cece had kept her head, that she’d been the calmer of the two, and that she’d been subtle in her handling of the situation. She’d impressed him. And she’d also made him think that maybe, just maybe, the feds were right. This was all a wild-goose chase.

He hoped so, he thought as he knocked on her hotel room door.

“Hey,” she said in a tired voice after the door swung wide.

“Here’s the information you wanted.”

“Thanks.” She took the papers from him as she leaned against the door frame. She looked beat. Exhausted. As if she’d worked nonstop since coming back to the hotel.

She probably had.

“Did you find out anything more about that guy?”

She nodded. “Nothing more than a race fan, complete with car-tire coffee table at home.”

Blain’s shoulders loosened. Maybe it was time to let it go. Maybe he
had
been overreacting.

“You finished working?”

She shook her head. “Looks like it’ll be a long night. I want to get this wrapped up by tomorrow.”

So she could leave. Head back to San Francisco.

He wished she didn’t have to go.

“Have you had anything to eat?” he asked.

“No. And I don’t really feel like going out to grab a bite, either.”

“There are other ways to get a bite than going out,” he said, pushing on her door so he could enter.

“What are you doing?” she asked after stepping aside.

“You need nourishment,” he said, sparing the room hardly a glance as he went to her nightstand and picked up the phone. “You’re no good to the investigation if you drop dead from starvation.”

He didn’t even hear her approach. Didn’t even feel her behind him until her arm brushed his own, the white T-shirt she wore transferring static to the hair on his arms.

“Don’t,” she said, grabbing the phone from his hand. Green eyes that looked a hell of a lot different than they had in high school peered up at him without an ounce of hostility. Beautiful eyes, he admitted to himself. Unusual and striking with their gold and silver flecks, flecks that matched her loose hair.

“I’m fine. Really,” she said, hanging up the phone. “I’ll eat something later on. Right now I need to concentrate on my files, and this list of names.” She held up the papers he’d given her.

Disappointment flickered through him.

“Hey,” she said, her eyes brightening. “I heard they ran qualifying. Who won the pole?”

And he felt like a kid all of a sudden, boasting to the cute girl next door as he said, “We did.”

She smiled up at him. Not that fake, sexy smile she’d used on him at the airport. Not the false smile she’d given him any number of times since, but a genuine, happy-for-him smile.

She was happy for him.

Why did that surprise Blain so damn much?

“That’s wonderful,” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “You must be thrilled.”

He
was
thrilled. And you know what? It felt good to share the information with her. Yeah, they might have started out on the wrong foot, but in the past twenty-four hours he’d developed a whole new respect for Cecilia Blackwell. She hadn’t tossed his concerns aside. Hadn’t treated his worries like they were nothing. So far she’d acted with absolute professionalism—well, aside from that incident at the airport, but overall, yeah, she’d done a good job. He respected her for that.

“Yeah, well, I wish you’d stick around for at least the Busch race tomorrow night.” And he really did.

“Too much stuff to do this weekend.”

He scanned her face, noted yet again how pretty she looked without makeup, how much she’d changed, how if she were any other woman, he’d…

He’d what?

Want to date her, he realized. Beauty, brains and a NASCAR fan—a guy could do a lot worse.

“I should get back to work,” she said, looking suddenly uncomfortable.

Had she read in his eyes some of what he’d been thinking?

“What time do you leave tomorrow?”

“Late morning.”

He didn’t know what to say after that. “Then I guess this is goodbye, since I have to be at out the track early.”

“I guess so,” she said, looking anywhere but his eyes. “Good luck tomorrow and Sunday.”

“Thanks.” Damn it. He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to spend more time with her. To find out what she’d been up to in recent years. Who her favorite driver was. What kind of ice cream she liked.

What?

He stepped back. “Have a safe flight.”

“Thanks,” she said again. “You, too.”

But as he turned away, he couldn’t help but feel regret. His hand even lingered on the door for a moment, then quickly, before he changed his mind, he left her room.

“Bye,” he heard as the door closed.

Yeah, bye.

Damn it.

C
ECE MAY HAVE HOPED
for a clean getaway, but apparently that wasn’t on the cards. A phone call from her boss had her speeding to the racetrack when she couldn’t get through to Blain. Apparently the man didn’t like being interrupted on race day, so he turned off his cellphone. Track officials were no help. Nor was anybody at his shop. Thus Cece found herself fighting race fans on their way to the Busch race. Returning to the track made her feel…anxious. Yeah, anxious.

She’d spent the whole night analyzing her feelings for Blain. Scratch that. She’d spent the whole night replaying the look on his face when he’d said goodbye. She could have sworn she’d seen regret in his eyes, regret she felt, too. And now here she was, about to face him again, and instead of concern over the news she had to impart, what she felt instead was anxiety that she was about to see him again.

She parked in the infield again, only today she was wearing regular jeans and a comfy off-white sweater that, perversely enough, was too warm,
since today there were no thunderclouds in the distance. Thus she was overheated, out of sorts and not in a good mood when she finally tracked down Blain in his Cup car hauler, not the Busch car garage where she’d spent the last half hour looking for him.

“Cece,” he said when he spotted her outside the sliding glass doors.

Cece almost didn’t recognize him. He wore a different shirt—this one for a different sponsor—the blue polo shirt making his eyes all the more striking.

And there went her heart.

Thump, thump, thump,
just as it used to do when they were kids. When he’d been out of her reach and she’d wished he wasn’t, and now, oddly…he wasn’t.

“Changed your mind, did you?” he asked with a huge grin.

“No,” she said, suddenly feeling strange. Okay, so she probably wasn’t looking forward to telling him her news. That was to be expected. But she had a feeling her sudden tension had to do more with seeing him face-to-face again than any official business.

Maybe, but that didn’t make it any easier.

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all morning,” she said, suddenly wanting to get this over with.

He looked wary, his smile dimming a few watts. “What’s up?” he asked.

She took a deep breath, wishing she’d never gotten
involved with this stupid investigation in the first place. But there was no sense in sugarcoating things.

And so she let out the breath and said, “Forensics came back with a preliminary report on the wreck that killed your friend.”

“On a Saturday?”

“They work round the clock.”

“And?”

Damn it, why did she hate doing this so much? “They found evidence of nitrates.”

His mouth hung open, the smile completely gone now. “Explosives?”

She nodded, quickly and sharply. “It’s nothing for certain yet, Blain. Just a chemical swipe that came back positive. They still have to run things through the computer, but I thought you should know.”

The crowd roared. Blain looked off to the infield. Two paratroopers were in the air, red and blue streamers trailing behind the lower one, an American flag trailing behind the upper one.

Yeah, the American dream. Chasing killers.
Whoopdedoo.

“Damn,” he said. “I guess that means they’re canceling the race.”

She shook her head. “They’re not. My boss has been on the phone with Daytona all morning. Until we come back with something positive, they won’t do a thing.”

“A chemical swipe isn’t positive?”

She shook her head again. “No, it’s not. The positive
swab might have resulted from racing fuel mixing with some unknown compound. We won’t know anything for certain for another day or two.”

“But you’re worried.”

His perceptiveness surprised her. “I am. I watched the tapes last night. Maybe if I didn’t know a lot about racing I might dismiss what happened as an accident, but you’re right. The sequence of events is off. It looks like Randy’s car exploded
before
he hit the wall.”

Blain looked at the ground, and for a second Cece could see the grief in his eyes.

“Blain, I’m so sorry.”

She had no idea why she’d said that—nor why she’d missed her plane, hopped in a car and driven all the way out to the track on a race day, just to tell him face-to-face. She could have waited until after the race, or this evening when he went back to his hotel.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, too,” he said, over the noise of the crowd. Driver introductions were almost over, boos and hisses mixing with wild applause, creating a cacophony of noise that was almost indescribable.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” he answered.

“You going to tell your driver?”

“On race day? I may as well pull him from the race if I do that.”

“So you’re going to race today, then.”

“What do you think I should do?”

Stupid, how gratified it made her feel to be asked her opinion. “I think you should be concerned.”

He nodded, looking grim.

“But I also think this is a different league, and thus not a target.” Busch racing wasn’t in the same echelon as the Cup tour, even if the cars did look the same. “It seems more likely that tomorrow’s race would be the target, not today’s. Besides, the note referred to the Cup car circuit, not this one.”

“Lance is a Cup driver, too.”

“Yeah, but not today.”

“And what about tomorrow? What do I do then? We’re trying to win a championship. Hell, we’re trying to hold on to our sponsor. Star Oil doesn’t like that a no-name kid is driving
their
car. We need a win to soothe their ruffled feathers, and to battle the negative image of a dead driver being associated with their logo.”

“Stupid,” Cece said.

“But fact.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,
Cece thought. “It’s a no-win situation.”

He crossed his arms, tension lines bracketing his mouth. “Yeah, it is.”

“Let Lance race,” Cece said on impulse, touching his arm, feeling the soft hairs that were in such contrast to his hard muscles. “I don’t see any reason to think Busch cars will come under attack, too. Tomorrow…well, tomorrow might be a different story.”

“You think so?”

“It’s a gut feeling, but it’s the best I can offer right now.”

He stared into the distance for a moment, seeking answers to hard questions. When his eyes returned to Cece’s face he still didn’t say anything immediately. “All right. We’ll race.”

She hoped she wouldn’t come to regret her words.

“On one condition.”

She wondered what that could be.

“You stay.”

“Stay?” she said in shock. “I can’t stay. I need to get back.”

He looked out over the homestretch, at the thousands of fans that sat in the stadium, and his face filled with such an expression of uncertainty, she couldn’t look away.

“Yeah, but I’d really like it if you hung around.”

He glanced back at her, that handsome, chiseled face that she used to fantasize about right in front of her. But it wasn’t his nearness that caused her stomach to pitch, caused her to inhale a bit, to stare into blue, blue eyes. It was his words, and the sincerity she heard in them. She told herself not to be weak. Not to give in. So he wanted her around. It wasn’t personal.

It sure
felt
personal.

The crowd roared.

To her right, another famous car owner nodded to Blain as he passed. A generator hummed. Cece
looked toward the sound, her eyes nearly blinded by the white big rig that housed the “brains” of a major network.

He wanted her to stay.

“Okay,” she said, but for one long moment, she wanted to be a race fan, not an FBI agent. Wanted to do this under different circumstances—not for the FBI, but for her own personal pleasure.

“You don’t look all that enthusiastic,” Blain said.

She opened her mouth, ready to feed him a pithy excuse; instead she found herself saying, “I wish I was here under different circumstances.”

He straightened away from her, his eyes holding hers in one of those long, thoughtful glances that made her see things in his gaze she’d never seen before. Doubt. Resignation. Uncertainty.

“Me, too, Cece,” he said. “Me, too. But c’mon. Maybe we can pretend everything’s normal.”

B
UT IT WASN
’
T AS EASY
as all that.

Not only was Cece battling concerns that a killer might be on the loose—Blain’s crew suddenly all suspects—but she didn’t like how nervous she felt at the prospect of being on pit road. During a race.

“Just make sure you stay outside the pit stall,” Blain said, his blue headset off one ear so he could listen to her and his crew members at the same time. “When we come in for a stop, stay out of the way.”

She had stared killers in the eye, looked down the
barrel of a nine-millimeter, but suddenly she felt as tense as a rookie on her first bust.

She nodded, tempted to wipe her suddenly sweaty hands on her black jeans. They passed through a chain-link fence that separated the garages from pit road, a swarm of humanity immediately enveloping them. Cece went on guard. Lord, it was like a rock concert, only more colorful, yellow-shirted crew mixing with spectators, family members and network personalities. Between bodies she could spy the race cars, a few crew chiefs squatting down by their driver’s window, some drivers just sitting in their car alone, staring straight ahead. Busch racing wasn’t the same level as Cup racing, but a lot of the same drivers drove both kinds of cars. So while there weren’t as many people in the stands, she imagined most of the rest looked and felt the same as the big leagues.

Chaos. Crowds. Confusion. The perfect cover for a killer.

She tried not to think about that, or to lose Blain as they wormed their way among crew members and TV personalities. More than one person caught Blain’s arm, wishing him luck, slapping him on the shoulder or the rear as he passed by. It all seemed surreal.

“Sit over here,” he said when they found his stall. Someone had set up a bright red tent opposite Blain’s pit. Stacks of tires were piled beneath the canopy, the black rubber turned a deep purple by the red, radiant
light. Opposite them was a matching red toolbox as big as a car, which housed wrenches of every size and shape. On top of the whole thing sat a chair, a TV and an umbrella to cover it all.

“You’ll know when we’re about to pit,” he said, “because everyone’ll start moving around. Just stay back.”

Got it. Stay back.

“I’ll check in with you from time to time.” But instead of turning away, he held her gaze. “Thanks for staying, Cece.”

She nodded, struck by this stranger who stared down at her. Gone was Blain the Jerk. In his place was Blain the Nice Guy—Blain who tipped one side of his mouth up in an odd sort of smile before turning away from her, stepping into the stream of people and entering his pit. One of the crew members caught her eye, the man’s mouth obstructed by his microphone. He winked. Cece nodded back at him, wondering…was he their perpetrator? Was there really a crackpot out there trying to knock off drivers? If so, was he here today?

A look at Blain confirmed he might be thinking the same thing. Sure, this was race day, but she had no doubt some of the tension in his eyes had little to do with competition.

A TV crew came up to him. To her surprise, a reporter shoved a microphone in his face. Somehow amid all the pandemonium she’d managed to forget that he was famous. They filmed him first, then a
man Cece assumed must be the Busch car crew chief.

Another suspect?

Damn it, this drove her crazy. She was seeing bad guys everywhere.

That’s what you’re trained to do, Cece. So just do it.

She was a federal agent, a protector. It was her job to keep people safe. And if forensics’ initial findings proved true, she’d make darn sure she did exactly that. She had to…for Blain.