“Go again,” Conn said.
She ran once more, already getting the hang of the test strip, improving her shifting and her time by half a second. Then she drove off the track and parked by Shane’s trailer, where Conn’s car was running. Finn was sitting half in and half out the driver’s seat, listening to the rumbling engine with an attentive ear. He gave Shane a questioning thumbs-up, one Shane returned with a definitive thumbs-up.
“Why is it so loud?” Cady shouted.
“The exhaust stops right after the manifold,” Conn said, his voice also raised. “Mufflers are great for making cars run quietly, but every inch of exhaust pipe reduces performance.”
“Oh.”
Finn hoisted his lean frame out of the car, then leaned through the open window after Conn got in, explaining something Cady caught only in snatches and didn’t understand anyway. Conn tossed her a vague salute as the car rolled toward the waiting line.
Cady wandered toward the chain-link fence. The stands, normally full on a Saturday night, were all but empty. The canteen was open, one bored-looking girl alternately serving up the occasional coffee or hot cocoa and flirting with the various crew members. Finn was among the guys at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee. Shane walked to the canteen, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Cady wondered if he’d picked up the habit from Conn, or vice versa. He ordered a cup of coffee, then walked over to stand beside her.
“Conn asked you to keep an eye on me, didn’t he?”
Shane just smiled at her. “I don’t usually get to watch the races,” he said in answer. “Usually I’ve got two or three cars I’m tuning up between runs.”
“You don’t want to drive?”
“Sometimes I do. But I don’t feel about it the way Conn does.”
She turned back to the track. Conn was second in line for the warming strip, staring straight ahead. She took the opportunity to watch him. His eyes resolutely turned forward, his jaw set. Something struck Cady.
“He doesn’t look like he’s having fun,” she commented before she could fully think through the stupidity of that statement. Of course it wasn’t fun for him. Maybe it was a different kind of fun, the kind that comes from a depth and breadth of experience, a total immersion in a hobby or sport. Conn knew cars and racing inside and out. She’d had a couple of moments of exhilaration. He had two decades of racing in his brain and body.
“This isn’t much fun for Conn anymore,” Shane agreed, to her utter shock.
She looked at him. “Why not? Why is he still doing it?”
“You’ll have to ask him that,” Shane said.
Cady thought about this. In her experience, doing something after the fun was gone meant you were either in something for a profound love and fulfillment or you were stuck in a rut you needed to hop out of. Based on the expression on Conn’s face, she was leaning toward the latter.
He rolled up to the starting lights. They counted down from red through amber to green. The Camaro shot off the starting line.
“Good shifting,” Shane commented. “It’s trickier than you’d think.”
“I figured that out after one run,” Cady said. Conn had some serious driving skills.
They watched the car rocket down the runway, then turned in unison to see the time flash up on the LED display: 10.00.
“Damn,” Shane muttered. He blew out his breath. “All we need is two hundredths of a second. I’ve got to figure that out.”
“Figure what out?” Cady said. She felt like she’d been dropped into act three, maybe four, of a family drama. “I thought the point was consistency.”
“You’ll have to ask him that,” she and Shane said in unison. “Got it. Good thing I like a mystery.”
“It’s not much of a mystery,” Shane said easily. She liked the way he smiled at her, despite the serious look in his eyes. “Pretty common story, truth be told. But it’s Conn’s to tell, and I’m betting you’re the right person to hear it.”
Cady wasn’t so sure about that. She and Conn were involved in a freakish, spur-of-the-moment relationship that was about sex and a total absence of privacy. They’d been thrown together because Chris thought she was in danger and Conn needed to be shuffled aside while Hawthorn tried to find out who’d beaten a man to a pulp and was trying to frame Conn for it. It was hardly something to write a song about. “What makes you think that?” she said, absently. Conn’s car had crawled up the return runway and angled into the back of the line for another run.
“He’s never brought another woman to the track,” Shane said.
“He has to bring me to the track,” she said, exasperated. Shane and Finn were acting like Emily and her BFFs, parsing every situation for meaning where there was none. “It’s work.”