Black Flag (Racing on the Edge) (46 page)

Was he serious?

My heart pounded as a
gasp escaped. With shaking and sweaty palms, my voice trembled when I spoke.
“Why don’t the police have that?”

“They do. This is
NASCAR’s copy.” Gordon relaxed into his black leather chair behind his cherry
wooden desk. Paper work and folders spread out everywhere buried the wood. “Do
you want to see it?”

“Yes.” I said with an
acrimony tone reaching for the CD.

Gordon yanked it back
shaking his head. “I can’t let you have it, but you can watch it here.” His
malevolent tone sparked as he inserted the CD into his laptop.

Now I clearly was not
thinking when I said yes. I had no idea what was on that surveillance video but
that part of me that was completely reckless and out of control, had to know
what happened. I had so many emotions going through my head I wasn’t sure how
to deal with them at that point. I was holding on by a thread, and a very thin
thread at that. Barely breathing, barely even surviving among the living had
become my purpose these last few days. Even with all that, I wasn’t aware that
the final thread could be cut in a matter of seconds.

“The recording is for a
three hour period so there is a lot of pass through here.” He sped up the video
and the time stamp raced by an hour in seconds when you saw the door open and
Mariah walk down the stairs, and then back up again with a closed for cleaning
sign.

I had no idea Mariah
was involved
until now
.

“The police have this?”

“Yes,” he assured me.
“Mariah was arrested this morning.”

There was something off
about his behavior though, I couldn’t place it but it seemed malicious. I’d
never really trusted Gordon and I wasn’t about to now.

Gordon sped the video
up another thirty minutes. Then you see the door open once again, and Sway stepped
inside, took about ten steps before abruptly stopping. Even on the video, you
can see her body tense. Or maybe it was that I knew her reactions well enough
to know when she was scared.

Less than a minute
later Darrin appears to step behind her. This was the part of the video where
my breathing increased considerably, and my blood began to boil. It was like
torture I’d never endured before.

The next few minutes
were probably the most horrifying minutes of my entire life, watching in
revulsion as Darrin
...
oh god
...
this has to be a nightmare
...
a vile unspeakable nightmare. The images
of her attack burned into my brain.

Her body was limp,
lifeless and bleeding as he hovered over her. A sharp pain rose in my throat at
the sight as a severe case of vertigo hit me like a wrecking ball. When he
tried to push her against the wall and reached for the button of his jeans, I
staggered back away from the screen, gasping for breaths.

All this time, I
thought I knew what pain was. I was wrong.
So
incredibly
wrong
.

 “Oh god
...
why
...
” I let out a strangled sob. “Why would you show me that?”
I yelled out slamming my fists against the wall of his office. Falling to the
floor, the shock of everything finally settled in.

The thread had been
cut.

I tried not to see it,
I tried to make it stop, but the images wouldn’t stop. They were constant.

Pain, torture, anguish,
agony, grief
...
all crashed over me,
piling up, waiting for the next turn to beat me down, and queuing in line to
rip me to pieces. Each emotion was tearing through me. The weight in my stomach
was ripping through me. I buried my face in my hands, begging for the pain to
dissipate. Beseeching for relieve but feeling nothing.

I lay there, collapsed
on the floor on the NASCAR hauler, the pain coursing through me so rapidly I
thought I would shatter at any moment if I didn’t get relief. My mind was go
garbled I couldn’t decipher emotions let alone voices but I thought I heard
Alley.

I was sure it was Alley
when I felt her arms wrap around me, her voice frantic in my ear. “Jameson!
Jameson you have to pull it together.
Please
, pull yourself together.”
She soothed, rubbing my back. “There are media reporters everywhere out there,
buddy.” I wasn’t sure if I was crying or not but by her frantic reassuringly
strokes against my cheeks I must have been. “It’s okay. You’re going to be
okay.”

I tried to stand but
just staggered backwards, sobs racked through me, shaking me to the core.

“You’re a fucking
asshole!” Alley screamed toward Gordon. She reached for his laptop and launched
it across the hauler. It smashed against the wall, the screen finally going
black. “You should have
never
showed him that. Do you know what you’ve
just done?”

As always, reality was
waiting outside the doors. I knew I needed to get to the drivers meeting but I
couldn’t
fucking
breathe. The heartache I was feeling
was so intense, so all consuming that I didn’t know where I was at. I would
have fallen to my knees again if Alley hadn’t been holding me up.

“Spencer?” she called
out holding me against her side. “Help me! We need to get him back to the motor
coach.”

Still disoriented, I
could feel arms of steel wrap around me and pull me toward the door. As soon as
the muggy air of the afternoon assaulted me, reporters did as well all sensing
the break.

“Jameson, how are you
holding up? How’s Sway doing?” a reporter with ESPN asked. I felt like fucking
punching him for even asking.

“I’m sorry,” Alley
interrupted stepping between the reporter and me. “Jameson will not be taking
any questions.”

Clearly, I was not
okay. I smiled but it was merely a desperate attempt to hide my anger and
grief. It was pretty fucking evident that I was not okay at all. Weaving
through them, Spencer got me inside the golf cart.

I could barely keep
from breaking down on the way to the motor coach. Once inside, I collapsed
against the couch. Spencer and Alley went to find Kyle. I’m not sure how much
time passed but the next voice I heard was Kyle.

“What happened?” I
heard him ask when he walked inside. “He was fine before he went to see
Gordon.”

Spencer handed me water
as Alley explained to Kyle what Gordon showed me.

“Are you fucking
kidding me?” Kyle seethed before storming out.

“Jameson
...
” Alley sighed and bent down beside me
on the floor where I was slumped once again, trying to pull myself together.
“You have to get to the driver meeting.”

I knew that. I put my
own emotions aside and tried for my team who were counting on me today.

Here’s the thing about
being a professional athlete—everyone wants a piece of you.
It doesn’t matter if you’re having a bad day or dealing with your own
shit, they regard you as public property, with an obligation to serve, to
entertain, to yield to others.
Whether it is your teammates, opponents, reporters, fans,
agents, or publicists, we are flooded with obligations and forced to tread
water, hoping like hell we don’t tire ourselves out and drown.

Defeat was not an
option for a guy like me. Not for any professional athlete. As a race car
driver, we don’t back away when inches from another car at two hundred miles
per hour. We’re not easily intimidated. We don’t flinch, hesitate, give up, and
we certainly don’t surrender. Not at the racetrack anyway.
It is the only option. Otherwise, we wouldn’t race and put our lives in
danger. No sane person would.

Even though defeat is not an option, our bodies still respond to
impulses. When we’re cold, we shiver. When we’re hot, we sweat. In response to
fear or excitement, our pulse races, our breath quickens. We can try to avoid
giving in to these impulses, but eventually, our body acknowledges the
situation and acts quickly to restore equilibrium. It is the only natural
reaction.

Similar to the human body’s reaction to restore regularity in the
presence of various stimuli, I gave in to Sway, the only woman who can make me
shiver and perspire at the same time, the only woman who makes my heart beat
quickly and my breathing increase.

It was the most natural reaction for me at the time.

And when I finally did give in, admit defeat, I forgot why I fought it
in the first place, why I held on so strongly for so long, telling myself that
there was nothing more than physical attraction between us.

I couldn’t have been more wrong and it taught me a valuable lesson: That
amidst life’s stimuli and circumstances, and all of the demands and obligations
thrust upon me in the spotlight, there is one impulse that I could control.
After the heat of the moment has cooled, deadly sins have been exemplified, and
my body had physically adjusted to everything that had occurred, I could
control how I redeemed myself.
I had that power.

“Hey, it’s time.” Bobby
stuck his head inside the motor coach. “We have to get to the
...
” one look in my direction and his voice
trailed off. “What happened to him?”

With as much strength
as I could gather, I rose to my feet.

I had an obligation.
A commitment.
And I had a choice to make.

Walking beside Tate and
Bobby we made our way inside the media center for the drivers meeting. I still
hadn’t spoken to either one of them but they understood.

Andy and Paul walked up
to us and sat down in front. Everyone was giving me concerned sympathetic
glances. You know the look, the one that said, “I think he’s gone off the deep
end but we understand why.”

I wanted to say, “Yeah,
well, I have people.” I was out of fucking control and I knew it.

Patrick stood at the
podium beside Lisa; Gordon was standing off to the side sporting a new fat lip
and wiping blood from his nose trying to appear as if nothing was wrong. I
shook my head in disbelief as Mason came to sit next to me.

I looked over at him in
confusion. They only people allowed in the drivers meeting were crew chiefs,
drivers and owners.

“Yeah so
...
” he adjusted the fit of his Simplex
hat. “I’m going be your crew chief today.”

I let out a small chuckle.
“Let me guess
...
jail?”

“Yep,” Mason let out a
laugh of his own shifting to get comfortable in the metal chair.

Straightening his tie,
Patrick cleared his throat, drawing the crowd’s attention to him. “Our first
order of business today is to announce that Gordon Reynolds will be stepping
down as Director of Competition effective immediately.” He said glancing at the
crowd. “Lisa Westin will take over intermediately until a permanent replacement
is announced next week in Dover.”

That was a change I
didn’t see coming. At least maybe now I could make it on and off pit road
without a speeding penalty. But then again, speeding penalties were the least
of my worries right now.

After the announcement
about Gordon, I couldn’t tell you what they said during the drivers meeting
other than the competition yellow after fifty laps because of yesterday’s rain.
When it rained, it washed away all the rubber built up on the track. In turn,
NASCAR would usually allow what they called the “Competition Yellow” to allow teams
to make necessary changes to their cars due to undetermined track conditions.

Walking through the
crowd, paddock and taking the golf cart to the motor coach seemed robotic.

“How exactly is this
going to work?” Spencer asked. “I mean, look at him? He hasn’t eaten anything
today or yesterday. We can barely get him to drink fucking water! How’s he
supposed to spend four hours in a car that reaches temperatures close to a
hundred and twenty degrees?”

“What are we supposed
to do?” Alley and Aiden said together. “We don’t have a replacement driver.”

Apparently curled up on
the floor wasn’t what they wanted. At least I had my racing suit on. I wanted
to drown in my own misery, the images just repeated in my brain on an endless
loop. I was drowning, treading was no longer possible. And though I wanted to
drown, it was impossible with Spencer and Aiden bugging the fuck out of me.

“This isn’t good
...
oh man
...
” Mason walked in, with the same concern as everyone else.
“What are we going to do? How long has he been laying there?”

“A while,” Alley
muttered handing me another bottle of
Gatorade
, trying to get me to
hydrate myself.

Shaking my head, I
pushed it away. I hadn’t eaten or drank anything since before the race yesterday.
I couldn’t. It was disgusting how consumed I was with this but I appalled
myself even.

“Maybe we should call
Justin as a backup driver?” Aiden suggested. “He’s a NASCAR sanctioned driver.”