Continuance (32 page)

Then, when the
Oriole feeds confirmed the contrary for Neal, the firestorm had almost landed
her in restraints. Neal had gone to bat for her in Cavanaugh’s office
personally, not two hours ago.
Maybe because we let the bastard slip away
too – at Java 101.
That was why Neal was still en route to the track at the
moment. In the end, Cavanaugh had been forced to agree that an entrenched asset
like Perez would be invaluable for this op. She’d already used her inroads here
to follow up a couple of other targets of interest – one of them Craig Knight. The
joke was, Knight turned out to be exactly what she’d concluded about Day –
gifted behind the wheel, but nothing more.

Motion outside
the window drew Lindsay’s attention to the track. The pair of black and white cars
in front roared toward the line to finish out lap one. Several seconds passed before
the number three and four cars appeared behind them, followed by the rest of
the pack.

Lindsay
eyclicked to open a comm channel to Wright. He had two more agents and eight
cops stationed around the track, ready to move in and bust Day before he turned
off his engine.

“Everything
looks good up here,” Lindsay said. “Costilla’s got a bead on the device, and our
targets are pulling away like we wanted.”

“Should make for
a perfect show, then.” Wright sounded like a producer waiting for the curtain
to go up for his latest play.

“Let’s get a
little more of this neck-and-neck stuff for contrast,” Lindsay said. “Then when
we flip the switch, the perks will be undeniable.” Day would look like a
retread sandbagging most of the race, then using his perks to pull it out in
the end. “We’ll activate the inhibitor at the end of this lap. Your team ready
on the ground?”

“Don’t worry,”
Wright said. “By the time the boss shows up, we’ll have ourselves a retread in
the bag.”

Lindsay smiled,
thinking about Darren as Day pulled even with Knight, headed into the second
lap.

If we do this
right, maybe we’ll have two.

Velocity: 62.5
meters per second. Relative down force: 110 Newtons. Anticipated lateral Gs: 0.6.
Jason didn’t
think about the numbers intentionally, letting them coalesce into a kind of gut
feeling as he went into the corkscrew, still right behind the Tesla. One lap
with Knight wasn’t much, but it was enough to get a lock on his driving profile,
to start anticipating how his car would move. The gut feeling crystallized into
a focused impetus, a slit-second window that would open when the Tesla
tightened its turn…

Now.

Downshift. Plus
3370 rpms. Adjust Bezier P
₃
and P
₄
for optimal racing
line.
Jason’s hands and feet executed the changes without conscious thought. The M3
surged ahead. Momentum carried him through the rest of the turn, and he gritted
his teeth in satisfaction as he slipped in front of the Tesla.

But the victory
didn’t last long. Knight swerved his car to the other side, taking advantage of
the corkscrew’s cutback to cut Jason off out of the exit. For a moment, the two
cars froze relative to one another, motors screaming in a dead heat of
acceleration. Jason glanced to his right, seeing a determined look of
concentration on Knight’s face. And in front of him, the scanner in Jason’s
helmet showed the tiny red outline of the inhibitor under the Tesla’s hood.

Why isn’t that
damn thing on?

Knight’s grimace
turned to a smile as the Tesla’s natural acceleration advantage kicked in, and
he pulled away. A car length ahead, he started to slide left, back in front. Jason’s
scanner caught a flash of red from the Tesla. The white car decelerated like it
had run into a strong headwind, and Jason had to swerve to miss it.

The M3 shot out
in front. A glance in his rearview showed his opponent falling back fast as
Knight slammed a hand down on the steering wheel. The glow of the inhibitor’s
signature on his helmet HUD showed a bright orange sphere now in place of the tiny
red cylinder.

Jason eyclicked
the audio comm. “It’s on! They just turned it on!”

“We got it,” Dr
Fairchild said. “All the telemetry is coming through.”

“Okay, Jason,”
Darren said. “We need you to finish consistent with your earlier driving. Then
we can show the variances came from Knight’s car, not yours.”

“No problem,”
Jason said. Neal was going to regret playing his hand so heavily. Coming out of
turn eight, Jason checked his mirrors again, expecting to see nothing but empty
track. He felt his grip tighten on the wheel as he saw the Tesla, just two
lengths behind. And gaining.

What the hell?
Knight should
have been two to three seconds behind. Had the inhibitor failed? Jason checked
his mirrors again. The orange sphere of the waveform field still showed plainly
on the scanner. If not the inhibitor, then what?

Coming down the
straightaway to close out the second lap, Jason pushed his car to the limit. If
he couldn’t win by a wide margin, there’d be nothing to show for this whole
ordeal. His chance to put Neal and Grieves on their heels would be gone. And
the Tesla was still gaining.

Jason eyeclicked
to bring up a rear view feed in the corner of his HUD.
No. Not gaining.
At least not continuously. Knight was gaining in surges, spurts of acceleration
followed by a few seconds of steady driving. And the orange glow of the
inhibitor seemed to pulse to the same rhythm, glowing brightly during the
constant speeds, dimming during the surges.

Twin 750s.
Jason cursed
himself for not realizing the problem when Knight had boasted about his twin
motor setup.
There’s a harmonic dead spot. He’s using it to compensate.
With
two currents driving the Tesla’s capacitor array, there would be times when the
waveform pattern from one would amplify the other. It would only happen at
certain frequencies, at set speeds, but during those times, it would cancel out
the inhibitor’s effects. Knight was taking advantage of each surge to power
through to the next, using the dead spots like stepping stones to catch up.

Any other time,
Jason would have tipped his hat to such quick thinking and quicker driving. But
now, he could only marvel at his own bad luck. With a grimace, he moved the car
into a defensive line to hold off the Tesla, now right behind again. An
animated white flag the size of a bus hovered above the track ahead. A ripple
of spectators rose to their feet along the stands like a shockwave as he and
Knight flashed across the line into the final lap.

He’s still too
close.
Too close.

2033

The Nissan
groaned as Michelle gunned the accelerator onto the freeway toward downtown
Everton. At the merge, she jerked the wheel into traffic, cutting off a
delivery truck. She barely noticed the honk and lewd gesture from the driver. Tearing
across all five lanes, she settled in on the bumper of a silver BMW. The
speedometer in the windshield read 89 MPH, but it still felt like the car in
front was moving at a crawl.

Come on. Come
on!
The rational part of her knew there was no reason to hurry. But that voice was drowned
out by others that would tolerate no delays. The wordless voice, pushing her
from behind, driving her to get as far from Robert as possible. The whispering voice,
speaking doubts and warnings, pulling her forward with the irrational fear
Patrick might change his mind and back out.

No.
Patrick had
agreed to meet her, and he wouldn’t just change his mind. That had never been
his way.

Pain stabbed at
her right hand, and drew in a breath when she realized what it was.
Oh no.
Relaxing
her grip on the steering wheel, she turned her hand over to reveal the
butterfly charm where it had dug into her palm. She sighed in relief. It was
still unbent, as beautiful as the day Patrick had given it to her.

Motion ahead
drew her eyes back to the road. Adrenaline surged as the BMW seemed to fly
backward toward her, red brake lights looming. Her hand flew up to grip the
steering wheel as she slammed her foot on the brake. The grinding moan of the
antilocks lasted several long seconds before the car jerked to a stop, just inches
from the BMW’s digiplate.

The collision
avoided, Michelle heaved a sigh and looked around. Traffic had slowed to a
crawl. Ahead, a holosign flashed a message in red.

Navigation Control
Zone Ahead

Left Lanes: Autonomous
Navigation Only

Right Lanes: Manual
Okay

Perfect. An
autonav zone.
And
of course, Robert hadn’t spent the money to retrofit her nine-year-old Nissan,
arguing she never drove into downtown anyway. By the look of things, she wasn’t
the only one without an autonomous setup. The autonav lanes were starting to
move smoothly again, but the manual lanes on the right might as well have been
a glacier, as people inched over to cram in.

The pain in her
hand was back again, worse than before. With a start, she opened her palm. In
her haste to avoid rear-ending the BMW, she’d slammed her hand onto the wheel
with the charm still in her hand. A single wing lay smashed against a
background of dark red. A trickle of blood ran down her wrist from where a shard
of orange and black glass protruded from a gash in her palm. The other half of
the charm was gone, somewhere on the dash or the floorboard. Spots of blood
dotted her skirt, crimson on violet.

The sight of the
ruined butterfly tore at her insides. Tears filled her eyes, unbidden intruders
into the fragile remnants of her self-control. She scrubbed the back of her
hand across her cheeks, but the tears only grew heavier. And heavier still as
she imagined having to greet Patrick as a sobbing, bloody mess.

A horn sounded
behind her, long and impatient. The BMW had long since moved ahead. Setting the
mangled charm in a cup holder, she used her good hand to steer the van to the
far right lane and exit. The manual lanes were at a virtual standstill. She’d
find a way around. By now, Patrick would be waiting.

2089

“I thought you
said it was on!” Lindsay slammed a hand against the window as he watched Day
pass by, only feet ahead of the white car behind.

“It
is
on.”
Costilla threw up his hands. “The signal’s wired in. Readouts are normal and
strong.”

Lindsay spun,
rounding on him. “Then what the hell’s going on? We need evidence to ninety-five
this guy, and we’ve only got two minutes left to get it.” With a shove, Lindsay
took Costilla’s seat in front of the datapad, but the man was right. The panel was
green, and the link showed everything functioning normally.

“Listen, rook,”
Costilla said over Lindsay’s shoulder. “Ops told us this thing would be
effective against all the standard hardware. I sent specs for five different
makes, just to be sure. So if you wanna blame somebody, blame them.”

Lindsay scanned through
the readouts on the datapad, looking for anything they’d missed. His eyes
stopped on the oscillating graph showing the target car’s power frequency. A
pair of lines danced on the readout like vibrating snakes. Why two waveform signatures?
Hell!
“You gave them the specs, but did you include Knight’s car? Specifically?”

Costilla shot
him annoyed look. “What do you think? A 2088 Tesla. Model V.”

“Not
a
Tesla V.
Knight’s
Tesla V. It’s been modded, you dumbass. The thing’s
running twin motors.” Lindsay didn’t bother to look over his shoulder at
Costilla. From the lack of reply, maybe the guy understood the gravity of his screw
up.

He glanced at
the race feed. The leaders were already heading into turn three, maybe ninety
seconds from the finish. With luck, it would be enough time to save Costilla’s
ass. And his own. He’d need to plot the pattern resonance pretty damn fast, but
he had no other choice. He activated the inhibitor controls and set to work.

Jason swerved
right, keeping his bumper in front of the Tesla as he fought off another surge
by Knight. He could see the inhibitor’s dim red glow in the helmet HUD, like a
pulsing orb under the hood.

He’s still too
close. Only a few turns left.
If they crossed the finish this way, the
spiders might not even accuse him. And without that accusation, the whole plan to
catch them for framing him went up in smoke. His chance was slipping away, but
he couldn’t push the M3 any harder, even with his perks.

Of course.
Then
I’ll slow down.
He could force Knight back to the speeds where the
inhibitor was effective. And hope to hell he didn’t pull off a passing move.

Splitting his
attention between the racing line ahead and the white car behind, Jason eased
off the gas. Right away, Knight moved up on his bumper, so close he seemed
hitched to it. The Tesla swerved right, trying to move around, and Jason
anticipated. But just as he moved to block, Knight reacted the other way,
almost pulling alongside before Jason could compensate. With an effort, he
focused his perks on Knight himself – watching the tiny, almost imperceptible
moves of his helmet that might indicate his next move.