In the Groove (10 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

The most you can hope for is to get it right some of the time.

The words repeated in Lance's head, his crew chiefs voice nothing but a warble of noise as he drove his car off pit road, pressing the accelerator to begin his warm-up lap.

And she was right, he thought, as the grandstands began to flow by faster and faster. Nobody could ever be perfect all of the time. Hell, history was dotted with the tales of brilliant men who'd said and done some really stupid things. Fermi had won a Nobel Prize for the discovery of new radioactive elements that had turned out to be not so new after all. Einstein had told the world that the universe was stationary, even though his own equations had pointed to the fact that it was expanding.

Lance threw his car into turn two, the back end sliding out from under him. Loose. The rear tires wouldn't grip the track. His hands gripped the steering wheel, his foot lifting a fraction as he fought for control. But no sooner had he lifted his foot than he was pressing it down again, allowing the car to drift higher in the hopes that he'd find better traction in the higher groove.

Like magic, the car straightened out.

And Lance felt elation fill him. That's it. That's the way to drive.

The most you can do is to get it right some of the time.

Other cars came up alongside of him. Lance recognized the blue paint scheme of the number seventeen car, Todd ducking down to take the inside line right as they moved toward turn three. Once again he felt the back end begin to break loose. He eased off the gas, feathering the brake to tighten things up a bit and trusting the high banking turn to transfer weight to the inside rear tire. The car bobbled. His hands tightened. But he held on to it and Todd's car faded back. He'd beaten through the turn.

The front stretch came into view, the white line nothing more than a brief blur of white as he zoomed toward turn two.

"Inside low," came his spotter's voice.

"There you are," Lance said as he drove it into turn two again. "I wondered where you'd gotten to."

Brad Jeffries, his spotter on every day but race day when he was busy changing tires, said, "Shoot, Lance. We didn't expect you to get all racey on the first lap."

"She feels good," he said, sailing through turns two and three with nary a bobble. He'd started to get a feel for her now.

"What's she feel like, driver?" Allen, his crew chief asked.

"A bit loose going into the turns, but if I keep her high and feather the brake a bit I can keep her straight"

"You want a track bar adjustment?"

Lance thought about it, heading for turn four and shocked to see that Todd was now behind him, and a good three car lengths behind him at that.
Hot damn.
The seventeen had been one of the fastest cars during the last practice. Of course, they might have made some adjustments that set them back, but Lance wasn't so sure. Back in the old days he'd actually won the 500, and the car he drove now felt fast Really fast.

"One-eight-eight-point-six-seven-oh," Allen said, and Lance could hear the exaltation in his voice. "Damn, Lance. That's a full tenth faster than the pole winner last year."

"She feels like a hot banana," Lance said.

"She
is
a hot banana," his crew chief echoed.

"I'd like to see how she does in traffic," he said, slowing down a bit so Todd could catch him.

"Inside," came his spotter's voice.

And this time when they came nose to nose, Lance let him pass, hearing the change in air pressure as Todd's car pulled up alongside of him.

"Clear low," his spotter said.

Lance ducked his car behind the seventeen, and immediately he felt the difference. The looseness got better. Much better. Rear spoiler, he thought. They should adjust that. Might fix the looseness when they ran in clean air.

Excitement made him smile. "Hot damn," he said, shooting past Todd a few seconds later.

"I take it that first lap wasn't a fluke," Allen said.

"Nope," Lance confirmed, and then, before he could stop himself he said, "Sarah, you listening in?" He was immediately stricken with the need to share this with her somehow. No, that wasn't it; he wanted her to know that she'd helped. He wasn't exactly sure how or why what she'd said had sunk in. Half a dozen people had told him much the same thing as she had.

The image of eager young faces rose in his mind's eye.

He smiled. That was it. It wasn't so much what she'd said to him as it was the realization that once upon a time he'd been an anxious schoolkid— anxious because all he'd wanted to do was race cars. And look, here he was, doing that. He'd forgotten that for a moment. Lance took a deep breath, remembering to just enjoy the moment and to quit stressing the small stuff—just as Sarah had advised.

"Umm, yes," came a feminine voice. "Testing one, two, three."

He laughed into the mike. "Sarah, I can hear you."

"Um, you can?" she asked. "Ah, good. I had a little problem figuring out how to make the thing work."

His smile crept higher, the lining inside his helmet forcing his cheeks to crease uncomfortably. Lance didn't care. "Well I'm glad someone helped you figure it out 'cause I just wanted to say thanks."

There was a momentary silence, then the sound of the mike opening up and the metallic sound of cars roaring by from her end. "For what?" she asked.

"For everything."

"Oh," she said. "Oh," she said again. "I guess the talk worked."

"Talk?" Lance repeated. "It wasn't the talk. It was the cookies."

"Ooo," she huffed in exasperation. "It wasn't the cookies, and you know it."

"Well, whatever it was, it worked."

Another silence, then her small voice saying, "Good. I'm glad."

Lance opened the mike again. "And, ah, Allen. You better say hello to our newest secret weapon."

"Oh, yeah?" Allen repeated.

"Eyup," Lance said. "Sarah is now our official cookie baker."

"I'm what?" Sarah said from her end, compressing the button on the side of the earphones. She had to have misheard him, although the headset was so tight against her head she was almost certain when she removed the things her ears would pop from the change in atmospheric pressure. "Did he say an official cookie baker?" she asked.

"He did," Allen said with a wry smile, ducking down next to her and screaming the words at her left ear—not that it was easy to hear him with the half domes covering her ears. They stood atop the hauler, Sarah having taken her life into her own hands by crawling up a narrow aluminum ladder, then half scooting, half crawling along the metal lift that led to a second ladder, this one shorter and leading to a sort of balcony that sat in top of the back end of the big rig.

"He's kidding, right?" Sarah yelled back.

"Knowing Lance, probably not," Allen called back, lifting his headphone away from his right ear a bit so he could hear what she said next.

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked.

Allen shrugged. "Lance can be superstitious at times. If he thinks something works, he's apt to do it again and again until it stops working."

"And he really thinks baking him cookies helped?" Sarah asked, having lifted her own earphone off with an ear-sucking pop.

"Who knows?" Allen said, shrugging. "All I know is something you did or said helped him out and so now he's not about to let you go."

Not let her go. Was he kidding?

"I'm bringing her in," she heard Lance say in her right ear, Sarah releasing the headphone so that it sucked itself back onto her head. It was such an odd feeling to hear Lance's southern drawl in her ears, as if he stood right next to her, when really he was out there, his white-and-orange car a blurred streak on the track.

"What do you want to change?" she heard Allen ask.

"Tire pressure," Lance answered. "And whatever you can give me on the rear spoiler."

She saw Allen nod, make some notations on the metal clipboard he'd rested on the balcony railing. "Roger," he said. "Will do."

"Clear low," came another voice—the spotter, she'd been told.

Allen shot down the ladder that led from the balcony to the lower deck with such speed and agility Sarah was left in awe. She heard the roar of an engine and a moment or two later saw Lance's car round the corner. It hurtled toward them, a few people darting out of the way as he pulled into the garage. Like a swarm of ants on an orange rind, his crew went to work, someone running forward and sticking what looked to be probes into the tire. Sarah turned away, having no clue what was going on and wondering if she should stay atop the transporter or not. She felt like a monkey on a poodle thanks to the way people stared up at her from down in the garage—fans, she surmised, because they looked as shell-shocked by the action as she felt.

In the end she decided to get down. The stupid headphones made the skin around her ears itch and Lance wouldn't be out on the track again for a few minutes. But the main reason she decided to get down was because she really couldn't see a whole lot from up top, and so she slid her headphones off her ears (scratching around her ears like a dog), and headed toward the ladder. Getting down, however, was much scarier than getting up, she soon realized. It involved a death grip on some sort of chain and blind faith that the ladder's steps were where they were supposed to be. Thank God she was wearing tennies and not heels. By the time her feet hit solid ground, she almost kissed it in gratitude, the aluminum ladder having shaken and vibrated the whole way down.

"Steady there," said a feminine voice when she stepped away from the thing and almost collided with a body.

"Sorry," Sarah said, turning and meeting the eyes of a green-eyed woman who just about made her jaw drop, she was so darn pretty.

"It's hard to see behind you when you're concentrating on the ladder," she quipped with a smile.

"Yeah, it is," Sarah said, about to turn away.

"How'd Lance do?" the woman asked in a southern drawl that sounded entirely too smooth to be anything but upper-class. The clothes were a dead giveaway, too. Her jeans alone must have cost a couple hundred dollars with their custom beading and tailored fit.

"Good," Sarah said, not sure how much she should say. Who was this woman? She looked familiar, her red hair such a startling color that Sarah was certain she'd remember it. Was she a model? An actress?

"He was better than good if his lap times were to be believed."

"I'm sorry," Sarah said, "but I'm not sure I should be discussing this with you. I'm new to the sport and I'm still trying to figure out who everyone is."

"I know who
you
are. You're Lance's new driver."

Sarah felt her mouth flop open, but only for a second. "How do you know that?"

"Because I saw you pull the thing in the other day. Nice bit of driving. Obviously, you're used to handling buses."

"Thanks," Sarah said, now truly perplexed by the woman's identity, although she suspected she was the wife of a famous driver. That would explain why she looked so familiar. Sarah had probably seen a picture of her when she'd been snooping around.

"I'm Rebecca Newman, by the way."

Newman, Newman, Newman. Why did that name sound so fam—

And then it hit her. She knew exactly who the woman was, and why she looked so familiar. She'd been the wife of a famous race-car driver, and when he'd died, it had made national news. She'd read about it the other day when she'd researched Lance. Because of the husband's death, Lance had been brought in to drive his car.

"Hi. I'm Sarah Tingle," Sarah said, holding out her hand.

The woman took it, her hand warm and soft in a way that only fingers tended regularly by a manicurist could be.

"Nice to meet you," the woman said. "And I have to be honest, I've never seen one of Lance's bus drivers in the garage before."

"No?" she asked. "I mean, that's interesting. I don't think I'd be here, either, except I baked Lance cookies earlier and he was so grateful he insisted I come watch him practice."

"You baked him cookies?" the woman asked, red brows lifted.

Sarah's skin warmed like the hood of a race car. "I did."

"That was nice of you."

"He looked nervous on TV," Sarah admitted. "I felt sorry for him."

"So you baked him cookies."

"I didn't give him a lap dance, too, if that's what you're thinking."

The woman laughed, her pretty face tipping back, a look of surprised delight entering her eyes. "I wasn't thinking that at all."

Sarah liked her. There was no logical reason why she felt instantly comfortable with Rebecca Newman (as evidenced by her lap dance comment), she just did. Maybe it was the kindness she saw in the green eyes. Maybe it was because she figured anyone who'd been through as much as this woman had, had to be nice. Maybe it was just that she saw friendliness in her face and Sarah felt the sudden need for a friend. Whatever it was, Sarah felt comfortable enough to say, "What
were
you thinking, then?"

"I was thinking if you baked him cookies and he drove as well as he did, you're in deep doo-doo now."