Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
They had already proven they were reckless enough to threaten Saylor, stupid enough to think Sutton could manipulate me, and desperate enough to push into Redline Kings territory without understanding the price. Men like that didn’t suddenly discover honor because a wager had rules.
At the dip before the second hard turn, Nitro lifted two fingers. “Hold up.”
The whole group stilled, but nobody made it look dramatic. Kane stopped beside a stack of barrels and glanced toward the crowd like he was watching the fence. Edge angled his body to block any long view from the Serpents’ pit. Drift kept walking another few steps, making the pause look like staggered coverage instead of a find. I moved toward Nitro and crouched beside him, following the line of his gaze to the asphalt.
At first glance, it looked like a dirty patch of pavement. Torque Ridge had stains everywhere, but this one caught light wrong. Too smooth and fresh.
Chief came down beside me and touched two gloved fingers to the edge of it, then rubbed them together, his mouth flattening. “Not old oil.”
I leaned closer and caught the faint chemical bite under the usual stink of fuel and asphalt. “Gear oil?”
“Mixed with something slicker.” Chief scraped lightly at the edge with a small blade from his pocket. “Thin enough to spread. Then dusted over it to dull the shine.”
Nitro pointed two yards past it, near the track seam. “There’s more grit there than there should be. Fine stuff. Not gravel. Looks like they brushed it across the exit line.”
I followed the arc in my head, feeling the turn through muscle memory before I ever put wheels on it. Come in fast, lean, correct for the dip, hit the outside slick if you ran the line they expected me to take, then catch that fine grit right as the tire tried to grab again.
On a bike, that wasn’t a mistake. This was a setup meant to make the rear step out at speed, maybe force a low-side, worse if the rider fought the machine instead of letting physics have its tantrum. It was subtle enough that anyone not looking hard might blame the track for being Torque Ridge.
Edge crouched on my other side, eyes on the patch. “Pathetic.”
“Yeah,” Nitro muttered. “Fucking lazy. If you’re gonna try to kill somebody, at least don’t do it like a coward with a bottle and a broom.”
Chief looked at him. “That’s your professional assessment?”
“That and their line prediction is insulting.” He looked at me, his mouth curving just a little. “They think you’ll take the flashy outside cut through the dip.”
I stood slowly, fighting the urge to look toward the Serpents’ pit. “They don’t know how I ride.”
“No, they don’t,” Kane agreed from behind me.
The fury in my chest wanted action. To walk into their pit, drag their racer by the throat to this patch of dirty asphalt, and make him eat the shit off the ground before I broke his jaw, then fed him to the nearest gator.
But anger wasn’t strategy, and Kane’s stillness beside me was a heavy reminder. Confronting them now would tell them we’d found it. Removing the trap quietly would leave them believing they’d stacked the odds, and men who believed they had a secret advantage got sloppy when the advantage didn’t appear.
“We clean it.”
Chief nodded. “I have compound and pads in the cart. We can make it look like we’re dealing with track grime.”
“Do it,” Kane ordered.
We worked without drawing attention, and when we were done, it was just safe enough that the trap was gone and the Serpents wouldn’t know it until their rider expected me to wreck and watched me fly through that section because the road belonged to me.
Edge’s grin was mean as we made our way back to the pit. “They’re going to be very disappointed.”
“They’ll live,” Nitro murmured.
I glanced at Edge. “Briefly?”
Edge’s grin widened, and his eyes glinted with a frightening twinkle. “Depends how disappointed Kane feels.”
Kane kept walking. “Race first.”
The public wager mattered because the racing world would see the Diesel Serpents lose after bragging too loudly and pushing too hard. But the private debt mattered more. They had threatened Saylor, used Sutton, and tried cheating the race by putting a trap on our track like we were amateurs too stupid to read pavement.
Winning would settle the terms. What happened after would settle the insult.
By the time we returned to the pit, the crowd had thickened against the chain-link fences. Saylor was waiting near my bike with Rev, Blitz, and one of the prospects close enough to make me feel better about leaving her there.
Her eyes found me before I reached her. She tried to smile, but nerves sat around the edges of it, tightening her mouth and pulling faint lines between her brows. I hated seeing worry on her face. Hated even more that Sutton and the Diesel Serpents had put it there.