Page 124 of Final Drive

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Jackson

Tyler tells me last, at ten to six, in the hallway outside my room.

“She asked me to,” he says. “Not because she doesn’t trust you.”

“I know why.”

“Do you?”

I pick my bag up off the floor and put the strap over my shoulder. “She wanted seven people between me and the news. It was the right call.”

Tyler watches me for another second, probably trying to decide whether he believes me, then nods and heads downstairs.

The thing is, Reese isn’t wrong. Three years ago, I’d have been in a car before Tyler finished the sentence. Two months ago, I would’ve gone looking for a reason to be near the media gate. Not him, obviously. Just the media gate. And if I happened to see him there, well.

This morning I stand in a hotel hallway with a bag on my shoulder and let the news sit in me. Quinton’s here. It burns exactly as much as it would’ve three years ago, but I go downstairs to breakfast anyway.

That’s the difference, even if nobody can see it from the outside.

We’re at the trailers by seven. The course is flat, and the air is already thick enough to hold every smell close to the ground: diesel from the launches, cut grass, hot rubber. Nine crews are unloading along the trailer line, and underneath all of it is that green, rotting-water smell every man-made lake gets once the weather turns warm.

This part I can do. Give me a boat, a set of wrenches, and eighteen minutes, and I’ll rig it better than anybody in the county.

Gray takes the bow pair while Bo and Cameron work through the middle. Reese moves down the hull with the tape measure, checking spans and calling numbers to Tyler. He writes everything down, then reads it back to her. Bennett stands by the trailer in his cap and stays out of our way.

I do my rigger and Zane’s. Twelve millimeters at the pin. Everything tight.

At twenty past seven, the smell changes.

It’s faint under the diesel, but I know it anyway. Expensive cologne. The same kind that hung around the Hampton Hills boathouse three Aprils ago. My hand stops on the wrench, and Cameron looks at me before following my eyes over my shoulder.

Quinton Whitmore is walking down the trailer line with a laminated credential hanging around his neck and a coffee in his hand.

He’s not even trying to hide. That’s what gets me. He’s strolling through a restricted equipment area at a national championship in boat shoes and a quarter-zip like he has every right to be here. Two volunteers in yellow vests look at his credential and let him pass.

Gray comes off the bow rigger. Bo straightens beside me, wrench still in his hand.

“Don’t,” Reese says.

She doesn’t raise her voice or even look up from the tape measure, but nobody moves.

Quinton stops about eight feet from her. “You’re in lane four. I looked it up.”

Reese retracts the tape measure with a snap. “Section eleven is closed to guests. Your credential gets you into the grandstand and press tent.”

“I wanted to say good luck.”

“You’ve said it.”

He takes a drink of his coffee, and I put my wrench down. Not on the ground or in my pocket. On the trailer rail behind me, where I can’t grab it without turning around.

Cameron sees me do it. His eyes flick to the wrench and then back to me, but neither of us says anything.

Past Quinton, a woman in a rain jacket has stopped beside the next trailer. Kowalski. She’s been around the press tent all morning, but now one hand is already inside her camera bag.

“I read the piece,” Quinton says. “It was good. You came off well.”