Page 10 of Hard Check
He could leave. Go back to the Lakeside Inn, stare at the lighthouse photograph above the dresser, listen to the AC rattle through another evening. At least the apartment Gunnar had found for him would be ready next week. Four walls he could make his own. But that was next week, and right now, the fair was louder than his hotel room, which was enough reason to stay.
He checked his phone. A text from his mother he didn’t open. Nothing from Phil. Nothing from anyone on his old team, but that had been true since the day the trade went through. He pocketed the phone and looked down at the cup. The wax coating had cracked where his thumb had been pressing into it.
Another puller fired up. The roar hit his chest, but this time, he didn’t flinch. He watched the rig launch forward, tires biting, sled dragging, the whole apparatus straining against the laws of physics. The crowd surged, people on their feet, and Leo found himself watching them instead of the track. A woman grabbed her husband’s arm without looking. A kid pumped his fist on the rail. The older men in their lawn chairs leaned forward like they could will the rig another foot down the lane.
He crushed the lemonade cup and tossed it. The sun was lower now, shadows stretching across the track. It wasn’t as much fun sitting around by himself when everyone else seemed to know one another. He could track down Ski or find Gunnar and Wes, but again, he was the outsider.
He walked in the opposite direction of where he’d last seen them.
Past the grandstand, past the food booths, the dunk tank, and a guy selling knives out of a tent. Past the last of the spectator fencing, where the crowd thinned and the announcer’s voicefaded to a tinny echo. A couple walked past him, the woman leaning into the man’s side, his arm around her shoulders. Neither of them so much as glanced at Leo.
The pits were a different world from the grandstand. Crews worked on rigs with their heads down, tools out, nobody looking up. A woman wearing a welding mask sent sparks flying from a roll cage. Two guys shoulder-deep in an engine compartment yelled at each other over the generator noise. Leo drifted closer, hands in his pockets. Nobody stopped him or asked what he was doing back there, so he decided to stick around a bit.
He ended up at the chain-link fence at the far edge of the pits, fingers curled through the wire, watching a crew run through what looked like a last-minute adjustment. His shoulders loosened. Out here, the only thing anyone cared about was whether the work got done.
A flatbed withWYATT’S GARAGEstenciled on the door was parked just past the fence. Leo almost didn’t see him. Dawson was crouched beside a rig, working at something on the chassis, his back to Leo. Same brown hair, same broad shoulders, grease up both forearms. His shirt was threaded through a belt loop. Leo’s attention was drawn to the Lin of sweat trickling down the center of his bare back.
He straightened and said something to the guy beside him. The guy laughed and passed him a wrench. Dawson took it without looking and leaned back into the work. Everything about him was unhurried. Sure hands, no wasted movement.
Leo’s fingers tightened on the chain-link.
Dawson reached deeper into the engine compartment, and the muscles across his back shifted with every movement. Leowatched him work and couldn’t have named a single thing he was doing. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t watching the work.
He should go. Back to the grandstand, back to the inn, back to anywhere that wasn’t standing at a fence watching a mechanic he’d spoken ten words to.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dawson had both arms buried in the engine compartment when Justin’s boot nudged his knee.
“Reading high again.” Justin crouched beside the rig, phone out, squinting at the data logger. “Same problem we had in Portage.”
“Wastegate.”
“You said that last time.”
“And I was right last time.” Dawson worked the socket onto the bolt and gave it a quarter turn. The housing wasn’t hot enough to feel through his gloves, so he stripped the left one and used his bare hand to check the clearance by touch.
Justin came around to his side and crouched, peering in. He was built like a fence post—tall, narrow, all angles—and he folded himself into small spaces like he’d been designed for engine bays. Straw-colored hair shoved under a backward cap, a sunburn across his nose that had been there since May. He stood close enough that his shoulder pressed against Dawson’s while they both stared into the guts of the thing.
“If it’s the wastegate, I’m going to have to pull the whole assembly.”
“Just the arm. Twenty-minute fix if you stop arguing with me about it.”
Justin grinned and flicked the brim of his cap up. “I’m not arguing. I’m considering my options.”
“Your options are let me fix it or blow up on the track.”
“See, when you put it like that, I’ll shut up.” Justin bumped Dawson’s shoulder and stood, pulling a water bottle from the cooler behind the rig. He drank half of it and poured the rest over the back of his neck. “Kyle’s been asking if you have time to help him out.”
“Kyle can ask me himself.”
“He’s afraid of you.”
“Kyle’s six-three and two-forty. I highly doubt I somehow intimidate him.”
“And you told him his rig was held together with duct tape and prayers.” Justin tossed the empty bottle into the bin. “I’m pretty sure he cried a little. You hurt his feelings.”
“He’ll survive. And his rigisheld together with duct tape and prayers.”
