Page 39 of Redline Baby

There is no one in the world watching.

Chapter 12. Soren

Dex is in the middle of explaining why he refuses to run synthetic oil in anything built before 1998 when Ni's phone makes a sound I have never heard before.

It isn't a ringtone. It's a siren. Ni stops moving. His phone is already in his hand. One tap opens a map, a red location pin pulsing against a stretch of county road I recognize from the ride last weekend.

His face goes dead serious.

"It's the safety app," Dex says.

Every trace of amusement is gone from his voice.

"Safety app?" I ask, already standing.

"It's Redline's," Dex says. "We had it custom-built. Anybody in the club can hit the emergency button and it sends their location to everyone on the response list."

Ni looks up from the screen.

"Kit's down."

That's all he says.

"Let's go."

They don't explain further. They don't need to. Ni is moving. Dex is moving. Sol is moving. So am I.

My helmet is secured to the lock beside the rear peg of my bike, three rows from the entrance. I have it free in seconds, pull the matte-black shell down over my head, fasten the strap beneath my chin.

The padding closes around my skull, muffling the outside noise. I swing a leg over the saddle, thumb the ignition, and the engine fires with a deep, rolling thunder that vibrates up through the frame. Around me, three more engines start in rapid succession. Ni pulls out first. Dex rides tight behind Ni's left shoulder. Sol takes the right.

I maintain a controlled gap behind the group. Nobody speaks. There is nothing useful to say. Ni sets a pace that is aggressive but disciplined, well above the legal limit on the empty stretches, braking cleanly before every corner and accelerating hard out of them.

He knows where he's going. I follow without needing to think. The town disappears behind us. Streetlights thin. The road narrows. Guardrails begin appearing along the shoulder, their reflective strips flashing white in my headlight for fractions of a second before vanishing back into darkness. The temperature drops as we climb.

I know the road now. I know where the longer sweepers are. I know where the pavement changes texture near the county line. I know where Kit likes to carry too much speed. I know because I've watched him.

I don't know what down means.

Not yet.

A mechanical problem. A low-side. A broken wrist.

A body in the road.

I shut that last possibility down before it can take shape.

Ni's taillight stays fixed ahead of me.

I follow it. The first evidence is not rubber. It's debris. A small shard of neon-green plastic glints at the edge of my headlight and disappears beneath my front wheel.

Then another.

Then the scrape marks begin.

Long, ugly scars carved through the surface of the asphalt, pale lines where plastic and metal have ground hard enough to chew through the dark top layer of pavement.

Thirty feet. Forty. Farther.