Chapter 5: Two Miles Away

The motel was two miles from the track, and I could hear the cars from the bathtub.

It had a pink door, a broken ice machine and a bedspread with seashells on it.

Reba called it the Ritz.

She'd driven the #4 down in a borrowed hauler with the old men asleep in the back, and dropped me and my duffel at the curb on her way in.

"Two miles," she said. "That's the closest a woman's ever been to a Tillery and stayed out of trouble."

"I'm not staying out of trouble."

"I know, baby. That's why I'm on the roof."

Thursday night was the qualifying race.

Two races, really, one after the other.

Thirty-odd cars in ours, and only the top finishers without a guaranteed spot got into the 500.

Sutton had no guaranteed spot.

He had no sponsor and no points and a car painted gray with a 4 on the door and my crooked name over it.

The series had made him tape over my name.

He'd taped over it with a strip of silver duct tape, and then he'd written CREW CHIEF on the tape in black marker.

The TV people loved that.

I sat cross-legged on the seashell bedspread with the laptop on one knee and my phone on the other.

The race was on the TV.

The timing feed was on the laptop.

Reba was on the phone, from the spotter's stand on top of the grandstand, with a radio in her other hand.

"Can you hear me?" I said.

"Honey, I can hear you breathing."

"Good. Tell him to stay in line and stay low. Don't try to win this. Just finish where it counts."

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Uncle's Obsession: After I Seduced Him from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.