1. Engines Roaring

Chapter One

Stefanie Souther

Lonephalt, Tenth County

Seven Months Ago

The nursery was decorated in white, with elegant accents of silver and light blue. It didn’t feel surgical at all. In fact, Stefanie felt quite warm when she was in there. Racers from all over Tenth County and even other parts of the state gifted Bronze, ranked Number Three, with boxes to help out. It wasn’t as though Bronze couldn’t afford to support Stefanie and their child.

Stefanie didn’t care for any of the gifts. She had met very few of Bronze’s crew and knew nothing about racers outside the county, though Bronze spent a lot of his time in Locksley County. She left most of the gifts boxed up and tucked away in the attic space above their squat home in the Lonephalt suburbs. While Stefanie, already six and a half months pregnant, was shifting things around up there, she had come across a box labeled ES. She knew she had seen it once before, when they had moved in, and knew that it had to be particularly close to Bronze to have his legal initials on it.

She had promptly carried it down from the attic and to the kitchen. Digging through revealed a collection of worn out stuffed animals, a knitted blanket, and t-shirts too small for a Yorkie Terrier. Among the box’s contents, she found an old wooden carving of a dog. Two of its legs and its tail were broken off, so that if it was set up, it would awkwardly wobble front to back. It had the whimsy of a child’s toy, and Stefanie at once wanted their child to play with it in the same way she imagined Bronze had.

So she took the wooden dog into the white, blue, and silver nursery. It was getting harder to walk, and climbing up and down the attic ladder hadn’t helped her back pain any, but Stefanie persisted.

She swung in a slow circle around the nursery, eyes lighting up at the crib, rocking chair, and changing table. When she tried to take her life eight years ago, having a child of her own had been the farthest thing from Stefanie’s mind. Now it was all she wanted. To live a peaceful life with Bronze and their child.

Stefanie set the wooden dog figure up on a clear spot on one of the shelves, shifting the small pile of mother-to-be books over for it to lean on. As she stepped back, the mobile phone in the pocket of her robe started ringing.

Stefanie pulled it out, expecting to see Bronze’s name and mobile across the screen. She was surprised when, instead, it was Fuel, the only one of Bronze’s racers to be in direct contact with her.

“Hello?” she answered. The racer usually didn’t speak to her. And had only been given her mobile in case of an emergency.

“Stefanie, it’s Bronze,” Fuel said. Static distorted his voice, possibly from wind whipping by. “Taboo made him a challenge he couldn’t refuse.”

Stefanie wasn’t immediately concerned, but the desperation in Fuel’s tone caused her to sit down in the rocking chair. “Is that a Heart-to-Heart?” she asked. That was the only way she could conceive that Bronze couldn’t refuse the challenge. “With the Starvale czar? Where?”

Fuel gulped before responding. “Yes,” he said. “At Suicide Road.”

“Bronze wouldn’t race there,” Stefanie said. “He hates it.”

“Stef, you need to come down here,” Fuel said. “Right now. He might realize how stupid it is to rise to this silly challenge if he hears it from you.”

“Okay,” Stefanie said. “I’ll be right down.”

#

Soon after, Stefanie pulled her red Mazda Miata down Ferdinand Street, the narrow side street that connected to the Street of Saint Apollos. Aside from driving straight up the one-way street known as Suicide Road, the intersecting street right before the infamous ninety-degree turn was the best, and safest, way to get there. Stefanie had to stop the car just before the traffic signal. A crowd had already gathered.

She jumped out of the car, holding her belly, and pushed her way through the crowd. The traffic light hanging above Ferdinand was green, which meant the Saint Apollos light was red. Engines roared in the night as Stefanie stepped off the sidewalk below the traffic light.

Closest to Stefanie, a lime green Dodge was squeezed into the narrow lane of the Street of Saint Apollos. On the other side of the Dodge was Bronze’s Porsche.

“Bronze!” she shouted, but despite the high concrete walls around them, her voice did not carry far over the crowd.

“Stefanie,” Fuel’s voice responded. The middle-aged man approached her from the right. “They’ll start on the green light.” He grabbed her by the arm and navigated through the crowd of racers to circle around the back of the cars. “It’s been red for a while but this light is infamous for its stale reds.”

“I know,” Stefanie said. “I know.” She closed her eyes and allowed Fuel’s gentle touch to guide her across the street.

As they passed behind the silver Porsche towards the opposite sidewalk, the light dropped to green. Both cars shot forward and went under the traffic light as it turned yellow.

“Bronze!” Stefanie shouted again. She hoped he didn’t lose control of the car in the takeoff. That Bronze would be safe.

Stefanie could not judge how fast the two drivers were going as they entered the ninety degree turn but it looked like Bronze had the Porsche under control. Then the Dodge kicked sideways. Plastic and metal crunched together as it slammed the smaller Porsche sideways.

Bronze’s car careened into the concrete wall. The metal body collapsed into shrapnel. The green Dodge kept going.

Metal crackled through the silent air. Dark liquid spilled out of the Porsche. Then chaos. Racers jostled past Stefanie. Desperate to go to Bronze’s aid. They shouted at once. Voices blending together incoherently.

Fuel ushered Stefanie towards his car. He tipped his mouth towards her ear, his breath warm as he said, “We’ll meet him at the hospital.”

Stefanie had no choice but to climb into the passenger seat of his car and to buckle up. A siren was already peeling through the air by the time Fuel closed his own door and started driving up the side street. Sharp pain twisted Stefanie’s stomach but she bit her bottom lip against it. Tears were welling in the corners of her eyes.

This wasn’t happening. The crash wasn’t real. Bronze was alright.

They made it to the hospital a full half hour before the ambulance showed up. Stefanie insisted on staying outside to wait for it. She ran to the back doors of the vehicle as it parked in the emergency bay, tripping over herself and landing on her knees on the way. Her vision was blurred by tears as ER doctors rushed out the doors.

“Step back, miss,” one said, but Stefanie threw herself across the stretcher as it emerged with Bronze. His eyes were closed and the blankets were bloody. The paramedics were bloody. Everything was bloody. One was in the middle of performing CPR.

“Come on,” a nurse said gently as she removed Stefanie. “Give them some room.”

The stretcher rolled into the hospital and Stefanie cried out, the sound ripping a hole through the night air. She had already lost her mother and her father. She couldn’t lose Bronze too.

A painful spasm dropped her to the pavement. Stefanie had the briefest notion that she must’ve landed in a puddle because she was suddenly wet from the waist down.

“She’s in labor,” one of the nurses called. “Her water just broke.”

The words barely registered as Stefanie was assisted into a wheel chair and wheeled through the doors after Bronze. A machine made a derr sound as they passed and she heard someone say, “Clear.”

“Bronze,” she croaked. “I have to see him.”

“Not until this baby is born,” the nurse told her.

The contractions were far too close together for the nurses to take her far. They set her up in a bed in the emergency room. They stripped her clothes and put her in a gown. She felt defenseless.

But then the baby was born.

Dead.

And Bronze died too.

Stefanie’s world collapsed.