Page 97 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

“I’ve made some mistakes,” Maverick said to Hector, who had wide eyes on him. Hector, who always looked out for him and everyone. They made fun of him, but they needed him to take care of them.Because they didn’t take care of themselves. “Big ones.”

Where did it start?

The fail always had a discernible starting point.

He’d determined this back when he’d taken his first big wipeout, all those hours he’d spent laid up. In that case, it had started the night before the jump. He’d been up too late onRed World, so he wasn’t rested. Instead, he’d chugged three energy drinks in the morning, which left him jumpy and vaguely sick. That morning he knew conditions weren’t right, but he went ahead with it anyway. Because he wasn’t focused, he hadn’t inspected the bike. If he had, he’d have seen that the wheel needed tightening. But maybe it started even long before that. That terrible need he had to please, to perform, to be watched, to be praised. Maybe that was the starting point that led to every crushing wipeout.

What was the starting point for this mess? Maybe it was the same. Maybe all the fails started at that original desire. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t stop fucking around. Why he lost his temper. Why he took bigger and bigger risks. And the money. Money and all the things it could buy was a kind of salve.

The phone kept ringing and ringing. FaceTime.Caller Unknown.

“Answer it,” said Hector, urgent.

But Maverick was frozen. That feeling he got when something was about to go really wrong was a siren.

Finally, Hector reached over, took the phone from his hand, and answered.

His face was cast in the blue light of the screen. “Oh, God,” Hector said, putting a hand to his mouth.

Maverick snatched the phone back from him.

He could barely process what he was seeing. On the screen, an unconscious Angeline was tied to a chair, a trail of blood coming from her mouth down her white tank top.

“Ange,” he yelled. “Ange!”

All his nerve endings vibrated; he wanted to crawl through the phone and rescue her.What happened? What was happening?

Then a face in a black mask with jagged white stitching for a mouth and two big gleaming buttons for eyes like a horror-movie rag doll filled the screen.

“I have another hider for you, Maverick,” it said. “You know, I thought she’d be tougher, would have put up more of a fight.”

The voice sounded strange and mechanical. Maverick tried to look in the background to see where they were, but all he saw was graffiti-covered concrete wall. The light, wherever they were, was low. He squinted into the background. They had to be close.

“Don’t you fucking hurt her,” he said through clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare. She has nothing to do with anything.”

The rag doll shook its head, the movement exaggerated and slow. It shook a gloved finger at Mav.

“That’s just another lie. I saw what you all did. I recorded you.”

Maverick thought back to carrying Alex across the lawn, to the form he’d seen at the hotel. Had someone been there? Had someone seen what they did? Bile rose in the back of his throat.

“You never stop lying, do you?” it asked.

Was it a man? A woman? He couldn’t tell. But there was something familiar there. Maverick kept staring. Hector still had his hand over his mouth and was backing away from the phone, almost comically afraid.

“Where’s Tavo?” asked Maverick. “What have you done with him?”

A light, mechanical laugh. “You’re on your own now, Mav. None of your team to help you. No one to enable you, to laugh at your jokes, to reflect back a self you want to see. Just Hector, who we all know is as useless as a kitten.”

Mav retreated to the control room, started operating from the box inside his head.A weird calm came over him, even as Hector started to cry. Mav watched as his friend sank his head into his hands, whimpering. He really was such a baby. He wasn’t going to be any help at all. The rag doll was right: he needed Tavo. They were the rough-and-ready team. Where was he?

“What do you want?” he asked the dollface. Because everyone wanted something, right?

“Therehe is,” the doll said. “There’s the cold, calculating Maverick we all know and love. Just curious, have you ever experienced a true feeling?”

The fog of fear dissipated, and a mental clarity settled.

Play the game. Save Ange. Save Extreme. Get the payout.