Page 35

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

_____________

3xp3rtguts: First crash. Watch the stories come out now about how Paragon is regretting their decision.

brightlotus8: Not like it was her fault. You can’t stop a tyre from puncturing when you’re inside the car.

3xp3rtguts: No, but you can make it puncture faster if you’re reckless.

gottcha_covered_: LMAO. Bro. Her driving wasn’t reckless. But whatever. You guys will do anything to make it seem like she’s bad.

I frowned at Vanessa’s car. As far as crash damage went it wasn’t awful. We would repair the chassis, axles, and wings that had been damaged in her incident.

It grated on me that it had happened. But the one thing we didn’t control? The tyres. The same manufacturer provided the tyres to all the teams. Every car had the same options available. Which likely meant that something on the car itself was the cause. And that made me even more angry.

The rear right tyre was pulled off, clearly blown to hell, and I went to look at it. After her first one blew I’d looked at it too, and no matter my frustration, these things did happen.

Lars already completed his pit stop, so we were free in the garage, barring anything else happening. The race only had a few laps left.

“See anything?”

“No. Just a normal puncture. I’ll check everything.”

And after he was finished checking everything, I would check everything again. This wasn’t a fucking joke. Formula 1 was dangerous, and it felt a million times different when you were in love with the person in the car. Having a packmate in the car was bad enough. Your Omega?

I wasn’t even an Alpha and I felt sick. The others must be losing their damn minds. Carson, one of the other mechanics, lifted up a tyre blanket for the busted tyre and began to fold it, since it didn’t need to be put back on. Light flickered, and I blinked. “Hey Carson?”

He looked at me. “Yeah?”

“Can I see that?”

He gave me a weird look, but handed it to me. “Sure.”

Please tell me I’m imagining things. Tell me it was just a trick of the light .

I held up the fabric, and my stomach sank. There was a pinprick of light coming through the center of the fabric. I found it and looked. Small enough it was barely noticeable when on the tyre since the fabric was black and the tyre beneath it was black. But large enough to be strange. The direction of the tear showed the torn threads on the inside . Like it had been pushed in .

“What’s up?” Carson asked.

“I’m not sure yet. Where’s the blanket from the first puncture?”

He shrugged. “I put it back in storage.”

Without saying anything else, I went to the tyres and found the spare blankets, digging through until I found the abandoned one for the rear right. Both punctured tyres had the same position on the car.

There was a hole.

And no holes in the others.

I went to the remaining fresh tyres, panic building in my chest until it felt like it would choke me. No holes on the fronts or the rear lefts. But there were on the rear rights. Every single rear right tyre had a hole in the blanket. Every compound. The hard, the soft, the wet tyres, the inters. All of them.

Carson was with me again as I pulled one of them down and practically ripped the blanket off in my haste. “Elias, man, what’s gotten under your skin?”

I ignored him until I found the place where the hole had been, and whatever hope I’d been holding onto disappeared entirely. “This,” I said, voice raw.

There was a hole in the tyre. Barely there, and not big enough to be noticed unless you were looking for it like this. But enough to destroy the tyre once it got hot enough and once there was enough force exerted to crack it open.

Fuck, it would take a lot of strength to puncture a tyre like this. A tool like a nail gun came to mind. We hadn’t found any nails though.

Carson leaned closer and swore. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’m not,” I whispered, not wanting to spread faster than necessary. “I saw a light when you lifted that blanket. Every single rear right has a hole in the blanket. And I would assume a hole in the tyre. Someone sabotaged them.”

It wouldn’t have been easy to do either with the number of people in and out of the garage, not to mention the force needed to do it.

“Holy hell,” Carson said.

“Don’t say anything,” I told him. “I’m going to Grayson right now. But in case it’s someone on the team, I don’t want to break the news. Grayson will decide how to handle it.”

He nodded. “Yeah. No problem. But fuck.”

“You have no idea.”

This was the last news I wanted to deliver, but I had to, and I had to do it now . I crossed to the pit wall and caught Grayson’s eye. “I need you.”

“After the race?” He was already looking back at the displays.

“Grayson,” I said. “ Now .”

His eyes snapped to mine, and Beck’s followed. Since Nessa was out of the race, he could come too. They took their headsets off and stepped down. I pulled them to the side.

“What’s wrong? I’ve never heard you use that tone.”

“Before I tell you what I’m about to tell you, I need you both to get a firm fucking hold of your instincts, because you’re going to need it.”

The energy between the three of us went thunderous and dark. Beck growled. “I’m in control. What is it?”

“The tyres were sabotaged.”

“What the fuck did you just say?” Grayson asked.

I explained as quickly as I could. “I don’t know how. Obviously we know why. Carson knows, but no one else. I wasn’t sure how you wanted to handle it. Genuinely, I don’t think it would be anyone on our team.” Everyone who had a problem with Nessa had resigned. Well, except Lars, but he’d be fucking insane to do this. Or, at the very least, to do it himself.

“Thank you for thinking about that,” Gray said. “But we’re not keeping this quiet. We’re blasting it everywhere . And it’s not just because it’s Vanessa. If we allow something like sabotage to go unchecked in this sport, it will be the end of it.”

He was right. If sabotage was a thing that was allowed, nothing would ever be safe, and paranoia would take over the teams. The sport would eventually collapse underneath it. Or become so dangerous that anyone who cared about themselves or their drivers couldn’t participate.

Cheers went up from the gathered audience as River crossed the finish line for the win.

“I’ll go to the FIA first,” Gray lowered his voice. “I’m not holding it back, but if we can stop the story from reaching the press until the driver conference is over, it will be better for Nessa.”

“Who’s going to tell her?” Beck asked.

I wasn’t possessive of this information enough to cling to speaking to her about it. This was one of those times when our pack and our profession clashed. The pack came first, but this was also a team matter.

“I will,” Gray said. “As soon as I can find her. Elias, save those tyres. Pull all the damaged ones and put them under lock and key. We don’t want whoever this was to try replacing the evidence.”

Fuck. Since all the teams got the same tyres, it would be easy enough to slip them out for identical ones. Especially since they’d already done this without being seen. “Done.”

The three of us nodded to each other. River would agree too. Our Omega—our pack —had just been attacked. And whoever it was needed to watch their back. Because we were professionals, but our pack always came first. No matter what.