Page 5 of Knot So Lucky

I'm walking straight toward the finish line of a race I never knew I was in.

CHAPTER 1

Pit Stop Problems

~AURORA~

The undercarriage of the Apex prototype is a fucking masterpiece of engineering that someone has royally fucked up.

I'm flat on my back on the creeper, fluorescent lights burning through my safety goggles as I trace the suspension linkages with gloved fingers that know exactly what they're looking for. The smell of motor oil, brake fluid, and carbon fiber fills my nostrils—familiar, grounding, the scent of home in a way that my actual apartment has never managed to be.

"Compression ratio's off by point-three percent on the rear left," I call out, my voice carefully pitched in the lower register I've spent years perfecting. "Front right damper's reading inconsistent—could be a faulty sensor or actual hydraulic degradation. Won't know until I pull it and run diagnostics."

My tablet's propped on my chest, stylus moving across the screen as I log each measurement, each deviation from spec.

The numbers don't lie, even when everything else in my life is one giant fabrication.

"Differential temperature variance suggests the cooling system's not distributing evenly. See this?" I angle the thermal camera toward Marco, one of the other techs crouched beside the car. "Should be reading 87 degrees across the board. Instead, we've got 91 here, 84 there. That's how you get warped components and catastrophic failure at speed."

"Christ," Marco mutters, making notes on his own tablet. "How long to fix?"

"Depends on what I find when I actually get into it." I roll myself out from under the car, sliding the creeper across the polished concrete floor of the garage until I'm clear of the vehicle. "Could be a few hours. Could be a few days if we need to order parts."

The garage is massive—one of the private facilities that only the elite racing teams can afford. Everything gleaming and state-of-the-art, from the hydraulic lifts to the diagnostic equipment that probably costs more than most people's houses. It still smells like any other garage, though:rubber, fuel, and the particular tang of high-performance machinery pushed to its absolute limits.

I'm pushing my goggles up onto my forehead when I hear the sharp, impatient voice that's been grating on my nerves since I started this job three weeks ago.

"Can you work any faster?"

I don't even have to look to know it's Richard Pemberton, the team's performance coach and the driver's personal manager rolled into one incredibly annoying package. He's got that particular tone that rich people use when they're talking to service workers—like we're somehow fundamentally less human than they are.

I sit up on the creeper, pulling off my gloves one finger at a time with deliberate slowness.

When I finally deign to look at him, he's standing there in his crisp polo shirt and pressed khakis, arms crossed like he's a disappointed parent about to deliver a lecture.

"No," I say flatly.

His eyebrows shoot up.

"Excuse me?"

"No, I can't work faster." I swing my legs off the creeper and stand, brushing my hands down the thighs of my coveralls. They're baggy enough to hide my frame, stained with grease and god knows what else.

Perfect camouflage.

"There's a whole fucking process for this type of stuff. You want me to skip steps? End up like the last tech who worked faster?"

The temperature in the garage feels like it drops about ten degrees.

Pemberton's face goes an interesting shade of red, but he doesn't say anything.Can't say anything, because we both know exactly what happened to the last tech who cut corners to meet deadlines.

Louis Chen.

Twenty-six years old.

Dead in a fireball at Silverstone because he didn't properly torque a fuel line connection, and nobody caught it in the post-work inspection that he also rushed through.

"Thought so," I mutter, crouching down to gather my tools.