Chapter 2
Day 7.
I stood outside Brennan Racing in my only clean shirt, already sweating through it, a folder of job applications gripped so hard the paper had started to soften in my hand.
The building looked exactly the way I remembered it. Glass, steel, and that low hum underneath everything, engines being pushed right up to the edge of what they could take. I used to love that sound. Now it felt like a room daring me to walk in.
The receptionist knew my face before I said a word. Her smile dropped fast.
"Mr. Claine. Ms. Claine isn't seeing visitors today."
"I'm not a visitor. I'm here about the technician position."
She blinked at me like I had spoken a language she did not know. "You want to be a technician?"
"I want to work."
"Do you have any idea what the other applicants would say if they knew Ransford Claine was standing at this desk asking for a wrench?"
"I know exactly what they'd say." I set the folder on the counter. "I still need this job. Please."
She looked at me a long moment, the way you look at a car that might not start, then picked up the phone. "Ms. Claine? Ransford is here. He says he's applying for the technician job."
A pause. I could picture Verane on the other end, jaw tight, that old flush of anger climbing her neck the way it used to right before she'd throw a wrench across the shop and not care where it landed.
"She says send him to Bay 7," the receptionist said. "Drew will talk to him." Her voice carried a smile that was not for me. "Good luck. You're going to need it."
Bay 7 smelled like oil and hot metal, loud enough that I felt it in my teeth before I heard it in my ears. A man in coveralls looked up from a diagnostic screen and did a double take that would have been funny on any other day.
"Well. Ransford Claine, applying to be a technician." He wiped his hands on a rag that had given up on being clean a long time ago. "You know who I am?"
"Drew Telt. Verane's chief engineer."
"I'm also the guy who watched her cry in this exact bay more nights than I can count." He said it flat, no heat in it, which somehow made it land harder than if he'd shouted. "Does she know you're standing here?"
"She sent me to you."
"Because she wants me to be the one who says no." He looked me over, head to boots. "How long you been sober?"
"Seven days."
"Seven days." He laughed, short and humorless. "I've got guys on this floor who've been turning wrenches for twenty years and still can't get past my interview. What exactly do you bring to this table?"
"I know what these engines sound like when they're right." I walked closer to the block on the lift beside him, and rested two fingers against the casing without thinking. "And I know what they sound like right before they fail. Verane built this one, didn't she? Something's off by a couple percent."
His eyebrows went up. "You can hear that?"
"I can feel it in my hand."
He was quiet for a second too long. Then he tossed me a set of coveralls, the fabric heavier than I expected.
"You're on probation. One mistake, one late morning, one whiff of anything on your breath, and you're gone before lunch." His voice dropped, and this time there was no joke in it at all. "Verane's the closest thing I've got to family. You hurt her again, I won't need a judge or a courtroom to make sure you regret it."
"Understood."
I pulled the coveralls on right there in the bay, the smell of grease and metal settling over me like something I had forgotten how to miss. When I straightened up, Verane was standing in the doorway, arms crossed, her face giving away exactly nothing.
"Day 8," she said. "Twenty-two to go."
"I'm not giving up."
"You always say that on day eight." Something moved behind her eyes, gone before I could name it. "Drew says you're good. Don't make me regret letting him find that out."
"Verane."
"Don't thank me. This isn't for you." Her voice dropped, quieter than I expected, almost like she hadn't meant to say the next part out loud. "Mira asked about her father again yesterday. I still don't have an answer that doesn't make her cry."
Something in my chest folded in half.
"Tell her I'm trying."
"I'm not telling her anything yet." She turned to go, then stopped, her hand resting on the doorframe like she needed it to hold her up. "Trying doesn't mean anything to a two year old, Ransford. Staying does."
She walked away before I could find a way to answer that.
I spent the rest of the day elbow deep in an engine that was not mine, following instructions from a man who clearly wanted me to fail so he could say he told her so, and somewhere around hour six I stopped thinking about any of it and just worked. My hands remembered things my mind had tried to forget. The weight of a torque wrench. The particular give of a bolt right before it's tight enough. For the first time in longer than I could count, I was not thinking about the last drink I wanted. I was thinking about the next bolt.
Drew found me at the end of the shift, arms crossed, studying the block I'd been working on like he expected to find a mistake hiding in it somewhere.
"You didn't screw it up," he said, like the words cost him something. "That's rarer than you'd think."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's a data point." He almost smiled. Almost. "Same time tomorrow. Don't be late."
I nodded, peeled off the coveralls, and walked out into the parking lot as the sun went down behind the building. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out expecting nothing, maybe a spam text, maybe silence.
It was Verane.
Drew's not easy to impress. He told me you fixed the timing issue on bay three's block before he even flagged it for you.
I read it twice, my thumb hovering over the keyboard, unsure if I was allowed to feel as good as I did.
Before I could type anything back, a second message came through, and this one erased the good feeling completely.
My lawyer called an hour ago. Someone from the old sponsor group is asking questions about you. I don't know what they want yet. But you should.