One For The Road

25: Lost

"Katie Moore," Daniel Henderson said before I could even set my jacket on the chair in front of me. He had a stack of papers on a table, and he smiled at me. "Let me buy you a drink."

I held up my hand. "Hold on a second. Why am I here?"

"Well," he paused, "I went ahead and wrote an article using the information you shared with me, and I wanted you to read it over."

"You what?"

"I would never publish it without your permission since you told me all of that wonderful information after a few drinks, but I think it would be a great way to get you back in the spotlight."

What? I was perfectly still in the spotlight. I was just off the stage for a quick break.

I looked this Daniel fellow straight in the eye. "No."

Who the hell did he think he was? I didn't need anyone to take my words that I spoke in confidentiality and twist them to make me out to be someone I wasn't. No matter how he spun my story, it wasn't his to tell.

He hesitated for a moment. "What?"

"I have everything under control. I don't need you to get me back in the spotlight. I did that by winning the All-Star Race."

"Of course," he said. "But consider this—"

"This is a little insulting, Danny Boy. If you're looking for a way to make a few bucks, you can go ahead and write an article about the hottest female athletes. I'm in fourth place, after Sloane Stephens, Amanda Kessel, and Alex Morgan."

"Sounds like quality journalism."

"Then maybe you should stick to baseball." I tucked my jacket into my arms. "I've got the world right where I want it right now. I can handle my own career. Thank you and good night."

I walked out the door without another word. I had gotten my point across. Unless I was paying them to manage me, I didn't need anyone's help.

***

Cleveland, Ohio. What a shithole. But it was my shithole, and I loved it anyway.

If Lake Erie weren't in the way, it would have been relatively painless to get there from London, Ontario. Great Lake my ass.

Once upon a time, when I first signed with Roger Truscott Racing, Griffin and I went on a thousand-mile road trip for publicity and fun from Akron to Baton Rouge. We got a little distracted along the way and hit up Cincinnati, Nashville, and New Orleans, but it was the moment I convinced myself that I had finally made it. Sweet, naive twenty-three-year-old me was a fucking idiot.

This second road trip wasn't nearly as long or with a person nearly as fun, but it was a road trip nonetheless. Drake and Josiah would have been decent company if they had just let me, a professional racer, drive, but there was something about the male brain that rendered them unable to relinquish the controls.

So I sat next to a fucking robot the entire five-hour trip and texted Griffin. He had a race at Pocono that weekend, and if I could make it happen, I planned on going to watch. After all the support he had given me over the years, it was the least I could do for him. Drake, Josiah, and I could make a fun vacation out of it if they wanted to come.

The Cleveland tournament was set up so that some of the more notable combat robotics teams in North America were seeded against smaller teams. At Team Sacrilege, we had our work cut out for us, but I lived for challenges. They didn't intimidate me at all.

Sixteen teams were set up in a bracket, and I smacked Drake in the shoulder until he told me that Amazon was listed as the second seed.

Maybe I'd get a chance to fight Megha Ratti once again. She was a classy, humble woman, and as much as I admired her on a personal level, there was no way I would let myself lose to her again. I couldn't. Fighting was in my blood, and I needed to put on a show. After all, Josiah only seemed to think that I was good for one thing: my name. And I couldn't dare prove him right.