Page 63 of Heartbreaker

We skip practice that night, opting instead to spend the evening with Demi and Lana, explaining everything they can to me about the Mavens, their past cases, and the current case. I sift through the report Demi handed me, highlighting anything that I remember as being exceptionally off, or anything that isn’t a usual error. Then, Lana adds each one to their timeline. Next, Demi adds each date into some system she built to scan and create a list of everyone who was working on those dates, then cross-references it to find people who were at all of them. She can also access any security cameras that might still have footage saved in the Cloud. I watch her in utter awe as she hacks into systems on one computer, runs code on a second, and attempts to reverse engineer the transmitter they found in my truck on a third.

Unfortunately, none of it is instantaneous, and it seems we’re stuck in a bit of a waiting game for the scan results.

“I could ask my dad,” I say, desperate to help in any way I can, but unsure of how. Demi and Lana share a hesitant look that churns nervously in my stomach. “Or….”

“We’d rather not bring anyone else into this if we don’t have to,” Lana says, uncharacteristically diplomatic.

“We can’t be sure who is and isn’t a suspect,” Demi explains much less subtly.

“My dad isn’t a suspect,” I say definitively, but Lana gives me a soft, understanding look.

“We’ve seen stranger things happen.”

“What would be his motive?” I ask, protective of the man who helped raise me. I might be frustrated with some of his choices, but I’ve never questioned his love for me, much less whether or not he would want to hurt me. A million people who might be behind this have moved through my mind tonight, but Dad has never been one of them.

“You said your tryout was a blind trial, right?” I nod, and Demi continues. “Maybe he didn’t want you on the team. Maybe he thought it would be too complicated, a conflict of interest to have you there. Maybe having you on the team was too complicated, but his hands were tied with letting you go since you’re a good driver. The board wouldn’t want to fire you if you’re winning for the team.” Unfortunately, her theory holds ground, but I refuse to accept it.

“But why would it carry here?” Lana lifts a shoulder.

“Not everything always makes sense. It could be that he’s mad you went against his advice and drove during your suspension. Or it could not be him at all. He’s just on our list until we can definitively cross him off. And considering we don’t have any easy access to the Indy circuit, we need to keep all of our options open.”

“What kind of access do you need?” I ask, an idea brewing. I’d already been weighing it, but now that we have more motivation, it sounds like an even better idea.

“Any, really, but ideally getting Lana to engage with the people there. The board, the drivers, the crew. Anyone who might dislike you.”

“Well, there are a lot of those,” I say with a humorless laugh. “But would a race and after-party work?” Lana lifts an eyebrow and tips her head. “There’s a race in Kansas City this weekend. We don’t have a show that day, and I was trying to think of reasons not to go, but…”

“But it could be a great place for Lana to go with you and get intel. See if anyone sticks out. That’s a great idea,” Demi says with an eager nod. I turn to Lana to get her opinion, but instead of quickly agreeing as Demi did, she bites her lip.

“We don’t have to go if you weren’t planning to,” Lana says, looking nervous.

“Yes, you do,” Demi says, looking at her partner as if she’s completely confused by the statement. “How else would we get that kind of access?”

“We can find another way. It sounds like Rome didn’t want to go.” She hesitates, looking from me to her friend. “I’m sure it’s uncomfortable and holds a lot of mixed emotions.” I reach over for her hand and shake my head.

“No, no. I want this solved as much as you guys do,” I say, though for the first time, I wonder if that’s explicitly true. Now that I understand why Lana’s really here and how temporary it is, I can’t help but wonder what will happen to her— to us—when the case is solved.

But that’s an issue for another time.

“I’ll call my dad tonight or tomorrow morning, make sure we can get seats for the race, and ask if there’s an after-party. I’ll frame it as showing off my new girlfriend, showing I’m settled down.” For a moment, I worry she might take it the wrong way, but then she smiles.

“Perfect. We might make an undercover spy out of you yet.”

“Ugh!” Lana groans, flopping backward onto her bed an hour later. I look at her a bit confused, my lips tipping with a smirk, though Demi ignores it, continuing to type on her computer.

“Everything okay?” I ask, setting my own stack of papers aside. I’m going through the incident reports one more time to make sure I caught everything, trying to seem even the least bit useful while the women work. We’ve plotted all the incidents I marked as strange, and it’s now easy to see that the sabotage began at the start of last year’s Indy season. It makes sense, in a way. That was around the time Dad told me I needed to clean up my image so as not to lose the board’s trust, and when I stopped going out as often.

If whoever is behind this was banking on me ruining my own career by partying. I took that option away, so it would make sense that they would then take a new route.

“I hate being stuck like this,” she says, groaning. “This is the worst part. We’re trying to piece little things together to get the full picture, but we still don’t have any substantial leads.”

“We’re doing everything we can, Lana,” Demi says, her voice consolatory. I’ve learned they’ve been partners for three years, so they’ve seen each other through many emotional roller coasters. “Lana is more of an action girl,” she admits, trying to clue me in..

“And Demi is a psycho who loves numbers and hacking shit.” Demi grins.

“It’s why we work.”

“Yeah, except it can be so boring. We should be out there doing something,” Lana whines in a way that probably shouldn’t be cute but is all the same. “I can’t look at these documents again. There’s nothing new.” She has a point, not that I’ll tell her that.