Page 1 of Full Throttle

Chapter 1

First Loser

Of all the things Dominic regretted, the oysters were at the top of the list. Not because eating shellfish for lunch in a landlocked city was asking for problems, although it was, but because he was almost certainly about to die. Oysters probably did rank on his list for a last meal, but only about eighth. Somewhere between a steak and a cheeseburger with not enough pickles.

He gripped the steering wheel. Rain battered his visor in silver pellets, the sound echoing like gunshots. The crowd was a watercolor of smeared faces. Ahead, a yellow car skidded off the racetrack, and Dominic swerved to avoid clipping its tail. Sweat clung to the nape of his neck.

His radio crackled. “How’s the car?”

“Good,” Dominic said mildly. “She says hi.”

“Hastings.”

Jeremiah, his race engineer, sounded stressed. The older man was either massaging his temples, tapping his foot, or smoking a cigarette. Perhaps a combination. Jeremiah could do all three simultaneously, as Dom had observed. He was a man of many talents.

“A lot of oversteer,” Dominic relented. “I can’t see much.”

That was an understatement. He couldn’t see a bloody thing. Las Vegas was a blur of red lights, trickling down his window, which was a shame. Vegas was one of the few circuits that ran through the city, and he would have liked to see Caesar’s Palace. But who’d expected a thunderstorm in December? Especially during the last race of the season?

Nobody.

Half the drivers were out. All nine teams were scrambling.

“Take it easy on the corners,” Jeremiah advised. “Manage the tires.”

Dom gripped the wheel. The tires had quit two laps ago; he might as well be driving on floor polish. Not for the first time, he wished that the final race was being held in Abu Dhabi like it usually was. Because you know what Abu Dhabi didn’t have? Rain. Alas, the city also didn’t have outrageous sums in sponsorship money and an American pop icon willing to come out of retirement to sing the national anthem, so here they were.

“Where are we sitting?” Dominic asked.

“P3,” Jeremiah said.

He slid into a turn. “Who’s ahead of me?”

“Capulet.”

He grimaced. Typical. His teammate was annoyingly laid-back, but Cap was fast at three things: driving, eating, and wrestling a shoe out of his dog’s mouth. Still, Cap had been struggling with his tires that morning, so Dom had expected him to be slower. Or Cap had claimed to be struggling, at any rate. You just never knew with him.

“And ahead of him?”

Jeremiah paused. “Sinclair.”

Dominic gritted his teeth. Anthony sodding Sinclair. He ought to have guessed. As much as it pained him to admit it, Sinclair was a decent driver. He was also an English lord who came from a wine empire and unironically used phrases like “jolly good,” but hey, there was no accounting for taste.

“How far behind am I?”

“About a one-second gap.” Another pause. Jeremiah was definitely smoking. “Cap is skidding a lot, though.”

Dominic sped through a turn, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Could he catch Cap in the next lap? Probably. Sinclair was a longer shot, but if he could do it, then he’d take the Drivers’ Championship. A fire blazed in his chest.

“I can catch them,” Dominic said.

Jeremiah’s voice was wary. “Just be careful. We can’t afford for Cap to crash out.” The speaker crackled. “Hang on. Your father wants a word.”

“Dominic?” a voice asked.

Dominic floored it down a straight. “Hi, Dad. Nice of you to drop in.”

Vance Hastings was always dropping in. His father had owned Duro Stallion for ten years, and Dom had raced for the team half as long. Blatant nepotism, obviously, but on his better days he allowed himself to think he’d earned it. Morning hill sprints. Weekends at the track. A constant, grueling diet since he was six years old. Some kids played with Silly Putty, Dominic had played with a cordless drill.