ALICE Ch 231

“She’s all right, Alice,” Lora says soothingly as Alice rhythmically keeps her tires warm in the line of cars. “Patty and Faye are out. Kirsi will pit. You may have a shot at Lewis. Be patient.” She’s not mentioning anything about Lando. He’ll have to fight Charles first, but he’ll be coming. “Quite a bit of race left, Alice.”

Alice focuses. Would they even tell her if Faye wasn’t all right? Alice has questions, but this isn’t the time.

“Here we go, Alice.”

Alice sees Lewis begin to pull away, and then comes the go-ahead. They are racing again.

FF1

“Alice Wilde has got to stay to the right or LeClerc is going to sail past on the outside. Alice Wilde dives to the inside! Point five seconds at turn three! And here comes Lando!”

That’s all Kylie has time for; she dashes away from the TV to join the others crowding the medical car. There’s an ambulance waiting. Kylie hops up and down; the bloody Amazons are in the way and she can’t see anything. Colby’s shouting at them to get back to the pit, and that clears the way enough for Kylie to get a glimpse.

Faye’s sitting up as they put her in the ambulance. She looks glassy, but she’s conscious. There’s blood and something like bandages. That’s all Kylie gets to see. The ambulance doors slam shut.

FF1

Lora does a double take when she looks to her left to see the stool beside her empty.

She grabs her mic to cover it.

“Where the bloody hell’s she gone?” she demands in a hoarse whisper.

“To Faye, of course.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“You are! Lora! Lora!” That’s Colby’s voice in her ear. “Look at that pressure line!”

Head spinning, Lora focuses on her screen, and the V-shaped orange line. Her eyes widen. She scrambles to unmute.

“Alice! Alice, box. Box, Alice.”

FF1

“What?” Alice screeches; she’s in combat with Lewis. She’s got him.

But she dutifully falls back. She fought so hard to retake her position from LeClerc, and there it goes. He flies past her. Alice isn’t surprised by this; she felt two jitters that she didn’t like much, both times accelerating out of turns. She’s not even bothered about the race being a bust; she just wants to make sure that Faye is all right anyway. One more downside to dating a coworker.

“Alice, stay out.”

“What?”

“Stay out, Alice. We had bad information. You are good to—”

“I’m already in the pit lane!”

“Alice, do not stop.” She’s already on her second set of tires.

In a state of disbelief, Alice cruises through the pit lane and back onto the track just in time to see Sara Pattinson vanish around the curve.

Robotically, Alice throttles up and tries to focus.

“Alice,” Lora begins.

“Stop! Stop! You don’t talk anymore,” Alice snaps.