eye and whose car shook violently from their passing.
In unison, Brent and Villanueva cut back into their lanes.
125 mph…
Brent’s mouth fell open as he once more checked Villanueva’s position: perfectly aligned with him.
The dotted yellow lines were a continuous ribbon, and the apartment buildings that walled in both sides of the road squeezed tighter as sheer acceleration made the road appear more narrow. Brent was now one with the machine, and he’d never felt anything more powerful and invigorating. There was no other adrenaline rush like it. At the same time, his shoulders knotted in terror because he knew just the slightest deviation in his course or sudden obstacle in his path could end it all. He drove along a cliff between pure terror and utter joy.
During the winter months in Los Angeles, when those precious rains most often occurred, a year’s worth of oil would begin to bubble up through the pavement. So as they crossed the next intersection, Brent felt the rear wheels begin to drift, and he realized with a start that they’d hit a large patch of oil and blasted over it, but now their wide race tires had grown slick.
Villanueva must have felt it, too, because he suddenly course-corrected, shifting over toward a row of cars parked along the curb.
Brent began to lose his breath as both he and Villanueva began sliding even more rapidly, but then the yellow Vette jumped forward, the car’s front end rising as Villanueva accelerated out of his slide, missing the parked cars by a side mirror’s width, Brent estimated.
With a gasp, Brent shifted his wheel and missed the last car in the row by what could be a hairsbreadth.
Now Villanueva was squarely in the lead.
There wasn’t much time. The first driver to cross La Bonita Avenue was the winner, and Brent figured they had only a half mile or less to go.
But these speeds were ridiculous, the whole idea that he’d succumbed to this insane.
He should abandon now. Cut his losses. Deal with Villanueva’s crap. Just take his foot off the pedal and go home… with his tail between his legs.
But then Brent remembered the look on his prom date’s face, how she, too, had been humiliated by Villanueva, and he considered all those days he’d cycled to school to avoid dealing with the guy. Was he supposed to be a victim all his life?
He booted the accelerator pedal, and his neck snapped back.
Villanueva held his position in the right lane as Brent came blasting up beside him, and then, taking in a deep breath and holding it, Brent stomped on the pedal. The engine’s whine lifted, and the tailpipes rumbled even more loudly. He was almost afraid to check the HUD for his speed, and when he did, he thought,
131 mph…
No one would believe he’d gone that fast down a city street, and everyone would say what an utter fool he was, that he was no better than Villanueva, that he was endangering lives and belonged in jail. But first the police would confiscate his car and make him watch as they put it in the crusher. This was the well-advertised fate of cars used by street racers.
The string of lights ahead turned yellow.
Beyond them, a few cars rolled to stops, the drivers waiting for their green lights.
They would cross into Brent’s path. Their timing was perfectly horrible.
Brent glanced over at Villanueva, who mouthed a curse and accelerated again.
Brent’s heart was in his throat and sweat dappled his forehead. He could hardly breathe as one after another the lights turned red and Villanueva streaked toward them, his car blurring into a yellow sun impaled by crimson taillights.
Cars began to move across the intersection.
Villanueva would attempt to weave through them.
Something told Brent to check his rearview mirror, but nothing was back there, no police car or other vehicle, nothing — but then he noticed them: his eyes, bloodshot, heavy, and aching. He did not recognize himself.
A wide pothole rushed up, and Brent veered so sharply to avoid it that he bumped — ever so slightly — the rear quarter panel of Villanueva’s car. The impact was so light that Brent knew there’d be no damage to his Vette, but at their speeds, the slightest shift of tires could be catastrophic.
And it was. Brent watched with a horrid fascination as the tap caused Villanueva to slide and lose control. The car broke into a spin that sent him into the oncoming lane.
Villanueva’s pinwheeling came to a sudden halt as his back tire slammed into the curb and the momentum lifted the entire car into the air.
The yellow Vette now spiraled like an Indy racer that had just hit the wall.
Brent gaped as Villanueva’s fate became even more apparent. The car was tumbling toward the massive concrete column of a streetlight.
And before Brent could pull in his next breath, the Vette struck the pillar, T-boning it so hard and fast that the entire vehicle split in two as glass, plastic, and shattered fiberglass rose in a debris cloud while the heavier sections plunged toward the pavement.
Before the rear half could hit the ground, it exploded in a fireball that consumed most of the street.
A half second later, the front end of the car came to a thudding halt and was swept up into the first fireball.
Three, two, one, and a second explosion tore through the front end, engulfing Villanueva in veils of black smoke backlit by the flames.
Brent jammed on the brakes, then downshifted to second, rolling up on the scene.
He was frozen, rapt, unable to fully process what he was seeing.
But with a chill and shudder, he realized he had to get out of there. He hit the gas…
The flames were painfully similar to the ones Brent watched now, at this moment, some seven years later, flashing across the flat-screen TV…
Brent stood in the base’s rec room, watching with the rest of his Special Forces team as the nuclear explosions detonated in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, those fireballs had just taken him back to that terrible moment when Carlos Villanueva had died on that rainy night. While his fellow Special Forces operators had been voicing their disbelief, Brent had remained there, stunned, reliving his senior year in high school, feeling it all again. That night had changed everything.
Everything.
“Hey, Captain? Captain Brent?”
Someone was yelling for him now, telling him to gather up his people, that the evac choppers were on the way…
But Brent was still in 2009, inside his Vette, crying as he sped down a side street, crying because he fervently believed that his life was over.
What would his parents think? His mother was an elementary school principal, a community leader who also worked for several charities. How would she feel about her only son being involved in a street race in which someone was killed?
If Brent hadn’t challenged Villanueva, if he’d just continued to dismiss him, the kid would still be alive. He couldn’t just say it was all Villanueva’s fault, that he’d deserved to die… because Brent had been weak. Brent had, indeed, stooped to the kid’s level. And because of that, the kid was dead.
The ride home had been the longest one of his life. He’d pulled the Vette into the garage, shut the door, as though he were being followed by someone who’d seen the accident, then dropped to his knees and vomited.
He remained there for five minutes, just drooling and breathing and trying to explain to the police in his head why he’d been racing and how sorry he was and that now, yes, his life was over…
And his parents would stand there, crying, as he was escorted into the police car, the cop placing a hand on Brent’s head so he wouldn’t bang it as he took a seat inside, behind the wire separating them from him.
