Blindsided by Katy Lee Page B

store, it must have shot up and brought the helicopter down, as well.
    Pace .
    Ethan ran around to the driver’s door but couldn’t get in. Not until he knew if his lifelong friend was in that burning chopper.
    “Sir?” Sam called from the backseat of the car. The boy’s voice shook. “Shouldn’t we get out of here? This whole place could blow up.”
    Ethan nodded to Sam but still didn’t take his seat. His gaze wandered to Roni’s ashen face.
    Flames danced in the reflection of her glassy eyes. He followed her line of vision to the shooting billows. What was going through her mind? he wondered. The way she still grabbed her neck gave him a hint.
    A pain that went beyond his pain of poverty. He’d misjudged her on so many levels. Saying she wouldn’t understand real pain had been a major slipup on his part. He wronged her, but he wouldn’t do it again.
    Ethan made his decision and took the driver’s seat. He fitted the rectangular key into the ignition. The car purred to life and he put it in gear, passing the flaming helicopter without a glance. He didn’t need to look for the driver of Roni’s Porsche to know he was long gone. Did the guy know his foil had been foiled? Did he know he actually might have saved them all, instead?
    Ethan looked over at Roni after he pulled out on the open road. Her head turned to watch the flames get smaller and smaller as he sped the car away from the site. He reached for her hand still on her neck, glad when she didn’t fight him.
    So cold her hand felt in his palm.
    So lifeless, too. She may not have fought him when she let him take her hand, but she didn’t offer anything either.
    Ethan thought it strange that her coldness bothered him. He, himself, never gave anything to anyone either. The two of them were cut from the same cloth. Two Lone Rangers forging their own paths in life, alone but in charge.
    But alone never felt so cold.
    * * *
    Uncle Clay was right. What was she thinking opening a racing school? She didn’t have what it took, but it had nothing to do with being a woman in a man’s sport.
    “I’m not qualified,” she mumbled, the first words since the explosion.
    Ethan squeezed her hand. She looked down and noticed dried blood on his. The sight of blood never bothered her. Racers were always getting banged up and in need of bandaging. Roni had even bandaged her sister-in-law up one night when she had been shot. Roni never got squeamish.
    But apparently she froze at being in a fire.
    She’d seen them from afar on the racetrack, but had never been in one...except for the one as a child.
    “What aren’t you qualified for?” Ethan asked, his voice low and concerned.
    “Opening a racing school.”
    “I’ve seen you drive. You’re qualified.”
    Roni slowly turned her head in his direction, blinking to snap out of the shock of her limitations. Limitations she never knew she had. “I always thought so, too. I thought I could deliver. I taught Jared to race and brought him up the ranks. If I could do that with him, surely I had what it took. But what kind of teacher would I be if I can’t be around fire? I froze back there. You saw it. You saw me!”
    “Okay, yes, I did, but you can’t make a life-altering decision in the wake of that scene back there. That was an attack on your life, not an accident.”
    “Accidents on the track can kill, too.”
    “Yes, but nobody wants them to. That’s the difference. That explosion back there was purposely triggered, and the fear you’re experiencing is because you were cornered in it with no way out.”
    Roni looked out the window, but the dense forests flew by in a blur. “No. The fear only came when the flames did. I’ve spent all my racing years learning ways to break away from careening out-of-control cars not because I wanted to win, but because smashed cars tend to catch on fire. I can’t believe I never saw this before. I wasn’t racing to the finish line. I was running for my life.” Saying the