Chapter 1: The Diagnosis
The heat in Georgia in July is disrespectful. It doesn’t just sit on you; it hugs you like a damp wool blanket you can’t shake off. Being eight months pregnant makes it feel like you’re carrying a portable radiator strapped to your belly.
I shifted my weight from one swollen ankle to the other, trying to find a comfortable spot on the cracked linoleum floor of “Mick’s Auto & Tire.” The air conditioner in the waiting room rattled like a dying lawnmower, spitting out lukewarm air that smelled of stale coffee and burnt rubber.
“Ms. Bennett?”
I looked up. Mick, the owner, stood in the doorway between the waiting area and the garage bays. He was a caricature of a mechanic—grease under his fingernails that looked permanent, a name tag peeling off his chest, and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. It was the kind of smile a shark gives a seal.
I waddled over, wiping sweat from my forehead. “Is it done? It was just an oil change and a tire rotation, right?”
Mick sighed, a long, theatrical exhale. He tapped his clipboard with a pen, shaking his head.
“See, that’s what we hoped, sweetheart. But once we got ‘er up on the lift… well, it’s not looking good.”
My internal alarm bells chimed. I’ve heard that tone before. It’s the tone used on elderly women and teenagers. It’s the ‘I’m about to pay for my boat payment with your credit card’ tone.
“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.
“Your transmission fluid is burnt. Black as tar,” Mick said, leaning against the doorframe, getting comfortably into his sales pitch. “And I’m hearing a serious knock in the lower manifold. Sounds like your timing chain is about to snap. If that goes while you’re driving… especially in your, uh, condition…” He gestured vaguely at my stomach. “We’re talking catastrophic engine failure. Dangerous stuff.”
I blinked. “The timing chain? On a Honda with 40,000 miles?”
Mick chuckled, a wet, condescending sound. “These newer models, they don’t make ’em like they used to. Look, I can’t in good conscience let you drive out of here. It’s a liability. But, because I like you, and I don’t want you stranded on the highway with a baby on the way, I can cut you a deal on the labor.”
He circled a number on the invoice and turned it toward me.
$2,450.00.
“Two thousand dollars?” I asked, my voice flat.
“It’s a big job,” Mick shrugged. “Parts are on backorder, but I got a guy. We can have it done by Tuesday.”
I looked at the invoice. Then I looked at Mick. Then I looked past him, through the dirty glass window, at my car sitting on the lift.
“Mick,” I said, “The car is running fine. There’s no knock. I check the fluids myself every month. The transmission fluid was cherry red last week.”
Mick’s smile faltered for a second, then returned, tighter this time. He stepped closer, invading my personal space. The smell of cheap tobacco and Old Spice was overwhelming.
“Look, darlin’, I know you probably read some things on Google,” he said, his voice dropping to a patronizing whisper. “But reading a blog doesn’t make you a mechanic. And let’s be honest…” He pointed the pen at my belly. “That ‘pregnancy brain’ is a real thing. It makes us forgetful. Makes us hear things that aren’t there, or miss things that are. You’re emotional. You’re tired. Let the professionals handle the heavy lifting.”
The room went silent.
Behind the counter, Sarah, the teenage receptionist with purple streaks in her hair, stopped typing. An old man in a trucker hat reading a magazine lowered it slowly.
Something inside me snapped.
It wasn’t the heat. It wasn’t the swollen feet. It wasn’t even the attempted robbery of two grand.
It was the “pregnancy brain.”
It was the assumption that because my body was creating life, my mind had ceased to function. That because I was a woman in a sundress, I couldn’t possibly understand the machine I drove.
I felt a cold calm wash over me. It was the same calm I used to feel in the pit lane at Silverstone when the telemetry data showed a pressure drop in the hydraulics with three laps to go and millions of dollars on the line.
“Is my car still up on the lift?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah, but like I said, I can’t let you—”
“Lower it,” I said.
“Now, hold on—”
“Lower the car, Mick. Or I’m walking back there and lowering it myself.”
Mick laughed. He actually laughed. He looked around the waiting room, seeking an audience for his comedy show. “You hear this? She’s gonna walk back there. Lady, insurance regulations say no customers in the bay. You trip and fall, that’s on me. Just sign the paper, go sit down, and let me save your car.”
He turned his back on me, dismissing me. He thought the conversation was over. He thought he had won.
I didn’t sign the paper.
I pushed open the door to the garage.
“Hey!” Mick shouted, spinning around. “Hey! You can’t go in there!”
The garage was louder, smelling of ozone and grease. Three other mechanics looked up from their stations. I walked straight toward my car. My strides were short, but my purpose was absolute.
“Get out of here!” Mick was chasing me now, his heavy boots clomping on the concrete. “Sarah, call the cops! She’s crazy!”
I reached the workstation next to my car. I grabbed a rag from the bench and a 10mm socket wrench.
“You want to talk about the timing chain, Mick?” I turned to face him. He stopped three feet away, his face red with anger.
“I’m telling you to leave!” he spit.
“Pop the hood,” I commanded.
“I’m not popping—”
I reached through the open driver’s side window and pulled the latch release myself. The hood popped with a metallic clank.
I threw the safety latch and shoved the hood up. The heat from the engine hit my face, familiar and grounding. I scanned the engine bay. It took me exactly three seconds to see what he had done.
It wasn’t a blown gasket. It wasn’t a timing chain.
“You disconnected the mass airflow sensor clip,” I said, my voice cutting through the noise of the shop. “And you loosened the heat shield on the catalytic converter to make it rattle.”
Mick froze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about fraud, Mick.” I leaned over the fender, my belly pressing against the warm metal. “You created a vacuum leak to throw a check engine light, and you created a rattle to scare me.”
“You’re hysterical,” Mick sneered, though his eyes darted nervously to the other mechanics watching. “You don’t know what that part even does.”
I laughed. It was a dry, sharp sound.
“Hand me that diagnostic tablet,” I pointed to the bench.
“No.”
“Hand it to me!” I roared.
The sheer volume of my voice, coming from a woman who looked ready to give birth at any second, startled the mechanic closest to the bench—a young guy named Benny. He instinctively grabbed the tablet and handed it to me.
“Thanks, Benny,” I said.
I plugged it into the OBD-II port under the dashboard. My fingers flew across the screen.
“Let’s look at the live data, shall we?” I turned the screen so Mick could see it. “Look at the fuel trim levels. They’re trying to compensate for unmetered air. Why? Because the sensor is unplugged.”
I reached down, snapped the sensor clip back into place with a satisfying click.
“And that rattle?” I grabbed the wrench I’d picked up. I reached down past the manifold, blindly finding the bolt on the heat shield. I didn’t need to see it. I knew exactly where it was. My hands had built engines that won Grand Prix races in Monaco. A Honda Civic was a Lego set compared to what I was used to.
I tightened the bolt. One turn. Two turns. Locked.
I tossed the wrench onto the metal workbench with a clang that echoed through the shop.
“Start the car, Benny,” I said.
Benny looked at Mick. Mick was pale, his mouth slightly open, sweat dripping down his temple.
“Start it,” Mick whispered, defeated.
Benny turned the key.
The engine purred. No rattle. No check engine light. Smooth idle.
I wiped my hands on the rag and turned to Mick. The entire shop was silent. Even the old man from the waiting room was standing in the doorway, watching.
“My name is Casey. For the last six years, I was the Lead Powertrain Engineer for the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team,” I said, my voice steady but dangerous. “I design engines that run at 15,000 RPM for two hours straight. I can diagnose a misfire by the vibration in the floorboard.”
I stepped closer to him, until I was looking up into his fearful eyes.
“So, Mick. Do you still think I have ‘pregnancy brain,’ or were you just trying to steal two thousand dollars from a mother?”
Mick opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
“I’m taking my car,” I said. “And I’m not paying for the oil change.”
I thought that was the end of it. I thought I’d drive away, leave a bad Yelp review, and go home to elevate my feet.
But as I backed out of the bay, I saw a black sedan pull into the lot, blocking the exit. A man in a suit stepped out.
Mick looked at the man, and for the first time, he didn’t look arrogant. He looked terrified.
Chapter 2: The Predator in the Pinstripe Suit
The black sedan was a Mercedes S-Class, the kind with tinted windows so dark they looked like pools of oil. It was parked diagonally across the exit of “Mick’s Auto & Tire,” effectively boxing me in.
My Honda Pilot was running, the AC finally kicking in to combat the humid Georgia afternoon, but I didn’t put it in drive. My hand hovered over the gear shift. Inside my belly, “The Bean”—as my husband Mark and I called him—decided this was the perfect time to practice his kickboxing.
Thump. Thump.
“I know, buddy,” I whispered, rubbing a hand over the stretched fabric of my floral sundress. “I want to go home, too.”
But I couldn’t move. Not just because of the blocked exit, but because of the scene unfolding in my rearview mirror.
Mick, the man who had just tried to swindle me out of a month’s mortgage payment, looked like he was about to vomit. The swagger was gone. The “good ol’ boy” mechanic act had dissolved, leaving behind a middle-aged man with slumped shoulders and shaking hands.
The driver’s door of the Mercedes opened. The heat outside was shimmering off the asphalt, making the air look like it was boiling.
The man who stepped out didn’t belong in this part of town. This was a neighborhood of strip malls, pawn shops, and cracked sidewalks. This man was wearing a navy blue bespoke suit that probably cost more than Mick’s entire inventory of tools. He was tall, silver-haired, with the kind of posture that suggested he owned the ground he walked on.
He didn’t look at Mick. He looked at my car.
He adjusted his cuffs, walked past Mick as if he were a traffic cone, and headed straight for my window.
My engineer brain, the part of me that analyzed risk probabilities and structural integrity, went into overdrive. Threat assessment.
I cracked the window down three inches—enough to hear, not enough for him to reach in.
“Ms. Casey Bennett?” the man asked. His voice was smooth, like bourbon poured over gravel. It wasn’t a question; it was a verification.
A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. I hadn’t given Mick my last name. I hadn’t given anyone my name except “Casey.”
“Who’s asking?” I said, keeping my hands visible on the steering wheel.
The man smiled. It was a practiced smile, polite but devoid of warmth. He reached into his jacket pocket. I flinched, my hand dropping to the door lock. He noticed the movement and slowed down, pulling out a sleek metal business card holder.
“My name is Elias Thorne,” he said, sliding a black card through the crack in the window. “I own the property this shop sits on. In fact, I own the plaza.”
I didn’t take the card. It fell onto the passenger seat.
“I saw your performance,” Thorne continued, glancing back at the open garage bay where the other mechanics were still pretending to work, terrified to look our way. “Impressive. Truly. Most people just pay the bill or scream. Very few dismantle the scam with a socket wrench.”
“I used to build engines for a living, Mr. Thorne. I don’t like being lied to. Now, can you move your car? My ice cream is melting.”
Thorne chuckled. “Formula 1. Red Bull Racing. You were part of the team that redesigned the intake manifold for the RB16, weren’t you? The ‘Bennett Configuration,’ they called it internally.”
My breath hitched. That was proprietary information. That was years ago. I had left that life. I had buried it under a quiet suburban existence in Georgia because the stress of the paddock, the constant travel, and the high-stakes politics had started to eat my soul. I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to be normal.
“How do you know that?” I asked, my voice dropping an octave.
“I recognize talent, Ms. Bennett. And I recognize wasted potential.” He leaned in slightly, his expensive cologne battling with the smell of exhaust fumes. “Mick is a blunt instrument. He’s useful for churning out volume, but he lacks… finesse. He got greedy with you. That was a mistake. I apologize on his behalf.”
“I don’t need an apology,” I said. “I need to leave.”
“Of course.” Thorne signaled to his driver without even turning his head—a simple flick of his finger. The Mercedes began to back up.
“But before you go,” Thorne added, his eyes locking onto mine. They were grey, cold, and calculating. “You should know that what happened here today… it wasn’t personal. Mick is under a lot of pressure. Quotas. Margins. The economy is tough on small businesses.”
“Fraud isn’t a business strategy,” I snapped.
“It is when the alternative is extinction,” Thorne said softly. “Drive safe, Ms. Bennett. Take care of that baby. The world is a dangerous place for things that are fragile.”
He tapped the roof of my car twice, like he was dismissing a taxi, and walked away.
He didn’t walk back to his car. He walked toward Mick.
I shifted the Pilot into reverse, my heart hammering against my ribs. I should have just driven away. I should have punched the gas and never looked back.
But I’m an engineer. When I hear a noise that shouldn’t be there, I have to investigate. When I see a system failing, I have to know why.
As I pulled out of the parking spot, I glanced one last time at the pair of them.
Thorne had his hand on Mick’s shoulder. It looked friendly from a distance, like an old friend catching up. But then I saw Mick’s face.
He was weeping.
A grown man, covered in grease and tattoos, standing in the blistering sun, tears streaming down his face as he nodded frantically at whatever the man in the suit was whispering to him.
And then, I saw the teenage receptionist, Sarah. She had come out the side door, holding a phone. She wasn’t filming. She was holding it to her ear, looking at Mick with an expression of pure devastation.
‘Drive, Casey,’ I told myself. ‘Just drive.’
I merged onto the main road, the tires humming on the hot pavement. My hands were shaking.
The drive home was a blur of strip malls and pine trees. My mind, usually a fortress of logic and order, was a chaotic mess.
Why did Elias Thorne know who I was? Why was a man like that overseeing a rinky-dink auto shop in the suburbs? And why did I feel guilty?
I had won. I had exposed the scammer. I had saved my money. That was the narrative I should be celebrating. But the image of Mick crying wouldn’t leave my head.
“It wasn’t personal,” Thorne had said.
When I pulled into the driveway of our small, ranch-style house, the automatic lights flickered on. The sun was beginning to set, casting long, purple shadows across the lawn that Mark kept meticulously mowed.
Mark.
My husband was the opposite of me. He was an elementary school music teacher. He was soft edges, warm hugs, and zero mechanical aptitude. If the toaster broke, he bought a new one. If the car made a noise, he turned up the radio. He was the peace I needed after a decade in the high-octane war zone of motorsports.
I parked the car and just sat there for a moment, the silence of the cabin ringing in my ears. I looked down at my hands. They were still stained with a faint trace of engine grease that the wet wipes hadn’t quite removed.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the vanilla air freshener.
“You’re safe,” I whispered. “You’re home.”
I grabbed my purse and the grocery bag from the passenger seat. As I climbed out, struggling with the weight of my belly, I noticed something stuck in the door jamb of the rear passenger side.
It was a piece of paper. A flyer? No, it looked like an invoice.
I pulled it loose. It must have blown out of the shop when I opened the door earlier to put my purse in the back.
It wasn’t my invoice. It was a crumpled, grease-stained work order from a previous customer.
Customer: Mrs. Higgins. Vehicle: 2018 Toyota Camry. Service: Brake Caliper Replacement. Total: $1,850.
I frowned. A caliper replacement on a Camry shouldn’t cost more than $600, even with premium parts.
I smoothed out the paper against the roof of my car. There was a note scribbled in the margin in red pen. It wasn’t in Mick’s handwriting. It was neat, angular script.
“Quota missed. +15% next week or we seize the equipment.”
My stomach churned.
“Casey? Is that you, babe?”
Mark’s voice came from the front porch. He was standing there in his cargo shorts and a ‘World’s Okayest Teacher’ t-shirt, holding a spatula. The smell of grilling chicken wafted through the air.
I crushed the paper in my hand and shoved it into my pocket.
“Yeah,” I called back, forcing a smile. “Just battling the heat.”
Mark jogged down the steps, his face full of concern as he saw me waddle toward him. He immediately took the grocery bag.
“You look exhausted,” he said, kissing my forehead. “How was the mechanic? Did Mick take care of you? I told you I could have taken it in on Saturday.”
“It was… eventful,” I said, walking past him into the cool sanctuary of the house.
“Eventful? Did they find something wrong?” Mark followed me into the kitchen, setting the bag on the counter.
I poured myself a glass of water, my hand trembling slightly. “He tried to tell me the timing chain was shot. Wanted two grand.”
Mark’s eyes went wide. “What? That car is practically new! What did you do?”
“I fixed it,” I said, taking a long drink. “It was just a loose sensor. I fixed it right there in the bay.”
Mark laughed, a joyous, booming sound. “God, I love you. I bet Mick didn’t know what hit him. You went full ‘Engineer Casey’ on him, didn’t you?”
“I guess.”
“That’s my girl. Don’t let them push you around.” Mark went back to the patio door to check the chicken. “So, we saved two grand? That’s the crib money right there! We should celebrate. Maybe ice cream later?”
“Mark,” I said, my voice quiet.
He stopped, hearing the tone. He turned back, the spatula lowering. “What is it? Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”
“The baby is fine,” I said. I pulled the crumpled invoice out of my pocket and placed it on the granite countertop. “But something is wrong at that shop, Mark. Something really bad.”
Mark walked over and looked at the paper. “What is this?”
“I think Mick is being extorted,” I said. “There was a man there. A man in a suit. He knew who I was. He knew about my job at Red Bull.”
Mark frowned, confused. “Your old job? How would a random guy at a mechanic shop know that? You haven’t worked in F1 in three years.”
“Exactly.”
I walked over to the kitchen window, looking out at the darkening street. The suburban quiet felt different now. It felt thin, like a veil covering something ugly.
“He said something about ‘quotas’ and ‘fragile things,’” I murmured. “He threatened me, Mark. Not directly, but he made sure I knew he could hurt us.”
Mark’s demeanor changed instantly. The goofy music teacher vanished, replaced by a protective husband. He crossed the room and put his hands on my shoulders, turning me to face him.
“Who threatened you? What exactly did he say?”
“He told me to take care of the baby because the world is a dangerous place. And he knew about the Bennett Configuration.”
Mark went pale. He knew what that meant. He knew that the only people who knew about the specific configuration details were my old team… and the high-end corporate spies who tried to buy data.
“Casey,” Mark said slowly. “Do you think this has to do with the lawsuit?”
I froze.
The lawsuit.
Three years ago, when I left Red Bull, it wasn’t just burnout. There was a whistleblowing incident. A safety regulation that was being bypassed by a supplier for a rival team. I had flagged it anonymously, but it caused a massive scandal. Millions were lost. Careers were ended. I had signed an NDA so thick it could stop a bullet, and I had retired quietly to avoid the fallout.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But this man, Thorne… he owns the plaza. He’s squeezing Mick to scam customers. It’s a racket. But why would he reveal himself to me?”
“Maybe he wants you to be scared,” Mark said. “Maybe he wants you to stay quiet.”
“Or maybe,” I said, a dangerous spark igniting in my chest, “he made a mistake.”
I looked down at the crumpled invoice again.
“Mrs. Higgins,” I read. “I know her. She’s the lady who plays organ at the church down the street. She’s on a fixed income.”
“Casey, stop,” Mark said, sensing where my mind was going. “We are calling the police. We are not getting involved. You are eight months pregnant.”
“The police won’t understand,” I said. “It’s just a bad mechanic quote to them. It’s a civil matter. They won’t see the pattern.”
“And what are you going to do? You’re not Batman. You’re a mom.”
“I’m an engineer, Mark. I solve problems.” I grabbed my phone. “And I have a dashcam.”
“Casey…”
“The Pilot was facing the bay,” I said, my mind racing. “It has a wide-angle lens. It records on motion. Even when the car is off, if there’s significant movement nearby, it buffers.”
I unlocked my phone and opened the dashcam app. The video files loaded slowly over the Wi-Fi.
“Please don’t do this,” Mark pleaded. “Let’s just eat dinner. Let’s just forget it.”
I tapped the file labeled 16:45 PM.
The video opened. It showed the view from my windshield. The garage bay was clearly visible.
I scrubbed forward to the moment I walked into the shop.
On the screen, I saw myself walk in. The frame was empty for a few minutes. Then, I saw Mick come out to the car. He looked around nervously.
And then, I saw it.
He didn’t just unplug the sensor.
Mick took a small, black device from his pocket—something that looked like a USB drive—and plugged it into my car’s OBD port for five seconds before removing it.
I gasped.
“What?” Mark asked, leaning over my shoulder.
“He didn’t just sabotage the engine,” I said, my blood running cold. “He downloaded the ECU data. He cloned my car’s digital key.”
Mark looked at me, confused. “Why would he do that? To steal the car later?”
“No,” I said, staring at the screen. “A 2022 Honda Pilot isn’t worth that much trouble. But the data on the navigation system? The saved addresses? The synchronized contacts?”
I looked at Mark.
“He wasn’t trying to scam me for $2,000, Mark. That was just the cover.”
“Then what was he doing?”
“He was data mining,” I said. “Thorne isn’t running a scam auto shop. He’s running an intelligence gathering operation. Think about it. Who lives in this suburb? Engineers from the Lockheed Martin plant. Contractors for the CDC. It’s a bedroom community for high-level clearance personnel.”
Mark stepped back. “You think they are stealing secrets from customers’ cars?”
“I think,” I said, grabbing my car keys from the counter, “that I need to look at that black box he plugged in.”
“You don’t have it,” Mark said.
“No,” I smiled grimly. “But I know where he keeps his ‘special’ tools. I saw the safe under the workbench when I grabbed the wrench.”
“Casey, you are NOT going back there.”
“I’m not,” I lied. “I’m going to see Mrs. Higgins. If they did the same thing to her, I can prove it.”
“Casey!”
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Eat the chicken.”
I was out the door before he could stop me.
It was reckless. It was stupid. It was undeniably “pregnancy brain” making me irrational.
But as I climbed back into the Pilot, I felt a surge of adrenaline I hadn’t felt since the lights went out at the Grand Prix.
I wasn’t just a victim. I was the only person in this town who knew how to read the code.
I started the engine.
But as I put the car in reverse, my phone buzzed.
A text message. From an unknown number.
I opened it.
Attached was a photo.
It was a photo of me, taken from inside my own house, through the kitchen window, just seconds ago.
The text underneath read:
“Stay home, Casey. The engine runs better when you don’t tinker with it.”
I dropped the phone.
I looked up at the dark street. The shadows between the trees seemed to move.
They were watching me.
Chapter 3: The Ghost in the Machine
My phone lay on the floor mat of the car, the screen glowing ominously in the deepening twilight. The photo of me, framed by my own kitchen window, felt like a physical blow. It was a violation deeper than the attempted theft of two thousand dollars. It was a declaration: We can touch you.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. My heart rate, which had spiked to a thumping 140 bpm, began to slow. This was the “Flow State.” It was what happened when the lights went out at the start of a Grand Prix, or when a piston rod shattered at 200 miles per hour. Panic is a luxury for people who have time to die. I didn’t have time. I had a baby to deliver in four weeks and a husband who thought a spatula was a defensive weapon.
I snatched the phone, killed the engine, and rolled out of the car. I moved with a speed that belied my thirty-six weeks of pregnancy, staying low, using the bulk of the Honda Pilot as a shield against the street.
“Mark!” I hissed as I burst through the front door.
Mark was standing by the stove, holding a plate of grilled chicken. He looked up, his smile fading instantly when he saw my face.
“Casey? What happened? I thought you left.”
I locked the deadbolt. Then the chain. Then I moved to the window—the one in the photo—and yanked the blinds down so hard the plastic wand rattled against the glass.
“Turn off the lights,” I commanded. “Now, Mark.”
“Casey, you’re scaring me. What is going on?”
“They’re watching us,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from the kitchen, into the hallway where there were no windows. I shoved my phone into his hand. “Look.”
Mark looked at the photo. His face went gray. He slumped against the wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor, staring at the screen.
“They took this… just now?” he whispered.
“They’re outside. Or they were.” I paced the small hallway, my mind racing through permutations. “Thorne isn’t just a landlord. He’s a handler. Mick is the acquisition specialist. The shop is the honey pot.”
“We need to call 911,” Mark said, his voice trembling. “This is stalking. This is a threat.”
“And say what?” I crouched down in front of him, grabbing his knees. “That a mechanic overcharged me and now I got a creepy text? The cops will take a report. They’ll drive by once. But Thorne… Mark, he knew about the Bennett Configuration. That’s not public knowledge. That’s classified intellectual property worth millions. If he has access to that kind of intel, he has access to the police roster. He probably owns the precinct.”
“So what do we do? We can’t stay here.”
“We can’t leave either,” I said. “If we get in the car, they’ll follow. If we try to run, we look guilty of something, or we make ourselves vulnerable on the highway. A ‘traffic accident’ is a very easy thing to arrange. Ask anyone in the industry.”
I took a deep breath. The baby kicked hard, a solid thump against my ribs.
“We need leverage,” I said. “We need to know what they are actually stealing. It’s not just contacts. It’s not just addresses. You don’t threaten a former F1 engineer over a list of contacts.”
I thought back to the invoice I had found. Mrs. Higgins.
“Mark, I need you to trust me,” I said, standing up. “I need you to go into the basement and bring up my old Pelican case. The gray one with the Red Bull stickers.”
Mark looked up. “You haven’t opened that in three years. You said you were done with that life.”
“That life is currently parked on our front lawn in a black Mercedes,” I said grimly. “Get the case.”
Ten minutes later, the dining room table was transformed into a command center.
I had my old field laptop open—a ruggedized machine designed to survive the vibration of a pit lane. Next to it was a tangled mess of cables, a signal analyzer, and a high-gain antenna I used to use for telemetry interception.
Mark watched me work, holding a baseball bat, pacing between the front and back windows, peeking through the slats.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Signals,” I muttered, my fingers flying across the keyboard. “If Mick installed a cloner or a tracker in my car, it has to transmit. It has to send the data somewhere. Bluetooth is too short-range. Wi-Fi is too unreliable. It has to be cellular.”
I booted up a packet sniffer, a program that visualizes all radio frequencies in the immediate area.
The screen filled with noise. Wi-Fi routers from the neighbors. Cell phones. Baby monitors.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Show yourself.”
I filtered out the known frequencies. I isolated the bands usually reserved for commercial GPS tracking.
Nothing.
“Maybe he took it out?” Mark suggested. “Maybe he just plugged it in to download and then removed it?”
“No,” I shook my head. “The data stream I saw on the invoice… the ‘vacuum leak’ scam… it takes time. They need persistent access. Wait.”
I saw a spike.
It was faint, buried in the noise floor of a sub-gigahertz frequency usually used for industrial automated metering—like smart water meters. It was a pulse. Every thirty seconds.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
“I found it,” I said. “There’s a transmitter. But it’s not in my car.”
I grabbed the laptop and walked to the living room. The signal got weaker. I walked to the kitchen. Stronger. I walked to the back door.
“It’s not coming from the street,” I said, my blood running cold. “It’s coming from the backyard.”
Mark gripped the bat tighter. “Someone is in the backyard?”
“No,” I said, staring at the signal strength meter. “It’s stationary.”
I unlocked the back door.
“Casey, don’t!”
“Stay here, Mark. Watch the front.”
I stepped out into the humid night air. The crickets were deafening. I followed the signal strength on my screen. It led me past the patio, past the swing set we had just built for the baby, to the edge of our property.
To the fence line we shared with Mrs. Higgins.
The signal wasn’t coming from my yard. It was coming from hers. specifically, from her garage.
I ran back inside.
“It’s Mrs. Higgins,” I said. “Her car. It’s broadcasting.”
“Broadcasting what?”
“Let’s go find out.”
Mrs. Higgins was seventy-two years old, a widow who made the best peach cobbler in the county and played the organ with a ferocity that frightened small children.
When she opened her front door at 8:30 PM, wearing a floral housecoat and holding a cat, she looked confused but delighted.
“Casey! And Mark! Goodness, is it time? Is the baby coming?”
“Not yet, Mrs. Higgins,” I said, forcing a calm smile, though sweat was trickling down my back. “I’m so sorry to bother you this late. But… did you take your Camry to Mick’s Auto recently?”
Mrs. Higgins blinked. “Why yes, dear. Just last Tuesday. My brakes were squeaking something awful. Mick is such a nice boy, isn’t he? Gave me a discount.”
I exchanged a look with Mark.
“Mrs. Higgins,” I said gently. “Would you mind if I took a look at your car? I think… I think they might have left a tool in there by mistake. I just want to check.”
“Oh, certainly! The garage is unlocked. Help yourself. Can I get you some iced tea? You look flushed, dear.”
“No thank you, ma’am.”
We went into her garage. It smelled of mothballs and old gasoline. The beige Toyota Camry sat there, innocuous and boring.
I opened the driver’s door. I didn’t need to look hard. I knew where to look now.
I reached under the dashboard, feeling around the OBD-II port. There was a splitter cable tucked up behind the plastic trim. One end went to the car’s computer. The other end went to a small black box zip-tied to the steering column.
“Gotcha,” I whispered.
I didn’t unplug it. If I unplugged it, they would know the signal was lost.
Instead, I connected my laptop to the black box via a USB-C interface cable.
“Casey, hurry up,” Mark hissed from the garage door, watching the street.
“I’m in,” I said. “Bypassing the encryption… God, this is lazy coding. Default admin passwords? Seriously?”
The terminal window flooded with text. I scrolled through the logs.
My eyes widened.
“It’s not just tracking,” I said, my voice shaking. “Mark. Look at this.”
I pointed to the screen.
Vehicle ID: Toyota Camry 2018. Driver: Martha Higgins. Saved Destination 1: 4400 Lockheed Blvd (Lockheed Martin Aeronautics). Saved Destination 2: Grace Baptist Church. Access Protocol: GATE KEY 4 – COPIED. RFID Transponder: CLONED.
“Mrs. Higgins doesn’t work at Lockheed,” Mark said.
“No,” I said. “But her son does. Doesn’t he? Doesn’t he drive her car when he visits?”
“Yeah, David. He’s a systems integrator there.”
“They aren’t stealing her data,” I realized, the horror setting in. “They are using her car as a Trojan Horse. They cloned the RFID gate tag that opens the secure parking lot at Lockheed. If anyone drives this car up to the gate, it opens.”
I scrolled further. There were dozens of files.
Subject: Ford F-150. Owner: Dr. Aris Thorne (CDC). Gate Access: BIO-LAB 4. Subject: Tesla Model 3. Owner: Sarah Jenkins (City Council).
“This is massive,” I whispered. “Thorne isn’t just a scammer. He’s building a physical key ring to the entire city’s critical infrastructure. Defense contractors, government buildings, research labs. He’s selling access. Or he’s planning something simultaneous.”
“We have to go to the FBI,” Mark said. “Right now.”
“We can’t,” I said. “Look at the data stream. It’s live. It’s uploading to a cloud server. If we go to the FBI, they’ll bring us in for questioning, they’ll seize the laptop, and by the time they get a warrant for the server, Thorne will have wiped everything and vanished. Or worse, he’ll execute whatever plan he has.”
I looked at the date stamp on the latest command file.
EXECUTE ORDER 66 – UPLOAD PACKET – TIMEFRAME: 48 HOURS.
“Something is happening in two days,” I said.
Suddenly, the garage lights flickered.
Mark jumped. “Did you do that?”
“No.”
We heard a car engine outside. Slow. Prowling.
I slammed the laptop shut. “They tracked the intrusion. They know someone accessed the box.”
“Mrs. Higgins!” Mark whisper-shouted.
We ran back into the house. Mrs. Higgins was in the kitchen, pouring tea.
“Mrs. Higgins, we need to leave. Now,” I said.
“But the tea is steeping!”
“We have to go!” Mark grabbed her arm, perhaps a bit too roughly.
“Mark!” I warned.
CRASH.
The front window of Mrs. Higgins’ living room shattered. A brick landed on the carpet.
Mrs. Higgins screamed.
I looked at the brick. There was no note. It was just a brick. A prelude.
“Back door!” I yelled.
We hustled the bewildered old woman out the back door, through the garden, and back toward our fence.
“My cat! Mr. Whiskers!” Mrs. Higgins wailed.
“Mr. Whiskers is fine, he’s a cat, he’ll hide!” I panted, struggling over the uneven grass. The baby felt like a bowling ball dropping lower in my pelvis. Not now, Bean. Please not now.
We got into our kitchen. I locked the door.
“They know we know,” I said. “The game has changed.”
“We are trapped,” Mark said, pacing frantically. “They are at the front. They are at the back.”
“No,” I said. I stood up straight, a cold resolve settling over me. The fear was gone. The engineer was back. “We aren’t trapped. We are hidden. They don’t know we have the data. They just know someone accessed the box in Mrs. Higgins’ garage.”
I opened my laptop again.
“What are you doing?” Mark asked.
“I spent ten years optimizing engines to run at the absolute limit of physics,” I said, my fingers flying. “I know how to make things go fast. But I also know how to make them break.”
I looked at Mark, my eyes burning.
“Thorne relies on these cars. He relies on the data stream. He thinks he’s the predator.”
I pulled up the code for the cloned black box. I started typing a new script.
“I’m going to write a patch,” I said. “A virus. I’m going to upload it to Mrs. Higgins’ box. And when it connects to Thorne’s central server to upload its data… it’s going to infect every other car in his network.”
“What will it do?”
“It’s going to trigger the ‘Bennett Configuration’,” I smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile. “But in reverse.”
“English, Casey!”
“I’m going to make every single car in his fleet redline,” I said. “I’m going to overheat his entire operation. But first…”
I looked at the car keys on the counter.
“I need to go back to the shop.”
“WHAT?” Mark screamed. “Are you insane? That is where the bad guys are!”
“Exactly,” I said. “Thorne is smart. He’ll be watching the digital network for the virus. I can’t upload it from here. He’ll trace the IP address back to this block. I need to upload it from the source. I need to plug directly into his mainframe.”
“You can’t. You’re pregnant. You can barely walk.”
“I can drive,” I said. “And I know that shop. I know the layout. I saw the server room. It’s in the back office, next to the bathroom.”
“Casey, no.”
“Mark,” I grabbed his face. “If we don’t do this, they win. They hurt Mrs. Higgins. They hurt us. They hurt the baby. This ends tonight.”
I turned to Mrs. Higgins, who was sitting on our sofa clutching a throw pillow.
“Mrs. Higgins, do you still have that spare key to the church?”
“Yes, dear. Why?”
“Mark is going to take you there. It’s sanctuary. No one will look for you there.”
“And you?” Mark asked, tears in his eyes.
I picked up the 10mm wrench I had inadvertently stolen from the shop earlier that day. It felt heavy and cool in my hand.
“I’m going to get an oil change.”
The drive to Mick’s Auto & Tire was surreal. The moon was full, casting a silver light over the empty suburban streets.
I parked the Pilot two blocks away, behind a dumpster at a Wendy’s. I couldn’t risk my car being seen.
I walked the rest of the way. Every step was a battle. My back ached. My ankles throbbed. But my mind was sharp.
The shop was dark. The “OPEN” sign was off. But there was a light on in the back office.
I crept around the side of the building, toward the bay doors. They were rolled down, but not locked. I knew Mick. He was lazy. He probably relied on the alarm system.
I approached the keypad by the side door.
Code?
I closed my eyes. I thought back to the diagnostic tablet I had held. The user login.
Admin1234.
I tried it on the door pad.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Buzz. Red light.
“Damn.”
I tried again. What would a narcissist like Thorne use? Or a simpleton like Mick?
I looked at the graffiti on the wall. “Mick’s Rules.”
I tried the last four digits of the shop’s phone number.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Click. Green light.
“Unbelievable,” I whispered.
I slipped inside. The smell of grease and rubber was overwhelming in the dark. I navigated through the shadows, past the silent lifts, past the tool chests.
I reached the office door. It was glass. I could see inside.
Mick was there. He wasn’t alone.
Elias Thorne was there, too. And two other men. They were in suits. They were looking at a wall of monitors.
On the monitors, I saw maps. Moving dots. Dozens of them.
And on the main screen, a countdown.
OPERATION BLACKOUT: T-MINUS 12 HOURS.
I had to get to the server rack. It was right there, in the corner of the office, blinking with green lights.
But there were four men between me and the port.
I needed a distraction.
I looked around the garage. My eyes landed on the fire suppression system control panel on the wall.
Then I looked at the lift nearest the office. There was a car on it. An old Ford.
And then I looked at the tire alignment machine.
An idea formed. A terrible, wonderful, engineer’s idea.
I crept over to the alignment machine. I grabbed a heavy impact wrench.
I was about to make some noise.
But before I could move, a cold metal circle pressed against the back of my neck.
“I told you,” a voice whispered in my ear. “Pregnancy brain makes you reckless.”
I froze.
It was Sarah. The receptionist with the purple hair.
She wasn’t holding a phone this time. She was holding a Glock 19.
“Turn around, Casey,” she said, her voice completely different—cold, professional, devoid of the teenage valley-girl accent. “Mr. Thorne has been expecting you.”
Chapter 4: The Bennett Configuration
The office was colder than the rest of the shop, chilled by a portable AC unit humming in the corner, fighting a losing battle against the heat generated by the server rack.
Sarah shoved me forward. I stumbled, catching myself on the edge of a mahogany desk that looked ridiculous in a grease-stained auto shop.
“Easy, Sarah,” Elias Thorne said, not looking up from the screens. “Mrs. Bennett is a guest. A very… valuable one.”
He turned his swivel chair to face me. The charm was gone. In the harsh fluorescent light, he looked predatory.
“You have a bad habit of sticking your nose into complex machinery, Casey,” Thorne said. “First the sensor. Then Mrs. Higgins’ black box. And now, you’re breaking into my facility.”
“It’s an auto shop, Elias. Not a Bond villain lair,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. My lower back was seizing up. The stress was triggering Braxton Hicks contractions, or maybe the real thing. I couldn’t tell anymore.
“It’s a hub,” Thorne corrected. “For the Gridlock Protocol. In—” he checked his watch “—eleven hours, we are going to initiate a synchronized shutdown of every traffic light and gated access point in the metro area. Total paralysis. While the city is gridlocked, my associates will extract assets from three different banks that won’t be able to get police response vehicles through the chaos.”
He stood up and walked toward me.
“And you, Mrs. Bennett, are going to help us finish the upload.”
“Why would I do that?” I spat.
“Because,” Sarah said, pressing the barrel of the gun into my ribs, “we know where Mark is. We know he’s at the church. And we have people there, too.”
My blood froze. I looked at Mick, who was standing in the corner, staring at his boots.
“Mick,” I whispered. “You have kids. You told me you have a daughter.”
Mick flinched. “I… I can’t, Casey. I owe them too much money.”
Thorne laughed. “Mick is a tool. Just like the wrench you’re holding.” He nodded at my hand. I was still gripping the 10mm wrench. I hadn’t even realized it. “Put it down.”
I dropped the wrench. It hit the floor with a dull clank.
“Here is the situation,” Thorne said, gesturing to the server rack. “We are running a custom firmware to bypass the firewalls of the city’s traffic grid. But the encryption is heavy. The processors are overheating. They keep thermal-throttling. If they slow down, the upload won’t finish before the morning rush hour.”
He leaned in close.
“You built engines that run at the limit of thermal destruction. You know how to bypass safety governors. I need you to go into the BIOS and disable the thermal limits. Overclock the system. Make it run hot enough to finish the job.”
“It will melt the cores,” I said. “It will destroy the hardware.”
“I don’t care about the hardware,” Thorne said. “I only need it to last one hour. Apply the… what did you call it? The Bennett Configuration.”
He pointed to the keyboard.
“Type. Or Sarah makes a phone call to the team outside the church.”
I looked at the screen. I looked at Sarah’s cold eyes. I looked at my belly.
I had to protect Mark. I had to protect The Bean.
I sat down at the keyboard. My hands hovered over the keys.
“Smart choice,” Thorne murmured.
I started typing. I accessed the root directory. I found the fan speed controls and the voltage regulators.
Thorne watched over my shoulder, arrogant and confident. He saw code. He saw numbers. But he didn’t understand systems.
He didn’t understand that an engine—whether it’s a V6 turbo hybrid or a server rack—is a living thing. It breathes.
I wasn’t just disabling the safety limits. I was creating a resonance loop.
“Mick,” I said softly, as I typed. “The air compressor in the shop. Is it the 80-gallon industrial one?”
“Shut up,” Sarah snapped.
“Yeah,” Mick mumbled, looking up. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” I said. “Enter.”
I hit the key.
On the screen, the fan speeds dropped to zero. The voltage spiked to 150%.
“What are you doing?” Thorne yelled. “The fans stopped!”
“You wanted it to run hot,” I said, standing up. “I diverted the power from the cooling system to the processors. It will finish your upload in two minutes.”
“Good,” Thorne smiled. “See? Mommies can be useful.”
“But,” I added, stepping back toward the door, “you might want to check the pressure valve.”
“What?”
BOOM.
The sound wasn’t from the computer. It came from the garage floor.
I hadn’t just overclocked the server. I had accessed the shop’s smart-grid system—the one Mick used to automate his tools. I had sent a command to the main air compressor to bypass its cut-off switch.
The safety valve on the compressor blew off with the force of a grenade.
The garage filled with a deafening hiss of escaping air, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris.
“What did you do?!” Thorne screamed.
“Distraction,” I grunted.
I grabbed the heavy fire extinguisher off the wall next to the door.
Sarah turned, distracted by the explosion in the bay. I didn’t hesitate. I swung the canister with every ounce of “mom strength” I possessed.
It connected with her arm. The gun flew across the room, sliding under the server rack.
Sarah screamed, clutching her wrist.
“Mick!” I yelled over the noise of the hissing air. “Get out! Now!”
Mick looked at Thorne, then at me. Then at the gun under the server rack.
Thorne lunged for the gun.
Mick moved.
He didn’t tackle Thorne. He tackled the server rack.
The big, burly mechanic threw his entire weight against the towering metal cabinet. It tipped.
It crashed down on top of Elias Thorne just as his hand reached the weapon.
Sparks flew. The smell of burning silicon and ozone filled the small room. The servers, already running at critical temperature, sizzled and died as they smashed against the concrete.
The screens on the wall went black.
UPLOAD FAILED.
Silence rushed back into the room, broken only by Thorne’s groans from under the wreckage and the distant wail of sirens.
I leaned against the doorframe, gasping for air. A sharp, undeniable pain ripped through my abdomen.
Water trickled down my leg.
“Oh,” I whispered.
Mick stood up, panting, looking down at Thorne trapped under the rack. He looked at me.
“Casey?”
“Mick,” I gritted out, clutching my stomach. “I think… I think you owe me a ride.”
Three Days Later.
The hospital room was quiet, filled with the soft sunlight of a Georgia morning.
Mark was asleep in the uncomfortable chair in the corner, his mouth slightly open.
I looked down at the bundle in my arms.
Leo. We named him Leo. He had ten fingers, ten toes, and a grip like a mechanic.
The door opened softly. A nurse walked in, followed by a woman in a suit. Not the kind of suit Sarah wore. A cheap, government-issue suit.
“Mrs. Bennett?” the woman whispered. “I’m Agent Miller. FBI.”
“Shh,” I said, nodding at the baby. “He just fell asleep.”
“I’ll be brief,” she said. “We arrested Elias Thorne. And Sarah. The network is dismantled. The encrypted drive you recovered from Mrs. Higgins was… instrumental. You saved a lot of people a lot of trouble.”
“And Mick?” I asked.
The agent sighed. “Mr. Mickelson is cooperating. Given his role in saving your life and stopping Thorne at the end… the D.A. is looking at probation. He’ll lose the shop, obviously. But he won’t lose his freedom.”
I nodded. It was fair.
“There is one thing,” Agent Miller said, pausing at the door. “The Red Bull Racing team sent a package. It’s at the nurses’ station. Something about a ‘consulting fee’?”
I smiled. “I’ll pick it up later.”
“You know,” the Agent said, “Thorne told us you used a ‘resonance loop’ to blow the compressor. He said you were just a pregnant housewife.”
I looked down at Leo. I kissed his soft forehead.
“He was right about one thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I am a mother,” I said. “And we are the best engineers on the planet. We build people.”
The Agent smiled and closed the door.
I closed my eyes, listening to the rhythm of my son’s breathing. It was steady. Strong.
Perfect timing.
Mark stirred in the chair. “Hey,” he whispered, rubbing his eyes. “You okay? Do you need anything?”
“No,” I said, feeling lighter than I had in years. “I fixed it.”
Mark smiled. “Yeah. You did.”
“But Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time the car makes a noise,” I said, “I’m buying the parts online. And I’m teaching Leo how to hold the flashlight.”
THE END.
