Collateral

Rose had been crying for hours in her apartment, holding her two-month-old daughter Ellie in her arms. She was trying to think of what to do next. She had no money, no job, and no boyfriend. The only person she could rely on was gone.

She couldn’t stop thinking about her now-dead boyfriend, Drew. How she begged him to stop street racing. How she watched his car blow up right before the finish line. How she saw him burn to death.

Suddenly someone knocks on the door. She ignores it. The banging on the door becomes louder.

Rose gets up, carefully placing Ellie on the couch. She picks up the chrome gun, lying on the table, and carefully walks to the door.

“Who is there?” Rose calls.

The voice of a gruff-sounding man sounds from behind the door.

“My name is Mr Smith,” the voice says. “I need to talk to you. Please open up.”

Rose carefully walks to the door, trying not the make a sound, keeping the gun aimed at the door.

“I don’t know anyone with that name.”

“I am a friend of Drew.”

Rose carefully opens the front door. Mr Smith is a tall man with brown hair and blue eyes. He is wearing a suit. It looks expensive. Even tho she was the person pointing a gun at him, Rose feels strangely intimidated.

“I am sorry for your loss. Can I please come in?”

Rose lowers her gun. “Yes, of course.”

She steps aside and lets him in. Rose picks Ellie back up in her arm, holding the gun firmly in the other one, and uses the gun to gesture Mr Smith to sit down.

Mr Smith sits down on the couch. He looks very much out of place in Rose’s cheap, partly rundown apartment. Rose suddenly felt very self-conscious about her looks. Her black hair was messy, her clothes were cheap and worn, and her glasses were slightly too big for her face. The man, Mr Smith as he called himself, seemed surprisingly comfortable sitting on her damaged and stained couch.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” Rose asked.

Mr Smith looks at Rose, top to bottom. “I was a friend of Drew. I wanted to offer my condolences.”

Rose clenches her fist around the grip of the gun. Her finger remains off the trigger.

“Then why have we never met?”

“I was his Bookie.”

Rose looks appalled. “I have nothing to say to you. Please leave my apartment.” She gestures with her gun towards the door.

“Please, hear me out,” he says.

Rose puts her gun back down. “Fine,” she says.

“He came to me before every race. He was a young guy, just betting thousands that he would win. I admired him, if I might be frank. He was always saying that one day, he would win big. Giving you and Ellie a better life.”

Rose just stares at him in silence. Then she regains her senses and spoke up. “Cool story. What do you want?”

“I want to offer you a job.”

“What kind of job?”

“I’ll explain it to you. But first, we need to take a drive. My car is parked outside.”

“I can’t leave Ellie alone.”

“You can bring her.”

Rose weighs her options. She doesn’t trust this stranger. But what other options does she have? She probably needs a full-time job to pay rent and feed Ellie. Which meant she needs to drop out of school. And what jobs were there for a 16-year-old dropout? None. If Mr Smith is speaking the truth, this probably is her best option.

Mr Smith drives Rose and Ellie down to the outskirts of Seattle. He parks his car on the side of the road. He looks at Rose and smiles.

Rose gets out of the car. She is still holding Ellie in her arms. They are parked overlooking a valley. Downhill lies a large racing track, crawling through the landscape like a snake. Near the car park, there are a couple of concrete buildings. The closest one reminds Rose of a pub or a restaurant. It has a neon sigh with the letters “Turbo Circuit Pub” on it.

The building behind it looks a bit like an office building. It has several stories with large glass windows.

The last building looks like a garage. Several cars are parked in front of the metal gates.

Mr Smith gestures at a red racecar parked in front of the starting line.

“Do you want to drive?”

Rose looks at Mr Smith. “I shouldn’t.”

Mr Smith looks back. “Why not?”

She looked at Ellie, who is sleeping in her arms. “It’s dangerous. Her Dad died in a car accident. She can’t lose her Mom too.”

“I can assure you it is perfectly safe.”

“If you say so.”

Mr Smith gestures at the pub-like building.

“My wife is waiting for us in the pub. She will look after Ellie while we race and talk business.”

The inside of the pub is decorated quite nice. The concrete walls are adorned with neon signs, and the space is filled with wooden tables and chairs. They don’t seem to fit together as if a bunch of second-hand furniture was crammed in. In the back is a wooden bar. Behind the bar is a large wooden board with numbers on them. Rose immediately recognises them as odds. So this is where people bet on races.

A woman in her mid-thirties is sitting behind a desk near the entrance. It looks out of place against the rest of the interior. The looks in her mid-thirties, and has long orange-red wavy hair and blue eyes. On the ground next to the desk, a three-year-old girl is playing with some cars. She has the exact same orange-red hair colour.

“Hello,” the woman says. “I am Mrs Smith. My husband told me about you.”

“That seems strange,” Rose says. “I only met him today.”

She ignores the question. “Your boyfriend came here a lot. Always betting on his street races. He could have made it big one day. I am so sorry for your loss. The world is worse off without him in it.”

Rose feels some tears well up. “Thank you.”

Mrs Smith puts her hand on Rose’s shoulder. “We’ll make sure you can take care of her, Rose. We will make sure you are both okay.”

The little girl looks up at Rose. “Hello, my name is Stephany. Do you want to play with me?”

Rose smiles. “I would love to, but I am afraid your dad and I have important business to take care of.”

Rose hands Ellie to Mrs smith. “Please take good care of her.”

Mrs Smith smiles. “I will. She will be right here when you get back.”

Rose caresses the face of her sleeping daughter. “I will miss you, little angel,” she says.