Tom shaded his eyes. The blaring sun overhead only served to intensify the pounding in his head. After hearing that Jason was going to be okay, he quietly slipped out of the emergency department and headed straight for the nearest bar that he could find and spent the better part of the night drinking himself into oblivion. Not that really changed anything expect leaving him with one hell of a hangover.
He ducked into one of the nearby garages hoping to avoid everyone, especially Leo and Jake, now that he was back in town. He wasn't ready for the barrage of questions that he knew was coming from the pair. Tom welcomed the darkened garage and the coolness of its interior. Walking across the scared floor, Tom headed for the first aid kit that hung on the wall. He found a bottle of aspirin inside and downed a handful.
He could hear the humming of the cars circling the practice track and found himself replaying Jason's accident over and over again in his mind. Jake had been right, Jason definitely knew something was off with his car but before he could really tell Tom how the car was handling, the breaks let loose and Tom watched as his lifelong friend as he headed straight for the wall. The taste of bile burned the back of Tom's throat and he found himself rushing to the nearby sink letting the contents of his stomach loose in the deep basin.
Splashing water on his face, he had to get a hold of himself. He knew that he had to find a way to get a handle on what was to come. He just wasn't sure if he would be able to actually do it. Jake had known him for years and the older man had caught both him and Jason in more than a few lies through the years. It would be a miracle if Jake didn't immediately see right through him.
"Why the hell aren't you answering your phone?" Billy's thunderous voice resonated off the metal garage walls as he stormed through the door. Again, the bright light of day assaulted Tom and made him want to puke all over again.
Pulling his phone from his back pocket, Tom saw the dozen calls and texts that Billy had left. "I turned it off," he lied.
"Why the hell would you do that?"
"I just did." Billy was just one more person on the list of people Tom didn't want to talk to.
"What's the word on Morgan?" Billy questioned. He hadn't been able to get much information on his rival's condition. In fact, talk about Jason's accident had been non-existent around Ryan Racing that morning.
"Concussion, broken ribs, cuts and bruises," Tom answered averting his eyes from Weston's icy stare.
"That's it?" Billy fumed. He had expected more severe injuries with the crash he witnessed.
For Tom though, those injuries were quite enough. Again, he felt sick to his stomach at the thought of the part he played in it all. He couldn't believe he had allowed himself to be talked into tampering with Jason's car. How had he gotten to this place? The transgressions he believed Jason perpetrated against him weren't anything in comparison to the idea that his friend could have died and he would have been to blame. He was thankful that his friend was going to make a full recovery but that didn't do much to take away the guilt he felt. It was all consuming.
"More than likely, he'll be out for a race or two," Tom heard himself say. He didn't know if it were true or not, and he was sure why he was poking an already angry bear but at this point he didn't care. Tom had already let Billy Weston turn his life upside down, so why not do the same to his as well.
"Damn!" Billy growled. This was not how it was supposed to work out. Jason was supposed to be out for the rest of the season, if he ever came back at all. A mere 2 races wouldn't do anything to help him widen the gap between them in the standings. "I guess we need to come up with plan B."
Tom's eyes widened. He could see the wheels turning inside Billy's head and could only imagine the schemes he was plotting and Tom wanted no part of it. "Like hell!" Tom forced. "I'm done."
"Oh, you think so?" Billy said in a cocky tone.
"I know so. I'm done. You're on your own man," Tom announced. He wanted no part of what Billy might be planning. He would be lucky to escape unscathed from the role he had already played.
Billy eyed the mechanic standing in front of him carefully, suddenly questioning his loyalty not to mentioned his unexpected attack of conscious. That's the last thing Billy needed was for Jason's best friend and mechanic to spill the beans. He wasn't about to let that happen.
"Where do you think you're going?" Billy questioned when Tom turned heading for the door.
He didn't know how to answer Billy's request because in all honesty, Tom hadn't a clue where he was going. He knew that he should have already been to the hospital to see Jason. It would appear strange to everyone for him not to show up to check on his friend. But the idea of being in a room with all of them knowing what he had done, well it wasn't something that Tom could bear right now.
He thought about crawling inside another bottle of tequila in an attempt to drown out the voices in his head telling him what a terrible person he was. But the ever-constant pounding behind his eyes put a stop to that idea.
Without any clear thought as to where he was headed, the only thing Tom did know was that he wanted to put as much distance between himself and Billy Weston as humanly possible.
"I said where the hell do you think you're going?"
The fact that Tom continued walking toward the door rattled Billy more than he wanted to admit. He envisioned his partner in crime walking into Morgan's hospital room and spilling his guts about what he had done and who he had done it with, or worse yet Tom could have gone straight to Pat Ryan with his confession. There was no way that Billy was about to let either of those scenarios happen.
Quickly Billy closed the gap between where he was standing and Tom putting his body between the open door and his cohort. "Where are you going?" Billy barked.
"As far away from you as I can get," the other young man finally answered.
"Don't even think about spilling your guts," Billy said through his clenched jaw. There was no way he was going to let Boudean pin any of this on him. "If you know what's best you'll keep your damn mouth shut!"
Tom stared blankly back at the angry man before him not knowing if he could do as instructed. The culpability for Jason's accident was eating away at him bit by bit.
"You so much as even think about implicating me in any of this, I'll hand your ass on a silver platter."
Tom now understood what it meant to make a deal with the devil. He had spun the wheel and lost. No matter what Weston did or didn't do wouldn't change the facts. He had let himself be coerced into tampering with Jason's racecar and that was something that he had to live with and the consequences be damned.
The fact that Tom had yet to say a single word left Billy feeling more than a bit unnerved. There was no telling what the mechanic would do next. "Don't think I won't make sure everyone knows this whole thing was your idea!" Billy threatened. "All of it, I'll be sure the world knows you're to blame!"
"Do what you gotta do," Tom said solemnly before pushing his way through the door.
Billy's mind was racing trying to form some sort of way out of this mess. He wasn't about to go down without a fight. He was so enthralled in his own thoughts that he completely missed Theresa Kennedy standing outside of the garage.
Theresa slipped into the shadow of the metal garage as Tom and Billy went by. She was still processing what she heard or thought she heard. She knew how much Billy hated Jason but she never in a million years thought he would be part of a scheme to tamper with another driver's car, but that's certainly what it sounded like. And apparently his loyal crony was having second thoughts about what they had done.
What shocked her more was that Tom, Jason's mechanic and now crew chief, had played a part in the plan. She was stunned that he actually had the balls to do it. Theresa knew that Tom was feeling slighted by Jason and detested the fact that "Princess Ryan" had thrown him over for Jason yet she never considered he'd have taken his resentment to such extremes.
What Theresa was certain of is that there was no way Tom Boudean had thought up the plan all on his own. Was he pissed yes, but he wasn't underhanded. That trait belonged solely to Billy. She could see how it would have been easy for Weston to have manipulate Tom. It wouldn't have taken much to incite his anger and pull him own board for sure.
The last thing Billy wanted was to lose to Jason Morgan so maybe it wasn't such a far stretch to think that he wasn't above taking out his competition and he had the perfect scape goat in Tom.
Theresa now had to decide what she planned to do with this little nugget of information. She was over the moon knowing that she had information that she could hold over Billy's head. Much to dismay she hadn't been making any inroads with Jason. It was a lot less fun tormenting Elizabeth when she was the only one playing. Perhaps it was time to reel Billy back in, even if she had to do through less than virtuous means. It wouldn't be the first time she stooped to blackmail to get what she wanted.
A gleeful smile spread across Theresa's face as she began plotting and planning her next moves. She just hoped that Tom kept his mouth shut long enough for her to set her idea in motion. Quite pleased with herself, Theresa made her way through the sea of steel garages and out buildings that littered the Ryan Racing Compound.
She was lost in thought when she came upon the remains of Jason's metallic blue racecar. She stopped short, her eyes widened with disbelief. She had never been this close to mangled metal that had once been a car. The front end was destroyed and the hood was missing not to mentioned that roof was compressed from when the car flipped over. A chill ran down Theresa's spin. She was shocked that Jason had come away from that crash with as few injuries as he had.
The idea that Billy had put this in motion and that another person could have died because of it made Theresa's blood run cold. She was a lot of things but never had she wanted to cause another human bodily harm. Sure, she hated Elizabeth and wouldn't have minded being the cause of her suffering but Theresa never once imagined wanting her dead.
Is that what Billy really wanted, had he wanted Jason to die in that accident? Theresa ran her hand along the distorted pieces of Jason's car and found herself without warning rethinking a great many things.