Target of One's Own

by M. L. Buchman

  Stopped in the middle of the plaza, she couldn’t seem to let go of the wheel.

  Christian was grunting. Hurting so bad that every time he even raised his hands to take the wheel, she saw him flinch at the pull on his lower back.

  Luke and a pair of medics sprinted up to them at the same time.

  They extracted Christian and got him on a backboard.

  Somewhere in the background she could hear the emcee talking about Christian’s accident last year. A glance showed that some technician was astute enough to have a clip of the disaster on hand and the spectacular end-over-end crash splashed across the big screen above the starting podium. The crowd groaned in sympathy.

  “You’ve got to move this car,” a race official was right in her face. “You’re blocking the starting lane.”

  “Drive, Zoe. Drive!” Christian called out as they rolled his stretcher toward the waiting ambulance.

  Luke looked at her from outside the car, across the empty driver’s seat. She hadn’t even released her seatbelt and she still clutched the steering wheel in some haze of desperation that this wasn’t happening. Luke didn’t climb in through the open driver’s door that his hands rested on.

  “Move your ass over, DeMille. You’re a better driver than I am.” Then he slammed the door and was racing around the car to the passenger side as he pulled on his own helmet.

  “Get this car out of here. Now!” The official shouted.

  “We’re both on his team, both entered and licensed. Can we legally take over?”

  “Honey, thirty meters from the Stage One podium? It’s all yours, just go!”

  She threw off her four-point harness and crawled over the console between the seats, then pretzeled herself around until she was in the driver’s seat.

  Luke slid into the passenger seat almost as fast as she was out of it. “Damn but that’s a cute ass you’ve got there, DeMille.”

  “Shut up!” If he was done with her, she sure didn’t need to be hearing that kind of crap. But if he wasn’t done with her—he had been naked in their hotel room just an hour ago—which must mean something. Too bad she didn’t have time to think about what.

  But cute? She was so goddamn sick of being cute she could spit kittens—which would be even cuter!

  Rather than making herself more crazy—if that was possible—she moved the seat all the way forward, snapped on her harness, and started the engine. She was careful not to look at Luke—she didn’t want him to see how much she was smiling.

  “The turns, Luke! The turns. I only memorized the first six.”

  Luke was still trying to get his harness clipped. It was set so small, he could barely get his hands around to the adjustment straps. “Follow the previous guy.”

  “Hello, two minutes, now more like three ahead of us. Got nobody to follow.”

  He glanced down at the Road Book, then up at the trip odometer. “Sweep left in seventy meters. Then you have a straight run of three hundred meters.”

  “Great, Luke. At eighty kph, that’s my next eight seconds.” Her first turn slammed him painfully into the passenger door.

  “I didn’t learn Stage One—Christian was supposed to do all of it.”

  “Well, he didn’t!”

  “Left then a tight right.” He risked releasing one hand from his safety harness to advance the Road Book readout. A glance out the windshield showed a line of policemen directing traffic. “Zoe!”

  “What?”

  “Take a goddamn breath, then follow the line of policemen. In the city, they’ll be our best signposts.” He finally got the harness set properly, the seat moved back enough that his knees weren’t in his chest, and began calling the turns before she reached them.

  “His scream, Luke. I’ve never heard anything like it,” her breathing was still far closer to hyperventilation than normal.

  “Yeah, I could hear it over the crowd. It happens.”

  “Not to me. Okay, Mr. Super Soldier? I work in a very quiet world. Radio calls from command and helicopters. I listen to ground teams only occasionally. So, I’m not used to people screaming in agony right next to me.”

  “Zoe…” He knew what to do with a soldier in the field. Dose him down and patch him up until the medic showed up or you needed a body bag. That took care of the injured.

  But how long since he’d dealt with someone who hadn’t already lived through that harsh dose of a mission turned ugly? Years. What did he do with a woman racing along a city street and beginning to freak?

  “Whatever made me think I could do this?”

  “You can outdrive a Team 6 SEAL—and trust me, we get serious driver’s training. And based on Christian’s curses as we raced along the Senegalese beach, I’m guessing you could outdrive him as well.”

  “I know how to drive, Luke,” her voice climbed higher and tighter rather than easing. “That’s not the damned issue.”

  She slammed through the next five turns as he called them out—barely in time. The next one he called too early and she almost blew into an alley through a sidewalk crowd. They should have driven together over some terrain. Their timing was off.

  He had studied the Road Book until he could read the directions without hesitation, but she’d been the one to ride with Christian, to practice with him. There was no synchronicity in what they were doing. And when they got away from the city center and the traffic police, he hadn’t called out a red light and she’d almost raced into crossing traffic—leaving black rubber on the pavement that they could ill afford to lose. Christian had said they’d go through several sets of tires over the two-week race and the number of spares were limited by the rules.

  The time he’d spent with the Malles Motos guys had taught him how to ride the course if he was alone on a motorcycle. It hadn’t taught him anything about how to help another driver.

  They both needed to breathe.

  He slowly got a handle on the call timing. Then he started feeding her information on speed limits, traffic, and other obstacles. Once they had that down, he checked their overall timing on the route—surprisingly, they were right in the slot. Night Stalkers missions, both drop-off and extraction, were planned to plus or minus thirty seconds. So that part of the challenge was nothing new to either of them. Another bonus.

  “You feeling any better?” he asked on a long straightaway that carried them out through Mar del Plata’s suburbs that looked no different from any Mexican town he’d ever been through. One story buildings, mostly white with brightly colored doors and the occasional man-tall graffiti littered the roadside. No hovels of the desperately poor, at least not along this route. Just typical—

  “Go to hell, Altman.” Zoe didn’t even glance in his direction. Her hands were clenched so tightly about the wheel, he didn’t know how she could steer.

  “Sure, if that’s what you want, DeMille.” He tried to make it funny, but she didn’t seem to take it that way. The guys on his team would have at least given him a pity chuckle. Not Zoe.

  Fifteen minutes away from the podium, another seventy to the start of the Selective Section.

  “You really are an asshole.” She didn’t make it sound like a joke this time.

  He considered lashing out at her, pointing out that she was really a bitch when she was driving, no matter how cute her ass was. It sounded funny in his head that way, but he didn’t think it would play well.

  “So, what’s the damned problem, sailor?”

  “I’m a soldier, not a sailor. An Army aviator. Okay? That’s all I know. For three days I’ve swallowed Christian’s shit and been the chirpy little Girl Friday and ‘Oh, isn’t he so sweet to let me drive with him?’ until I’m ready to gag on it. I’ve spent hour upon hour at his parties getting my breasts stared at and my butt patted. And—”

  “You’ve what?” Imagining someone touching Zoe without permission was—

  “Give me a break, Altman. What hole do you live in that you don’t know that’s how women get treated. Don’t believe m
e? Ask Nikita.”

  Luke tried to imagine someone doing that to Nikita, a Team 6 SEAL, and not winding up bloody and mangled.

  “And I still don’t know anything!” Zoe hunched over the steering wheel as if it had just been stabbed into her chest. “Is Hathyaron even here? That’s the worst of it, Luke, I don’t know. I’ve totally screwed up. All I want to do is crawl back into my coffin, do my job, and never come back out.”

  Zoe could feel the hot tears running down her cheeks and soaking into the helmet padding to either side of her face.

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

  Move your cute ass!

  And that’s how Luke saw her as well. He was already done with her and still calling her cute. She’d show him goddamn cute! When they hit the Selective Section, she’d pound the car to pieces until he was screaming just like Christian.

  She’d never heard a sound like that in her life. Except inside her own head as her virginity, as her girlhood, as her unforgivable innocence was ripped away in a single instant of never-ending torture. And not just once. Repeatedly over years. At first she’d avoided her father’s garage for all the good it did her. Toward the end, she’d sought it out just to prove—

  “Zoe. Zoe! DeMille!”

  “What?” She shouted back at him.

  “Stop!”

  Her eyes focused and she was almost the one to scream. Slamming hard on the brakes, the Citroën squealed all four tires. When they stopped, the nose of the car rested only a breath from slamming into the undercarriage of a parked truck. It would have shredded their car if she’d hit it.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Do I seem like I’m okay?” Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  “Uh, no.”

  Zoe hung her head between her arms.

  “Want me to drive?”

  No. She wanted him to go to hell along with all the other memories. If he was now in her past, fine let him. She was so done with it.

  Luke gave her silence. He didn’t push. He didn’t insist. And at the moment, silence was a true gift.

  “Where’s my next turn?” It practically tore her throat apart to grind out the question.

  “Eighty meters back.”

  She nodded, but couldn’t raise her head yet. Breathe. Just breathe. That’s how she got through these moments when they slammed her unexpectedly. An RPA was far more forgiving though. If she flew in the wrong direction for three seconds, no one knew or cared. She cracked open the small triangular window at the leading edge of the window—the only part of the car’s glass that opened—to get even a little more air and stared at the parked delivery truck. Its driver came around the far side and startled in surprise when he found a Dakar WRC car blocking his door.

  “Zoe DeMille?” It wasn’t Luke, but the truck driver. Then he rushed to her window holding out his clipboard and a pen. “Please sign this for me. Oh, lovely style, senorita. I will cherish it forever.” He continued on in racing Spanish.

  She managed to ask his name, then reached a hand out through the small opening to write his name and sign it with a flourish that she’d stupidly practiced for hours, right down to the heart-shaped o in Zoe. She wasn’t even going to think about how sad her life was.

  A glance at Luke. Still doing his SEAL waiting thing. She was really going to miss him.

  Shifting into reverse, she rolled backward until Luke indicated the turn she’d missed. In her rearview mirror she could see the next driver: Pierre Manot, Switzerland, three Dakars, just celebrated his fifth anniversary of marriage to his high school sweetheart, driving for…

  She took the turn. Except for turns and warnings, Luke didn’t say a word for the next forty kilometers. For forty kilometers she slowly pulled back her dignity piece by piece. No one had ever seen her have an episode that bad. No one. And now he’d seen two of them.

  “Who is she?” The first non-racing words between them in half an hour.

  “Who is who?”

  “The woman you’re with.” Though why she decided she needed to torture herself with that, she didn’t know.

  Luke thought about that as he called the next several turns.

  Rally racing used to mean getting away with whatever you could in between checkpoints. The checkpoints were never known, so you had to simply make sure that you matched the ideal course timing as closely as possible. And if that meant going double the speed limit to catch back up to the plan after a delay, that’s what you did.

  Now, with the GPS tracking their every move, speeding was prohibited and it all came down to precision—thankfully something Zoe specialized in. Her flying, her driving, her brain were incredibly precise. Even her The Soldier of Style persona—which he’d initially assessed as flighty and inane—he now understood was meticulously planned and maintained. Though he’d still tag it as inane. The only time he’d seen her let go was in his arms.

  Who was the woman he was with?

  He stole a moment to look over at her, but couldn’t think of how to describe her. Words weren’t exactly his best play, he was far better at doing and showing. However, taking her out into the low bushes they were presently driving past outside of town wasn’t really an option. The scattered one- and two-story homes were no longer crowded wall against wall. Patches of green stood between the house of tan stone or brick.

  What was she asking? Was she asking for help in understanding herself? How was he supposed to—

  “Fine. Never mind,” her growl was worthy of a ticked-off Rear Admiral.

  He concentrated on the Road Book for a moment as they were turned south with five extra turns that the course designers must have put in just to be irritating.

  “She’s…” How was he supposed to describe Zoe? “Surprisingly sexy and—”

  “I take it back, I don’t want to know.” Zoe picked up three more seconds on their laggard time by slaloming neatly around an overloaded bus before an oncoming hay truck threatened their existence.

  Starting with sexy probably hadn’t been the best choice.

  “She makes me laugh.”

  “Hard to picture you laughing,” Zoe’s tone was still acerbic. Okay, maybe he didn’t, but she made him feel as if he wanted to. He hadn’t had a whole lot of laughter in his life. A mom who bugged out when he was two. A drunken father, with a lobsterman’s powerful fists, who thought that beating on his son would help mold his character. They’d both been black-and-blue the day he left for the Navy.

  What had he just been thinking about her moments before? Oh, right. “The way she thinks is stunning. And I’d say that your assessment about Hathyaron being at The Dakar is plenty sharp enough to continue the mission. Even before Drake heard—”

  “The way she thinks? You’ve got some strange criteria, Altman.”

  He wasn’t quite sure why Zoe kept talking about herself in the third person, but maybe after whatever that episode had been, it was more comfortable for her.

  Perhaps she was asking him to help her define who she was.

  That happened all the time during the sixteen months of SEAL selection and training. That was how he’d figured out who he was. That level of endurance couldn’t be done without coming to terms with who you were. Was this Zoe’s “Hell Week”? Maybe it was. Seven days ago, he’d been standing in Hathyaron’s compound in the middle of winter in Pakistan. Now it was the morning of the seventh day—midsummer in South America.

  “She’s someone who does her best to make others not notice her,” Tweety Bird DeMille all dressed in yellow was a highly engineered distraction from the real Zoe DeMille, who he was only starting to understand. “And utterly fails because of who she really is.” Nikita, he knew, was notoriously hard to impress, yet Zoe certainly had.

  “Great,” Zoe’s tone could dry out burnt toast. “When do I get to meet this perfect bitch?”

  “Got a mirror handy?”

  Zoe was passing a line of cars and almost clipped the nose of the last one when she jerked back
into the lane—not quite squealing the tires.

  “Wait.” She set herself solidly in the lane. They were now on a nominally two-lane paved road—paved as in the potholes had sharply defined edges where the pavement had cracked off and broken.

  Luke held on, but she managed to veer around a particularly deep hole at the last second.

  “Who are you talking about?” He could practically hear her teeth grinding.

  “What do you mean?” The road was getting rougher, jouncing them harder with each passing mile. He guessed they were reaching the end of the city…and the roads.

  “Who are you sleeping with, Luke?”

  “You. Or hadn’t you noticed?” Again she made him want to laugh. She had the strangest sense of humor and it just tickled him.

  “Not so much these last few days. Who were you with?”

  “The Malles Motos.”

  “The Motorcycle’s Trunks? Is that a strip club?”

  This time the laugh actually came out before he could stop it.

  “In a way. They’ve certainly stripped away all their support.”

  “Everything just hanging out there,” Zoe’s tone still had an odd bitterness he couldn’t pin down.

  “Yep. Those guys—”

  “Guys?”

  “—are very attractive.”

  “Guys?” Did she think he was being like sexually attracted to guys? No, she was just teasing him again. He wanted to hoot aloud, but decided to play it up instead.

  “Awesome dudes. They’re running bare bones.”

  “You mean bare-assed, don’t you?”

  “Ouch! That’d be an uncomfortable way to run the Dakar.”

  The GPS flashed on, indicating they were within three kilometers of the timing zone at the end of the Road Section. The arrow indicated that it was well off to their right. He scrolled the Road Book and saw that there was a deceptive turn farther ahead that would send them that way. An earlier turn would probably get them lost deep in some farmer’s field. Tricky bastards. They were still on course no matter what the GPS said.