Target of One's Own

by M. L. Buchman

  Yeah, Zoe.

  Getting really real.

  “How could you do this to me?”

  “What?”

  “What?” Liesl raged at both of them the moment they climbed out of the car at the San Rafael bivouac. “Have you seen the footage? You are the new sensation of The Dakar… Und es ist nicht mein Film!”

  Christian spun a laptop so that Luke and Zoe could see what he’d been watching.

  Luke’s stomach lurched as he saw the bright yellow Citroën clawing up an impossible dune face. Knowing what was going to happen didn’t alter the sensation. Seeing it in perspective from the helo’s vantage point almost made him nauseous. Down on the sand, it was simply what was happening. In the wider world? It looked terrifying.

  They’d done that?

  As the helo climbed and the wider view came into the frame, Zoe slipped an arm around his waist and held on. He pulled her tight against him and held on himself. It was an amazing sequence. Then, in a tapering telephoto, it followed her racing jump over the next dune and the flight down the far side.

  “I take back what I said yesterday, Zoe,” Christian turned from the replay as another scene unfolded. This time the camera was on the ground and had caught Cid’s car failing to cross the upstream ford across the river and then slowly sinking as it washed downstream away from the camera (then a clip showing them back in motion—Go guys!). “Maybe I have nothing to teach you. Not many drivers would have dared to take the righthand course. So, until the next disaster or amazing feat, you are the media’s darling.”

  Luke felt Zoe’s shudder beneath his arm.

  He looked down at her in surprise, but she was very carefully not looking up to meet his gaze. The air whooshed out of him as surely as if he’d been sucker punched in the solar plexus.

  That amazing maneuver was pure luck? He wanted to ask, but decided that he definitely didn’t want to know the answer. No, it was pure skill, but it certainly hadn’t been with any planning.

  How far out on the edge was she running this? That one he knew the answer to—about SEAL-on-a-mission far. Damn, the woman was amazing. He’d never met anyone like her.

  The fact that he might not ever again was a startling thought that he didn’t like at all.

  20

  “Go! Be famous for an hour or two.” Christian had waved them away after they’d prepared the Road Book. Either his back was paining him too much—or he wanted some alone time with the hot Argentine brunette whom they passed as she sauntered down the lane toward Christian’s camp site.

  Zoe couldn’t help but giggle.

  “What is it with men and their little one-track minds?”

  In answer Luke yanked her into the shadow of an Iveco truck. Marik Ebbers, Netherlands, Legend with seventeen Dakars, top finish was…

  It was something she couldn’t remember as Luke quickly proved where his “little one-track mind” was focused without question. For the length of perhaps thirty seconds, he locked his lips on hers and thoroughly manhandled her—one hand on her breast, the other down the back of her pants to haul them together. She managed to slip a hand over those six-pack abs and down the outside of his pants making him groan into their kiss until her head was spinning.

  Then he released her all at once, forcing a gasp of need from her, and grinned down at her. “Having a woman like you around? Makes me very one-track.”

  If Luke really meant what he’d just said…

  It wasn’t that she doubted him. But until she was eighteen, she’d been just like Luke. And Christian. Got a pulse? Let’s do it. She’d shed that idiocy at eighteen when she’d burned that awful Huckfest photo of her and the line of guys she’d fucked. Men never seemed to get past that. Christian certainly hadn’t.

  But if Luke really meant what he’d said, she remembered that transition herself. It had changed the course of her life in so many ways. She’d left men behind—at least random ones—and started working on fixing herself. She’d focused her energy on The Soldier of Style and joined the Air Force as an RPA flier.

  Resting both hands on his chest and looking up into Luke’s shadowed blue eyes, Zoe wondered—perhaps for the first time—What if?

  Christian would never change. He was too much the privileged boy.

  But Luke was a Spec Ops warrior of the highest caliber. What if he was changing? Was she ready for that? How—

  “Okay, enough of that, you two.”

  Luke had seen Nikita and Drake coming up behind Zoe. The interesting thing was that Zoe didn’t startle away. Instead she turned and leaned back against him as if it was the most natural thing on the planet. His hands had landed on her trim waist. In her turn, she’d laced her fingers into one of them and pulled it onto her so-soft belly as she turned so that she ended up inside his embrace.

  It made him feel…like…an ST6 SEAL. When a mission wasn’t totally in the shitter, being in SEAL Team 6 was the ultimate power drug. The best weapons, the toughest training, and the most dangerous missions.

  Holding Zoe made him feel that kind of powerful, except it was a new kind as well. Strong and protective—that’s what it was. As if holding her, he could do anything.

  Felt like the old joke about two guys in Maine who get blown way off course in a hot-air balloon. As they were landing near a farmer working his field, they asked him, “Where are we?” The Mainer answered, in typical fashion, “You be in a balloon, you darn fools.”

  Zoe had certainly blown him way off course. Where are you, Luke? And the answer? In a relationship with Zoe DeMille, you darn fool. And he didn’t want to be much of anywhere else either.

  He looked at Drake and Nikita, chatting with Zoe as she continued to lie back in his arms. They were standing hip-to-hip, so close that they must…have their inside hands tucked in each other’s back pockets. So close. So comfortable. It wasn’t just that he saw that now. It was as if they’d always been that way and he could finally see it for the first time.

  He glanced down at Zoe’s black-and-blonde hair. What the hell had she done to him?

  “Ahmed said he could handle everything the car needed, then shooed us away, too.” Nikita’s smile told Zoe so much that she needed to know.

  Yes! This was how it felt when it was right.

  Sure, she’d helped Nikita and Drake get together during the Honduran mission. But that heat, that rightness had been there for them from the very start. All she’d done was help Nikita get out of her own way. With the slightest shift, she was able to lay her head back against Luke’s chest.

  What if Zoe got out of her own way? Maybe she’d end up…exactly where she was. Being all wrapped up in Luke’s arms was about the best place she’d ever been. It was no longer a question of how long would it last. It was now hoping that it didn’t end. Ever.

  And that was far too big a thought for the second night of The Dakar.

  “Let’s go dancing.” She tipped her head back enough to look at Luke. “Can you dance?”

  She could see where his eyes traveled down the front of her blouse. She hated when guys did that. But Luke? He’d earned a license to do it as often as he liked. It tickled her no end that he wanted to. The first time, when she’d caught him doing it as Christian drove them from the airport into the city of Dakar, had merely been surprising—and she remembered thinking, How typically male. Now she knew that nothing typical remained between the two of them. They’d left behind simply sex right along with mere lust and pure heat. She wanted to be with Luke. And she wanted him to want to be with her.

  Apparently too mesmerized by her minimalist breasts to speak, Zoe looked back to Nikita, “Does he dance?”

  “Not in my lifetime.” Nikita almost laughed. Drake shook his head in agreement.

  “Time to learn.” She kept one of Luke’s hands in hers, grabbed Nikita’s with the other, and together the four of them plunged into the social area of the camp.

  They followed the sounds of pounding drums and blaring trumpets to the big open area out in front of
the mess tent. There was definitely a party going on.

  The San Rafael Guerra de Baile, the War of Dance troupe, had taken over the broad field. Men were dressed in clinging black slacks heavily embroidered in gold, and knee-high leather boots covered in bells that tinkled brightly with each leaping step. Their seafoam green, asymmetrical shirts and long black gloves were also beautifully embroidered. Their dance partners were just as colorful: gold heels, kicky little green skirts that poofed out with layers of equally tiny petticoats, which didn’t even reach down to mid-thigh, their poofy-sleeved matching tops, and little straw hats trailing bright ribbons as long as their dark, flowing hair.

  They were all working the crowd, and with each moment, more race drivers were enticed to join in. Zoe could already feel the beat in her toes and flowing up her body. It wasn’t the rhythm of sex…quite. It was the rhythm of how good it felt in anticipation. And how good it felt afterward. The moment where a crow of pure joy wanted to sound out.

  Luke gave her one of his, Are you insane? looks.

  She took both his hands and pulled him down until she could shout in his ear over the driving beat of the band. “Do you think Hathyaron would dance or would refuse?”

  His eyes flicked over her shoulder, assessing the crowd, then snapped back to hers in a moment. It had taken him under three seconds to see the pattern once she’d brought it up—he was just that astute. But had she just out-observed a SEAL? No, she’d dragged him into an environment that couldn’t be more foreign to him if it was on Mars. She almost laughed at the comparison; he was the God of War after all, just like Mars—or at least close enough that she didn’t care about the difference.

  “My bet is he would,” she shouted again. “He’d let loose because he’d think that The Dakar was the one place he was safe. That means that anyone who refuses is less likely to be a suspect.” Then she started to dance backward toward the throng without releasing his hands.

  A look of alarm shot across his face.

  “You’re not Hathyaron, are you?” Her tease got him moving, but it was a close thing. He might have balked if Drake and Nikita hadn’t happened by in that moment, arm-in-arm with a male dancer between them trying to show them the steps.

  She did her best to catalog who watched but wouldn’t join. Some of them surprised her. The stern Russian motorcyclist, Roza Vilenko (two top-three finishes in nine Dakars), danced beautifully. She looked like the female badass from the next Terminator movie and moved as well as some of the professional dancers—of course she was doing the men’s dance, not the women’s. The women’s seemed to be mostly about shaking their hips and making their tiny skirts flit up to reveal even more bare thigh.

  Tammy Hall was in the middle of them, of course, with her blonde hair flying and her cowboy hat not looking out of place for once. Zoe was pleased when Tammy’s attempt to peel Luke off Zoe’s arm was rebuffed with utter disdain.

  He did one of his who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are looks and Tammy went away.

  Being five-four, she’d never been able to wield that kind of look with any success. On Luke, it was terrifying—which was awesome.

  Liesl and her camera showed up at some point. She gained another point in Zoe’s estimation by mostly shooting her and Luke when Luke’s back was to the camera—leaving him out of the picture as requested. She hoped that Liesl captured at least one with both of their faces so that she could have a copy.

  The dance troupe was good. Once they had a driver in their crowd, they were very reluctant to let them out. It gave her enough time to memorize the thirty-six who wouldn’t join in. As to the ones who did, out of six hundred drivers, at least a hundred of them were dancing. That left over four hundred who weren’t here to change their suspect-likelihood. It was a long shot, but she knew that hunting a target was the accumulation of hundreds of tiny bits of data that just had to be correlated the right way to find an answer.

  And while she was doing that, she was dancing with Luke.

  It was an evening she was never going to forget.

  21

  Stage Three was predominately on piste—on track. Dunes were definitely off piste—“HP” in the Road Book for the French hors piste.

  Of course “track” was a strong word to describe the day’s route. There was a dirt path that a road grader might have cut through the wilderness fifty years before. Or maybe a couple of ox-drawn carts had once come this way—when the world was even younger than she was.

  Zoe could have measured the smooth spots in the road in meters—on a good stretch. The suspension was doing a dance that had nothing to do with a Michael Jackson moonwalk and a lot to do with a Metallica heavy metal show. The Senegalese beach had been so much smoother by comparison that the car had seemed to float while the suspension took the abuse. Not so much here.

  Every turn was a slide, because at a hundred and fifty kph, the tires were only catching the tops of each road divot—too little traction to actually call it a turn. Places to accelerate strongly, like a run up to a dune, were replaced with a gear shift every second or so. Down, down, down, headed into a corner, then up, up, up before the next down, down on the twisting track.

  The road grader—which hadn’t been near this road since the Stone Age—had left low berms of dirt off to either side. As she was still in the top four—she’d dropped down a place but was still within a minute of the lead because Hermann Golschen (eight Dakars, Belgian, Peugeot) had moved up so strongly—she’d had an early start. By end of day, this track would be twice as pitted and even harder to run at speed. Despite how few cars had started ahead of her, every now and then a pair of tracks blew out over the berm. A pair of fresh tracks would shoot out of the middle of a turn. A new path would be plowed through the sparse bushes, then a new notch in the berm where the racer rejoined the road.

  This was high desert and completely unpopulated. Definitely the land of Whatever Worked.

  “Luke.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Any off-piste forbidden symbols in the Road Book?” In some of the environmentally fragile areas, or farmland, they were severely penalized for leaving the track.

  “No.”

  She didn’t need to say anything else. Luke began scrolling ahead in the Road Book. He made a pleased grunt.

  “Okay, so, not this turn, but the next one. Straight off the middle.”

  In the second turn, she punched head-on through the berm and almost flipped. The berm was both softer and wider than it looked. Have to remember that. But she managed to keep the nose out of the dirt with a burst of power. Back in Pismo she’d gotten over the first instinct, which was to hit the brakes. Sudden deceleration would have nosed the car down and they’d have burrowed in.

  “Ditch!” Luke had been looking ahead.

  She gunned the engine and aimed for the highest ground she could see. It made a small lip of a jump—enough that she could fly nearly thirty feet. Looking down at the ditch as they flew over it said that maybe off-piste hadn’t been the best idea—it was a rough, rocky defile that they never could have crossed on the ground. Landing on the far side in the middle of a massive acacia hedge sounded like a thousand fingernails being dragged across a chalkboard. All the thorns and woody stems certainly weren’t doing anything good for Christian’s paint job.

  “Berm and a hard left.”

  Zoe jumped back onto the road and slid into a long drift to get lined up once more along the track. They did two more like that, surviving as much by chance as planning.

  “Maybe going off-piste isn’t the best idea.”

  Instead of answering, Luke shouted, “Dust!”

  She raced the engine harder because her first thought was fesh fesh—dust so fine that it might as well be quicksand. This absolutely was the kind of country to expect it in.

  Except this dust wasn’t vast clouds of talcum powder fineness. Instead, it was a hazing of the air, especially on the outside of the turns where a sliding turn would particularly kick it up. Though the leader
s had started two minutes apart, she had caught up to someone enough that his dust hadn’t settled yet.

  “No more turns for a while,” Luke was looking straight ahead.

  Zoe rarely looked beyond the next hundred meters of track, but she followed his gaze. The flat plains of the Dry Pampas had climbed into the Andean foothills without her noticing. The track did indeed stretch out long and straight ahead of them. Even as she pushed up through fifth and into sixth gear—something she got to use far too rarely—she couldn’t help but admire the view.

  They were arrowing directly for a vast blue lake. Around them was low scrub in blackish dirt. Beyond the lake rose a towering volcanic peak—pitch black with iced glaciers trapped in its higher folds like a giant sentinel set to guard against their passage. It blocked out a whole section of the achingly blue sky.

  “It’s midsummer!”

  “Not up there. Cerro Galán is one of the biggest calderas in South America. Besides, we’re at 4,500 meters.”

  “We’re what?”

  She’d been preparing a mental list of problems for Ahmed. Something was eating the Citroën’s power. The acceleration had worsened all morning until she felt as if she was gasping as badly as the car. And the power bleed-off response had worsened ten-fold through the day’s racing. If they were three miles above sea level—higher than any road, paved or not, in the US—it was no wonder the car was struggling.

  Come to think of it, so was she. She’d been so focused on the racing that she hadn’t noticed, but now that they were on a straightaway she could feel the oxygen deprivation. Her head throbbed, her butt hurt, and her nose and throat were achingly dry. Drinking water didn’t help. Having Luke palm a couple of aspirin for her didn’t either.

  “Say something,” she begged him, needing a distraction.

  “Well, according to Liesl, don’t drive us into that lake. You might float, because it’s way saltier than any ocean, but it also has something like 200,000 times the safe dose of arsenic if we sink instead.”