With the climbing equipment, my pack is heavier than I usually carry on a cross-country race. I snug up the straps a bit more so the load doesn’t bounce with each step.
As I jog toward one tree, the leaves explode into a flurry of green and turquoise feathers as hundreds of small birds roosting here take flight. How odd that bee-eaters live on this island. My mother gave me a picture book about Zimbabwe when I was little, and that book had a page about bee-eaters. I always associate these little beauties with Africa, tens of thousands of miles away, but what do I know? Llamas and ostriches roam through pastures all over the U.S. now, so I guess water buffaloes and bee-eaters can be anywhere, too. After all, there’s that one tiger here—how did she end up in solitary confinement on this island?
The interlaced tree branches block out most of the sun, which is a small blessing. Sweat streams down my back and trickles between my breasts. My crotch is a minor wetland on its way to becoming a major swamp. Even my racing bib is soaked through, the big number 7 floating in a pool of damp orange cloth. Sebastian has to be experiencing his own personal downpour. I can only imagine what it would be like to navigate this steam bath in the merciless sun. I guess we’ll experience that soon enough.
There’s always too much time to think during these contests. Non-runners don’t imagine it’s like that, but really, what’s your mind going to do while your body is racing around? My brain tends to venture into places I don’t want it to. I often wonder if Aaron’s a runner. We both had the same long legs when we were kids. Then—and this is always my second thought when I think of my brother—I wonder if Aaron is still alive.
I was his big sister. I should have found a way to protect him, even if I was only fourteen at the time.
If my brother is still on this planet, he is twelve years old now. What does he look like? Is he still called Aaron, or has he been reinvented, like me? Does he ever think about me?
Always the same endless questions. Not a single answer.
Early in the morning on Halloween, I crawled out of my dumpster shelter and went to a pay phone. Yes, there was still an actual pay phone for the oldsters outside the pharmacy next to the assisted living place; I guess it was there for nostalgic reasons.
“My parents were murdered,” I told the 9-1-1 operator, “Last night.” I explained about Aaron and the car chase and gave her our address.
“This a Halloween prank?” she asked.
“No!”
I heard what I thought was a sigh, so I wasn’t sure she believed me.
Then she prompted, “And your name is?”
I dithered for a minute about whether to tell her. She said, “Honey, I can see you’re at the pay phone outside the SaveRite pharmacy. Stay in the booth. I’ll send an officer to help you.”
The thought that she knew where I was and was sending the police propelled me into panic mode again. After slamming down the phone, I snuck back to my neighborhood and crept through the back yard across the street. I sat behind the neighbors’ wood fence and peeked through a knothole at my house.
On our front lawn was a real estate sign with a huge SOLD notice draped across it. A moving van filled the driveway. I watched two hairy guys lug out a huge roll of carpet and stash it inside the van, then add a couple of overflowing boxes.
Our neighbor, Mrs. Talston, watched from her yard next door. Joker pawed at one of the round rocks that bordered the driveway until she called him and made him sit down beside her. She gave him a pat on the head. He licked her hand.
I was glad to see Joker alive and with her. She’d always liked our dog and taken care of him when we were out of town.
Where had Joker been last night? I didn’t remember a single bark from our house. Maybe the ninjas darted him or locked him up somewhere.
A patrol car rolled into our driveway, blocking the moving truck. An officer got out. He talked to the workers and then disappeared into the house. After a minute, he came back out with one of the movers. They were both actually laughing.
The policeman had a quick conversation with Mrs. Talston. I couldn’t hear a word from my hiding place, but she shook her head. He nodded his, and then jotted down something on a little pad he was carrying. As he pulled open the door to his cruiser, one of the moving guys came out carrying a box. He yelled, “Happy Halloween!” to the cop, who waved and drove away. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
A few more boxes and a rolled rug, and the loading was finished. As the moving truck disappeared down the street, Mrs. Talston spotted a book at the edge of our driveway. When she picked it up, I noticed it had a black tire mark on it from the moving van. Mrs. Talston took a quick look inside. Joker whined and pawed at her pants leg. She shook her head again, pulled up the lid of our garbage can, and dropped the book inside. She wiped her hands on her jeans before she and Joker went back into her house. I thought about crossing the street to look into our windows, but then I spotted the black SUV parked down the street, half-hidden in the dappled shade of a big fir tree.
I waited until after midnight to risk slinking into my own back yard. A glance through the dark windows confirmed what I suspected—our house had been completely cleaned out. Even the carpets had been removed; I could see the tack strips along the edges of the living room. What in the hell had happened?
Only the book lay at the bottom of our garbage can. I practically had to stand on my head to reach it. It was heavy for its small size, and in the dim light, I recognized my mother’s scrapbook. I hadn’t seen it for years. After she got a digital camera, Mom started keeping all her photos in the cloud.
Joker had pawed at a rock alongside the driveway. This particular rock was larger than most in the border, and in daylight, you could see that it was mostly white quartz with a gold-colored zigzag stripe through it. My mother always hid a house key there.
I knelt and picked up the rock, then dug my fingernails into the ground beneath it. Sure enough, about half an inch down, there was the spare key on its flashlight ring in a little plastic bag. A lot of good a house key would do me now, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. The ninjas and movers had taken every other reminder of my family. I shoved it into my pocket.
A small sound from the Talstons’ house sent me scampering back to the shadows of the alley. I walked a couple of blocks and edged as close as I dared to the pool of light under a streetlamp before I opened the cover of the scrapbook.
On the first page was Mom and Dad’s wedding picture. Next page—photo of Mom pregnant with me. I pulled out the keychain to use the flashlight for a better look. That’s when I discovered the cylinder on the keychain was not a flashlight, but one of those thumb-size USB memory sticks that plug into computers. I heard a car coming, so I slammed the book closed and zipped the keychain into my pocket and jogged back to this night’s hiding hole, under an overturned rowboat beached near the Community Boat Center in Fairhaven. My bed there was not any more comfortable than the dumpster, but it smelled a lot better. And the sound of the waves lapping on shore provided at least a little comfort. I put the scrapbook under my head for protection from the gravel beneath me.
How could all this have happened? What could the neighbors have thought? I never found any announcement of my parents’ deaths, or of any murders that night in Bellingham. When I called my mom’s office, the receptionist said Amy Robinson didn’t work there anymore. My father worked out of his home office, and that number had been disconnected.
That’s when it occurred to me how strange my family life was. How unusual that my dad had zero relatives left, and my mom’s were all in Zimbabwe. What are the odds?
Zimbabwe. Do I have relatives there? Grandparents? Aunts, uncles, maybe a cousin or two? I wouldn’t know; I’ve never been to Africa. But I’ve studied up on it.
Zimbabwe has a terrifying history. If you think politics in our country are nasty, you should check out how many people get killed in Africa around election time. Maybe that’s why Mom left her homeland; maybe her family was on th
e losing side. She never talked about that. She just showed me photos of the rainbow-colored birds and butterflies and flowers she grew up with.
This memory makes me change course and slow down a little to peer at a Verde Island bush with huge amethyst flowers shaped like trumpets. Then I focus on the center of the closest blossom, and my heart skips a beat. The black-and-yellow bundle in the middle of the bloom is not an exotic flower pistil, but a furry spider with a body the size of a quarter.
Welcome to the tropics.
I veer off and pick up my pace, circumnavigating an odd depression in the ground that must have been left by a bomb. I glance with care at other flowers as I pass, and I double-check the vines to be sure they are vines. I spy a couple of butterflies and I spot two red-striped tree frogs, but no more spiders. (Thank you, Whoever-Is-in-Control-Up-There.)
A few minutes into my wildlife survey, I realize that I’ve lost track of Sebastian.
I stop. Check my watch. Two hours have passed and I’ve covered a little more than fourteen miles. I hold my breath for a few seconds and listen. I hear nothing except the screeching of birds or possibly monkeys, and the thumping of my own heart. I let myself breathe again, and bend forward and wipe the sweat off my forehead. Where the hell is he?
“Sebastian?” I holler, cupping my hands around my mouth. I turn in place, still panting, catching my breath. “Callendro?”
Nothing. A white butterfly flits past my face and lands on the slender trunk of a nearby tree. Then there’s a flash of movement, and the white wings are gone. Perched on the butterfly’s landing spot is a little green lizard that squeezes its eyes shut as it swallows. I didn’t even see that lizard before it struck. Clearly, neither did the butterfly.
“Callendro!” I yell again. When there’s still no answer, the muscles in my stomach tense up. Damn it, if Sebastian’s already ruined this race… I don’t want to finish that thought. I have to shove his sorry carcass across the finish line to win.
I run forward, keeping my course close to the line on my wrist unit, calling as I go. Before long, I switch from yelling his name to shouting things like “Answer me, you sorry excuse for a runner!” and “Goddamn it, Callendro!” and looking up toward the sky and screaming, “Tell me where he is, robot suits!”
I don’t care if this is going to appear on a vid tonight or not. I’m upset.
Then finally I see the flash of his blue shirt up ahead, made more visible because he’s mopping his face with it as he leans against a tree.
“Yo,” he says as I near him. “I almost tripped over a snake back there.” He jerks his chin in the direction of the forest behind us.
“What the hell are you doing?” And how the hell did he get in front of me?
“Resting.” He turns to do a few calf stretches like he’s cooling down for the day.
Now I feel stupid that I only checked for names of winners among the men in this race. I should have compared the male competitors’ times with mine. It’s an annoying but undeniable fact that the men are almost always faster than women racers.
I grab a big gulp from my water tube. “Why didn’t you answer me?”
“I could hear you coming straight this way.”
I take another sip while I think about this. I hope he didn’t hear the “sorry excuse” yell and all my goddammits, because we’re not even to the first checkpoint yet and we need to work like a team.
“I especially liked the bit about the robot suits.” He grins at me before he pulls his shirt back on over his head.
“I think we’re making good time,” I say, changing the subject. “We’re almost to the river.”
He picks up his pack and slings it over his shoulder. “No ‘almost’ about it.”
We step through the trees onto the bright lip of a cliff. After the dim forest, the sun is blinding, and I squint as I approach the steep drop-off. A few pebbles plink down from the lip into the river, which is far enough below and roaring so loud that we don’t hear the sound of the rocks hitting the water.
The sheer vertical drop makes me feel a little light-headed. I back up a couple of steps from the edge before I unbuckle the straps and let the pack slide down from my back.
Whose suicidal idea was it to leap over that edge?
I’m painfully aware that The President’s Son is scrutinizing my every move. I pull out a tube of glycerin gel and squeeze some into my mouth, swipe it over my dry teeth with my swollen tongue, swallow it down. It tastes like cherry-flavored petroleum jelly, but it’s moist and it’s sweet and full of calories and vitamins and enzymes a racer’s muscles need. I wash it down with a gulp of water as I observe the river screaming past below. The muddy water hurtles over low rocks and surges around jagged tall ones. It doesn’t look safe even for fish.
Oh, Bailey. The things I do for you.
I look up like maybe I could absorb inspiration from above, but catch instead a glint off something metallic high in the sky. I narrow my eyes. “Drone?”
Sebastian squints at it, too. “Probably.” He pulls out his own tube of gel. “I never wanted this, you know.”
“Tastes like crap, I know.”
“No, I meant…” He rolls his eyes skyward so I understand he’s talking about the drone.
I never thought about that before. Who wouldn’t want to be the president’s kid? Okay, the president’s secret-until-now kid, but I’ve seen pictures of Sebastian with his father’s arm wrapped around his shoulders. Last year, the opposition tried to use Garrison’s old affair to embarrass the President. It’s amazing how our Puritanical history still erupts like that, like a pimple that’s always lurking under our national skin.
Garrison was more clever than the holier-than-thou types gave him credit for. By acting like he was proud to finally have his son recognized, he turned the tables so effectively that his opposition looked like narrow-minded twits. Garrison won in a landslide. They made a handsome pair, the Prez and Sebastian. The title of First Son had to come with a set of magic keys that could open all sorts of doors I could never dream of knocking on.
It must be weird to suddenly find out you are related to the First Family. I wonder if Sebastian has ever met the two First Daughters. Or would they be the First and Second Daughters? They’re just a few years younger than I am.
Sebastian squeezes a long worm of green gel into his mouth and then swallows.
“Time to gear up?” He wipes his lips with the back of his hand.
I take another glance at the roiling torrent beneath us. I turn toward my pack and start pulling out the rope and harness, hoping that the quivering of my hands will get lost in the motion. “Gearing up.”
As I step into my harness and cinch it tight, there’s another flash from overhead. I wonder if the Secret Service is about to watch us die. Then I think that, no, they wouldn’t let that happen.
At least not to Sebastian.
Chapter 4
We have a brief debate about whether one should try to belay the other or whether we should both descend together. The rappelling was my idea, so I should probably know which is the right choice, but I don’t have a clue. I can’t see any immediate benefit to one of us staying up here while the other one slides down. It seems like we could get separated, and I’m not about to let that happen a second time.
So we each wrap a rope around a separate sturdy tree, don our harnesses and thread the ropes through our D rings, and then walk to the edge. The plan is to drop down on top of the boulders beneath us at the edge of the river bed, and then pack and stow our ropes and harnesses before beginning the swim phase. At the lip of the canyon, I turn my back on the river and focus straight ahead, staring at the trees as I say over my shoulder, “Know what to do?”
“Yep.” His voice sounds as tense as I feel, but I know that neither one of us is going to admit we are scared senseless. “Let’s go.”
That was supposed to be my line. But I’m relieved when he says it, and so we drop over the edge and start down. The cliff is
an overhang, so we can’t walk down it, but end up dangling from the lip and sliding—or more accurately, skidding and stopping, skidding and stopping—down our ropes like spastic spiders. As we get closer to the water, it’s obvious we are at least three yards away from the boulders we planned to land on. All that lies beneath our dangling feet is turbulent brown water.
Sebastian stops about six feet above the churning river.
“Uh,” he says.
My thought exactly.
It’s pretty clear we can’t stand up and repack the ropes and harnesses into our bags and then run around the river canyon. I take a deep breath and then say, “Plan B. Inflate vests.”
We’re both wearing those flimsy-looking life vests that airlines use. They’re lightweight and pack in a small space. Mine puffs up when I yank on the shoulder ring, and so does Sebastian’s. So far, so good. Now I pray they’ll keep us afloat with our packs and climbing harnesses on.
I point at him. “Release your rope. Hold your breath and swim for all you’ve got to the other side. I’ll wait for you.”
He makes a scoffing sound, probably at the notion that I will reach the far river bank before he does.
“Ready?” I ask. “Together, on three.” I let my rope slip through the D ring but hang on tight to the loose end, dangling now with one arm outstretched above my head. I wait as Sebastian fumbles with his own rope.
“One.” I take a deep breath. This is insane.
Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) Page 3
