Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1)

by Pamela Beason

  I wave my hand again. “That’s the system for you. Understaffed, overworked…they pretty much take whatever solution is presented to them these days.”

  I don’t really know if this is true, but it sounds plausible, doesn’t it? Over the years, I have become an excellent liar.

  It crosses my mind that maybe these secret squirrels could help me find out who murdered my parents and what happened to my brother. Then I remember the black SUV parked around the corner from my house that night. The same type of black SUV the Secret Service likes to use when they’re trying to be invisible.

  My father always told me, “Never trust what anyone—your friends, the television, the authorities, the government—says. Judge people by their actions, not by their words.”

  That’s another weird thing that I never thought about until he was not around to explain. Dad was an accountant who specialized in the import-export business. What did he have to be paranoid about?

  No, I cannot confide in these Secret Service suits.

  “I really don’t like to talk about those times.” I choke up a little for effect.

  Sebastian tells him, “Lay off her, Hasanov.”

  And Hasanov does, but perhaps only because our little dinner party is interrupted by the blond female agent who walks in with a phone in hand.

  “Call for you, sir.” She places the phone in front of Sebastian.

  It’s President Garrison on the tiny screen. The camera is aimed at Sebastian, of course, but I sit up a little straighter just in case he can see me, too.

  “I’m proud of you, son,” Garrison begins.

  “Thank you,” Sebastian responds.

  “First place,” the President says.

  “So far. It’s only the first day.”

  “And you’re taking good care of that Zany girl.”

  I grimace at those condescending words, but Sebastian says, “We’re looking out for each other.”

  The President’s voice changes to a more serious tone. “Son, the Secret Service advises me that the threat level is still extreme.”

  Threat of what, I want to yell, but I can tell that nobody in this room will answer me. This threat is apparently some sort of state secret that I’m not allowed to know.

  “My partner and I will finish this race,” Sebastian growls at the screen.

  I wish he’d said win, but at least he mentioned me. And he didn’t call me Tarzan.

  A female voice from off-screen behind Garrison murmurs, “Mr. President, the envoy is waiting.”

  She mentions the name of a country in the Middle East. Ugh. I avoid the news as much as possible, but everyone knows there’s a civil war going on there again. When wasn’t a war going on in those sad countries? It seems to be an eye thing; people have been killing each other there for eons.

  Yes, it’s awful. But after spending zillions of dollars and killing thousands of soldiers, our leaders finally admitted we’re not changing anything by diving into these bloodbaths.

  President Garrison says he’ll keep America strong and rebuild the economy by keeping the country out of international conflicts. Unfortunately, his strategy for growing the economy is to put the corporations in charge of every decision. One guess how well that’s working out for most of us.

  On the screen, the Prez glances briefly toward his aide, murmurs something unintelligible, and then looks back at the camera. “Be careful, son. I love you.”

  “Good night.” Sebastian presses the Off button. His expression is a mixture of exasperation and exhaustion.

  “At least you got a phone call,” I point out, yawning. Marisela and the kids would be asleep now, and Emilio’s probably cruising around in a tank somewhere.

  Outside the mess tent, bells and whistles go off, and we hear one of the newsquackers reporting to his own camera crew in a smooth, rehearsed voice. “Team One, Catie Cole and Ricco Rossi, has just arrived.”

  The cameras inside the tent quickly duck outside. I glance at my watch. Cole and Rossi are fifty minutes behind us. Too close for my comfort.

  Mrs. Wrinkle delivers two small envelopes to me, laying them beside my plate on the table. Next to Sebastian, she sets down a big bouquet of red roses and a cardboard box containing multiple envelopes.

  At the end of each day, competitors are allowed to receive any items and messages our fans want to send, after the items are inspected by the race officials to be sure none of us is getting tips or performance drugs or anything else that’s verboten.

  When races are Stateside, the crew often delivers huge piles of gifts and messages to even the lowliest racers. But we are so far away from civilization that it costs a small fortune to ship anything here. So I’m not surprised that I get only two envelopes. I can’t help being envious of my teammate’s bounty, though.

  “Wow.” I point to his box. “You must have a lot of rich fans.”

  A flash goes off. The cameras have returned to our tent, which means that Cole and Rossi must be in the showers.

  Sebastian throws me a look I can’t quite decode. Then he picks up the bouquet and reads the tag in a flat voice. “Good luck from the White House Staff.”

  He tosses the bouquet over his shoulder. The female suit rises from her chair to rescue the flowers from the floor.

  Sebastian paws through his box. “Senator Barker, Senator McKee, Representative Pickard, Senator Wright, Representative Parenti, Governor Howard—”

  “I get it.” I guess it makes sense that the government high-ups would want to please the president by supporting his son.

  “Our tax dollars at work.” Sebastian finger-walks through the batch, tossing each envelope over his shoulder onto the floor after reading the return address. Finally he comes to a light blue envelope that he pulls out and keeps.

  “Mom,” he says, grinning. He slits the envelope open with his dinner knife, and reads in silence.

  I take this as my cue to open my first envelope. It is, as I expected, from Marisela. The mailing date proves she was thoughtful enough to post this almost two weeks ago so she could get the cheapest rate.

  Her kids Kai and Kiki, ten and eight years old, have sent drawings of me. Kai’s is in colored pencil and shows me in motion, running, my hair streaming out behind me. In the background are trees filled with colorful birds. The image is amazingly accomplished. Kai has become quite the artist since I left.

  I wonder if my brother Aaron likes art. Today he would be a big brother to Kai. Aaron was just entering the colored felt pen stage when… No. I hastily haul my mind back from the edge of that black abyss.

  Kiki’s drawing shows me standing on a three-tiered podium wearing a huge red-white-and-blue medal. I’m in the center and highest up, just like they position the winners in the Olympics.

  Unlike her brother, Kiki is not gifted with artistic skills. In her drawing, while I am fleshed out and recognizable only because I know her intention, the second and third place winners are mere stick figures. Maybe my adopted little sister just ran out of time, but the drawing gives the impression that I have bested a pair of two-dimensional outlines. I chuckle.

  “What?” Sebastian says.

  I show him Kiki’s drawing. He laughs, too, and then says, “I wish our competition looked that beatable.”

  “De acuerdo,” I answer.

  His mouth falls open a little in surprise at my Spanish words of agreement. Then his lips curve into a little half smile as he registers that we both have Spanish-speaking mothers.

  Marisela’s letter is filled with words of encouragement. She writes, You have always been a winner, mija. I rub my finger over that sentence for luck.

  That she could truly think I’ve always been a winner is impossible to believe. When she first saw me, I was as down and out as a girl could get. It was December, and while I had mastered dumpster diving and mopping the occasional floor in a fast food restaurant for a rare hot meal, I was in serious danger of freezing each night. I broke into a little hut that migrant workers lived in duri
ng the summers. I thought the whole apple farm was deserted, but it turned out that Marisela was the winter caretaker.

  She not only taught me how to survive, but showed me how to live in the world while staying under the radar. She helped me find work before I was sixteen. She helped me find clothes and shoes and friends and get back into school. I owe everything to her. I carefully place the drawings back into the envelope to save for later.

  I turn over the other envelope before opening it. The return address is unreadable, but the postmark says Nairobi, Kenya. I use my dinner knife to cut through the thick tape that seals the flap. Inside the envelope is a wad of plastic bubble wrap. I pull it out.

  More tape. I saw through that and finally a pendant on a braided cord falls to the table top. I stare at it, my breath catching in my throat.

  The pendant is made from a huge dark seed, carved into the shape of the continent of Africa. Inside its borders are tiny silhouettes of a giraffe and a monkey and a bird. I know that the cord, which looks like fine black wire, is made of hair from an elephant’s tail.

  The last time I saw this pendant, it was in my mother’s jewelry box.

  I turn it over. It’s been three years, but I swear it looks exactly the same.

  I paw through the packaging. There is a folded note: Recognize this? p.a.patterson@qqq.net

  I lay the necklace on the table in front of me. A chill prickles over my skin from my head to my toes, and I chafe the goosebumps that erupt on my arms.

  Who is p.a.patterson@qqq.net? Could it be Aaron? If my brother sent the necklace, then he’s alive and he knows I am, too. No, that’s a crazy thought; Aaron would be only twelve today.

  Could Aaron be with friends or relatives in Africa? Could my parents have survived?

  Is P.A. Patterson one of my parents’ killers?

  “What’s that?”

  I glance up, startled out of my speculations.

  Sebastian leans across the table. “You look like you just pulled the ring out of a hand grenade.”

  I realize my mouth is hanging open. I shut it and swallow to bring up some words. “Just a trinket.”

  That scrapbook and the flash drive I found are the only physical links I have to my family. My friend Sabrina keeps them for me in her safety deposit box. I’ve scanned all the pics from the scrapbook. I study them now and then on my computer at home to remind me what Mom and Dad and Aaron and I looked like. A lot of the pictures include people I’ve never met. Some photos look like family reunions. They give me hope that I have relatives somewhere.

  Since my first six months were basically spent trying not to starve or freeze to death, it took a while before I could get to a library computer to check out the flash drive. I made sure nobody was sitting too close before I plugged the stick in. I don’t know what I was expecting—an explosion? A tidy summary explaining why my family had been eradicated?

  I found nothing even remotely interesting. All that old flash drive contains are scans of accounting spreadsheets and formulas and reports, along with a couple of photos of the laboratory where my mother worked, and a half dozen pictures of what look like corporate functions, groups of people my parents worked with over the years, executives in suits and scientists in lab coats.

  My mom spent a lot of her time in a lab coat. She loved her job, trying to come up with new drugs to treat diseases. She was most proud of formulating Retaxafal 44, which most people know as RT44. It pretty much saved the world after Ebola mutated into so many strains. The only negative is that RT44 causes seizures in some people. But my mom solved that problem, too, by inventing another drug called Plactate, which prevents the side effects.

  Both those drugs make mountains of money for Quarrel Tayson Laboratories because, like the flu vaccine, the formula for RT44 has to change every year to block new mutations of the virus. Military troops all over the world are routinely dosed with RT44 and Plactate. So are international aid workers and basically anyone who travels a lot. I’ve had my own shots of my mom’s meds in the last two years because I compete in endurance races in remote places.

  As I think now about my mom’s work, a bubble of mysterious conversation bobs to the surface of my memory.

  “That’s not only unethical, it’s immoral,” I remember her saying on the phone. A pause. “Fine, I’ll take it elsewhere.” Then she hung up.

  In my head, I can hear her voice perfectly, her carefully enunciated angry words. My mother spoke with a slight accent that most people assumed was from Australia or New Zealand. What was the ‘it’ she was talking about? This conversation took place only two days before the murders. I could tell she was arguing with someone at QTL. I was annoyed because that call had interrupted our discussion of a pair of designer jeans I wanted.

  I never got those jeans.

  I’d give anything to have those petty annoyances again. But all I have are fragments of memories and a few old photos. Now that I’m older and have some life experience under my belt, I realize there might be clues in those pictures. I hope I’m smart enough one day to realize what those clues might be.

  But I look at the necklace on the table before me and think that maybe now I have this other physical connection, too. Who sent this gift to me? Is it a good omen, or a signal that my parents’ killers have found me?

  Sebastian asks, “You okay?”

  Pull it together, girl. You’re acting weird. “I’m just surprised. I’ve never gotten anything like this. I usually get tee shirts or baseball hats.” When I get anything, that is.

  He picks up the pendant. “It’s unusual. From Tanzania? From one of your father’s relatives?”

  I blink at him for a second, confused by his errors about my history. Then I shake myself back to the present: I am Tanzania Grey and my father was from Africa.

  “I’ve never heard of any relatives there,” I tell him.

  He hands the necklace back to me. “Then it must be from one of your African fans.”

  Of course. This can’t be from my mother’s jewelry box. These carved seed pendants are probably a dime a dozen all over Africa. But that doesn’t explain the note: Recognize this?

  A flash of light from across the room makes me blink. The Secret Service guy has just taken a photo of me holding the necklace and now he’s checking it out on his tiny handheld screen. Paranoia strikes me like an electric shock—does he know something about this pendant and my mother?

  A brush of clothing alerts me to another cameraman maneuvering behind me. Before he can snap a photo of the necklace, I quickly I wrap the note around it and shove the bundle into my pocket and then take a drink of water to steady my nerves.

  It’s only a common piece of African jewelry, I tell myself. There are probably thousands of identical necklaces. There are probably thousands of P.A. Pattersons.

  Sebastian and I check our messages on the camp laptops. I have a note of encouragement from my sponsor—You go, girl!—and a few fan letters from female runners. One says You are such a great role model for young black women! –MamaAfrica.

  I know MamaAfrica meant it as a compliment, but this sort of apartheid talk always annoys me. Why can’t I be a great role model for all young women?

  I’m tempted to write back and ask if she sent the pendant from Nairobi. But there’s no way to tell who is behind any piece of email. She might not even be in Africa. I’ve learned not to say much of anything over the Net. Cyberspace is infinite and eternal.

  After we’ve done everything we are required to do in front of the blasted cameras, Sebastian and I are finally allowed to retire to the sleeping area. During these races, your sleeping tent is your only truly private space. I’ve always had my own sleeping quarters in other contests, so I am surprised when Team Seven is hustled off to one tent. I guess I should have taken the time to read all the pages in the race description, but when I saw the million dollar prize, I promptly trotted to the Dark Horse Networks office to beg them for the entry fee and expenses.

  This is my first par
tner race. I guess it makes sense for the teams to be housed together, since we have to get up and eat and start off on the next leg at the same time. At any rate, I don’t have the energy for any hanky-panky even if I was attracted to Sebastian that way. And I suspect sleep is much more alluring to him right now than I would ever be.

  As Sebastian undresses, I duck outside. This is my nightly ritual, no matter what the weather, no matter where I am. I like to go outside and feel Nature all around me, and think about the things I’m grateful for that day. At home, I normally do this alone, but of course here a guard trails me as I stroll outside of the circles of camp light. He is amazingly quiet behind me; I feel him more than I hear him, which is a little unsettling.

  I stop as soon as I am in full darkness, and turn my face to the sky. The moon is close to full tonight, and the stars here are brilliant and unfamiliar. I wonder if that cluster of big ones is the Southern Cross. I like to think that if Aaron is still on Planet Earth, he’s looking at the sky at the exact same time I am.

  Tonight, I think, I am grateful to be here on Verde Island. I am grateful to be strong. And I am especially grateful to be in first place.

  The night air is sultry with warmth and moisture. I take a deep breath of jungle air. A touch of perfume tickles my nose—maybe a night-blooming flower—along with the earthy smell of damp vegetation. As I exhale slowly, I hear the telltale sound of flip-flops coming up beside me.

  “What are we doing?” Sebastian asks in a quiet voice.

  It’s too dark to make out his face, but I can see that his hair is loose and he’s wearing only a pair of shorts along with the thong sandals.

  “I am saying good night to the world.” I sigh. “And I guess you are following me.”

  “Can’t let half my team disappear.” When he looks up, moonlight defines the planes of his face. “Is that the Southern Cross?”

  “Maybe,” I murmur.

  In the distance, a creature squeals. It’s not a sound I recognize. Maybe that animal just became lunch for something bigger, maybe that’s an ecstatic mating call. Scritch-scritch noises and rhythmic croaking emanate from the jungle in surround-sound.