Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) (15 page)

My flight is far too short; after only a second or two I’m slammed to the ground with a full-body whack. My head smacks into the dirt. Stars dance across my vision. I slide a few inches across a field of mud and gravel until friction overcomes momentum and the world stops moving.

Sweet God-If-There-Is-One, I hope that was amusing for you, because it was certainly not fun for me. Am I a quadriplegic now? For what seems like an hour, I cannot breathe. I cannot move. Somewhere along my tumbleweed journey my sunglasses deserted me. I shut my eyes against the cruel brilliance above.

Then the air rushes into my desperate lungs, and all I can do is moan. I despise whiners but if anyone has a right to complain, it’s me right now. I lie there for a second trying to decide if any of my parts still work and wondering if the world will watch me skid-flopping down a mountain on the race vid tonight.

I can hear the newsquacker now: “And with that unfortunate stumble by Zany Grey, Team Seven drops out of the Verde Island race.”

Ice crystals shower down into my face, interrupting my internal newscast. When I open my eyes, I see Sebastian perched at the top of a snow ledge about five feet above me.

“Way to fall off the glacier, Tarzan,” he says. He leaps down beside me. “Are you mobile?”

“Uhhnnn.”

He bends and holds out his hand. I’m sort of surprised when my arm actually obeys my command to lift from the ground. My fingers curl around his. He yanks me to my feet. Surprisingly, I can still stand, although I’m not exactly steady. Ice pellets shower out of my shorts and the back of my shirt. I take a couple of tentative steps, rake ice and dirt out of my hair with my raw fingertips. The backs of my arms and legs are bleeding, and my clothes are soaked.

Sebastian’s legs are also red and raw.

“Did you fall, too?” I ask.

“I sat down.” He shrugs. “You started it. I had to keep up.”

He thrusts a leg backward and peers over his shoulder at the back of his calves, which look like they’ve been scraped across a cheese grater. “I can’t say that I’d recommend this method, though. I know they say no pain, no gain, but this is a
lot
more pain than I was expecting.”

“I don’t know.” I try to ignore the sting of my own body parts and match his sardonic humor. “I was really getting into the human sled routine. Until the very end, that is.”

“I must admit, it was fast.” He grins.

It’s a miracle that we didn’t kill ourselves. The blood and ice water on our bodies and clothes will dry in the tropical sunshine that we’ll be running in to the end of the race, but we need to get moving before our scrapes start to scab over. I rub the back of my head for a second to ease the ache there from my body slam. We both do a quick stretch that we probably shouldn’t have, because stretching our snow-grated skin proves to be a form of self-torture, causing our skin to bleed more. But soon we’re off again, trotting gingerly, picking our way through the field of lava rubble that separates volcano and glaciers from thick jungle.

To distract myself from the burn of my shredded skin and the ache in my head, I envision what my life is going to be like after I get the million dollar prize money.

In desperate times, a girl needs to lose herself in fantasy.

Less than a mile onward, we confront a river coming off Mount Everett. The roiling water is the color of chocolate milk. It’s glacial melt, full of dirt and minerals, impossible to see through, and achingly cold.

The stream is running thigh-high as the snow and ice of the volcano melt in the tropical sun. I’ve spent plenty of time exploring the Cascades and the glaciers near my home town, so I know the volume of water will rise throughout the day.

There’s no bridge, nor is there anything to make one from. There’s no choice except to ford this frigid obstacle on foot. We plunge in. My ice-shock headache begins immediately, adding to the throbbing I’m already experiencing from bashing my skull against the ground.

The river bottom is all sharp tumbling rocks. I am careful to feel for each foothold before leaning my weight into the next. I am already black and blue and scraped all over and my strained foot still aches from yesterday; I don’t need any more injuries.

Watching the water ripple past around me in the bright sun makes me feel dizzy and sick to my stomach, but if I shut my eyes, I’ll fall down. I hope I don’t have a concussion. Or if I do, I hope I make it to the finish line before I am unconscious.

When we are halfway across the stream, Sebastian stops me by throwing a hand out in front of my face.

“Look!” He points.

About fifty yards downstream, Team Eight flounders in the water. At first my aching brain can’t make sense of what’s going on. Tober Collins stands immobile while his partner, Gabriella Taylor, gyrates around his lower half. Some sort of weird mating dance?

But then I clue in. Tober has managed to get his foot wedged between rocks while wading the river. Gabriella is struggling to free him, diving headfirst into the river over and over again.

“I c-can’t,” I hear her wail when she comes up. “It won’t b-b-budge.”

She is moving in slow motion. Even from here I can see that they are both quaking so hard they can barely stand upright. Small wonder; this water is bone-chilling. Team Eight started nearly two hours ahead of us. Who knows how long they have been stuck here?

I reach the other side of the stream right behind Sebastian, and grab at his arm. “We have to help.”

He glances at Team Eight, and then back at me. “I thought you wanted to win.”

I grimace, because that’s what I want most in life right now, and he’s right, stopping will cost us precious time. “But we have to help.”

“The race crew will rescue them,” he argues.

“Like they rescued us from the crevasse?”

His laser gaze burns into mine.

“I couldn’t live with myself if Tober dies,” I tell him. “Could you?”

He stares at me for another second, then we both grit our teeth and slog back into the stream toward Team Eight.

Tober’s teeth are chattering so loudly that it seems like his jaw might crack. His lips are blue and hang loosely, and his face is already taking on the vacant expression of hypothermia. It’s amazing he’s still able to stand up in the rushing water. Gabriella isn’t in much better shape, but she still has enough life in her to sob.

“Right side first,” Sebastian says to me. “Together. One, two, three.”

We both bend, dunking our heads and arms under the silt-laden water. My face and head spasm in that instant freeze-pain again. I run my hand down Tober’s leg. There, his running shoe is wedged between two slippery rocks. I feel Sebastian’s fingers curled around the sharp edges of the rock on the right, so I jam mine in beside his, and we both pull.

The rock does not budge, even though I plant my feet and lean back and tug with everything I’ve got. I suspect Sebastian is doing the same.

Out of air, I erupt out of the water, gasping and chafing my arms and swearing. I thought the glacier was cold, but sliding down the flank of the volcano was nothing compared to being immersed in this ice flow. “Dios mío! Cold cold cold!”

Another second and Sebastian is up, too, and making similar sounds. The only consolation is that I can no longer feel my shredded skin.

Both Tober and Gabriella stare glumly at us, shivering. Another half hour, or maybe less, and they will be as dead as Maddie Hatt.

Take care of salt and pepper
, my brain chants idiotically.

We all have to get out of this river.

“Left,” I say to Sebastian. “Now.”

We stagger into position and then dive back under and grope our way down Tober’s leg again. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but the rock on that side seems a little smaller. We wedge our fingers between leg and stone and yank. The rock tilts slightly, then breaks from its mooring and slides sideways a couple of inches. Seems like it should be enough, but Tober’s foot doesn’t shift position. My head is splitting with pain and I can’t hold my breath much longer. It occurs to me that this guy probably can’t even feel his lower extremities any longer. He might not know his foot is free. I can’t let go of the rock or it will tumble back, so I head-butt his thigh. As Tober falls backward, his running shoe slips out of the trap.

When Sebastian and I fling ourselves up out of the ice bath, Tober’s floating in the water, his face barely above the ripples. We drag both runners to the edge of the river and leave Tober and Gabriella shivering on the shore. At this point, neither of them can even crawl, but surely the tropical sun will warm them enough to walk. Team Eight will survive, but they are clearly out of the competition.

Our teeth are chattering, too, but Sebastian and I are still mobile and will thaw soon in the steamy heat. We wring out our clothes as best we can and then stagger toward the thick forest, at first moving like Frankenstein’s monster, and then easing into a lope as our muscles warm up. It’s a relief for my eyes to rest on greens and browns instead of squinting at diamond-bright sunshine bouncing off crystalline snow.

It’s the last day of the race. I feel like we are nearing the end of a list of challenges we are supposed to endure today. Glacier test, check. Rescue competitor from river, check.

Now there are only two teams ahead of us, and who knows how many other obstacles like that river. Maybe the other racers will have similar accidents in the remaining eighteen miles.

My brain flashes on the tiger and the crocodile, and then on the land mines. I amend my wish for the others to have
non-life-threatening
accidents.

My head still aches and the skin on the back of my arms and legs feels tight and on fire. But my legs feel strong and maybe the ice bath even did some good for my sore foot. Now that we’re lower in elevation, I’m breathing at my normal running rate. We’re in the jungle again, back on reasonably level ground.

I begin to think that maybe it’s possible, maybe we will be the first to reach the finish line and I can save Bailey after all.

And then the unthinkable happens.

Sebastian and I are jogging along at a comfortable pace. He runs a little behind me and off to one side, crashing through the brush or leaping over a bush or a fallen log. That’s how I keep track of him, by all the noise he makes.

I hear him make a strange little “huh” sound, and then there’s a loud plop like a heavy branch falling to the ground.

An alarm goes off in my brain:
Tiger! Tiger!

“Bash?”

I stop and turn in place, scrutinizing the vegetation. We’re in a small clearing, out of the trees but surrounded by giant ferns whose fronds reach my shoulders. It’s the perfect hunting ground for a tiger. I search through the arching fronds for orange fur or burning yellow eyes or any sign of my partner. I’m pretty sure he was to my left and about twenty yards behind.

“Bash?” I shout. “Bash!”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, I hear a parrot screech an alarm call.

My heart leaps into my throat. Out of the corner of my eye I spy a flash of movement among the trees.

Face her down; tigers are scared of eyes.
I take a step in that direction. Then there’s a sharp blow to my shoulder, just below my neck. I pitch forward and trip over a vine to complete a faceplant in the duff between all the ferns. As soon as I hit the dirt, I roll, looking for the tiger that took me down. But there’s only me in the midst of the arching green fronds.

My shoulder hurts. I feel dizzy. I pull my backpack strap off over my shoulder and it scratches me all the way down my arm. There’s a dart embedded in the strap; that’s the claw digging a gouge in my arm. I yank the dart out of the strap; it leaves behind a wet greasy-looking stain. Then I hear voices.

Men.

My first thought is that the ninjas who killed my parents have finally found me.

They’re speaking some kind of harsh, guttural language. One of those Middle Eastern or African languages. They all sound the same to me. But most worrisome, I don’t hear Sebastian at all.

My heart switches into overdrive and my brain switches tracks. Oh God-If-There-Is-One, this has to be The Threat the suits kept hinting at. Kidnapping The President’s Son could be very lucrative, or at least make a big media splash for a group of terrorists. They have darted Bash. It explains the weird noises I heard. My dart deployed its venom on impact with my backpack strap. His must have hit the target they were aiming for.

One of the voices is coming my way. Although this moist earth muffles a lot of sounds, I feel heavy footsteps moving toward me. There’s no way I can crawl away and hide quickly enough. I yank up the strap of my pack, position the dart on the ground next to my shoulder, and collapse onto my back, praying that it appears as if the dart is or was embedded. I make myself go completely limp. Just before I close my eyes, I see one of those creepy bird-sized spiders perched on a bent fern frond, only a few inches away from my face.

The man is almost upon me. Deep breath. I slow my breathing and open my mouth slightly, forcing my facial muscles to go slack as if I am unconscious. A couple more steps. Even without opening my eyes, I know there’s a big foot right beside my head.

“Here!” he yells in English.

The voice sounds familiar. Can it really be Hasanov, the sharp-nosed Secret Service agent?

This is uber-bad news. If Hasanov is part of the dart crew, then help is not going to come any time soon.

A couple of shouts from his comrades persuade Hasanov to nudge my shoulder with his steel-toed boot. My heart is pounding so hard it seems incredible that he can’t see or hear it. It takes all my willpower to keep from moving. But then the spider must shift position, because Hasanov yelps and quickly repositions himself down toward my feet. He yells something at his comrades that makes the others laugh.

Hasanov will have his gun, of course. I wait for the click of the safety or the hammer like you always hear on television. At which point I plan to roll sideways before I get a bullet between the eyes.

No click. What is he doing? Just watching me?

Wait. Breathe slowly.
I feel soft whispers of movement on my forehead. Ay yi yi—the spider!
Unconscious, I’m unconscious
, I tell myself;
I am aware of nothing. I am comatose
. But I feel every one of that arachnid’s eight hairy legs as it tap-dances across my left eyelid, traverses my cheek, and then slides down my neck to the ground.

As soon as the spider is off and I’m starting to wonder if Hasanov is going to simply walk away, he grabs me by the ankles and yanks, pulling me from beneath the ferns. My backpack slides up to my neck and its straps pull my arms upward to trail behind my head. My shirt is raked up, too, and the rough vegetation scours the skin of my already shredded back. It’s hard to keep up the pretense of unconsciousness as the second layer of my skin is gouged and burned and my head bumps along the rough ground. I pray Hasanov is not looking at my face.

When I’m far enough away from the spider, he drops my feet and yanks my right arm, which hurts a lot more than dragging me by my running shoes, but I manage to stay limp. He heaves me up onto his back, whacking his shoulder into my diaphragm and knocking the breath out of my lungs. My pack flips down to wallop my aching head.

So he’s not going to kill me. At least not right away. I hope this doesn’t mean that he and his thuggish friends intend to have fun with me before they slit my throat. The President’s Son is valuable, but I am expendable in anyone’s eyes. On the back of my eyelids, I see replays of beheadings broadcast in the recent past. I open my eyes to erase the horrific visions, but then all I see is the fabric of his shirt in front of my face. Light blue. Despite the dampness of the cotton, he smells like cologne and deodorant, so I know he cannot have been out in this heat for long.

I expect to be dumped onto the ground, but instead I hear him say, “Let’s go,” and we continue our tramp through the jungle. My head is pounding from hanging upside down, my pack bangs into my neck with each step, and the swaying motion is making me dizzy and nauseous. Or maybe I got more of that knockout drug than I thought. I don’t want to think about what could happen if I vomit down Hasanov’s back.

Are the men following us carrying Sebastian? There’s been no mention of him, at least not in English. Could I have been the target all along? Hasanov is Secret Service. Has the government been investigating me, watching me, communicating with God Knows Who? Will I die in a pool of blood like Mom and Dad? I begin to wish I
was
comatose instead of so easily able to torture myself with all these fears.

My journey as a pretend unconscious body is short. At the end of our hike through the jungle is a helicopter—I dare to briefly slit my eyes open to see its camouflage paint before I am tossed inside like a sack of potatoes. Pretending to be unconscious is harder than it looks, especially when you know being flopped around like a sack of dog chow is going to hurt like hell. As the back of my skull connects with the ‘copter floor with a solid thud, my jaws clack together and I see a flash of white lightning between my eyes and my eyelids. Maybe I twitch in pain, because next a woman’s voice says, “Are you sure they’re both out?”

A
woman
? The voice sounds like the blond robot guard, but I don’t dare look. She said “both,” so Sebastian must be here, too, and at least “out” isn’t
dead
.

Is our whole Secret Service contingent in on this kidnapping? That would make a perverted sort of sense. Who else could more easily pull off kidnapping The President’s Son than those who are assigned to guard him? Who else could better divert or fool the drones than those who program them in the first place? This group might have known all along that Sebastian and I fell into the crevasse. Had we foiled their plan by escaping on our own?

I don’t have enough time to think this through because Hasanov replies to her question, saying, “I’ll make sure.”

Then a wet sweet-smelling cloth is held against my nose and mouth. For a second I think about holding my breath, but I really have no choice. There are at least five of
them
. Bash has to be unconscious. I breathe in lightly and hope for the best, if there could be anything good in this situation. One breath, two...