TWICE VICTORIOUS (26 page)

He wanted to run out into the road, snatch her off her bicycle, carry her to
safety.

He forced himself to stand still, not to distract her. Around him the crowd was
cheering her on as she drew closer.

Slowly closer.

Her bicycle wobbled as she crossed the finish line and she almost fell into the
arms of a big man who was waiting. The team manager? Adam thought so, having seen
him with Stell and her teammates.

He pushed through the crowd until he was no more than ten feet from Stell, then
stopped. She was being held up by the tall blonde while a young woman in shorts and a
team T-shirt was working on her leg. The redhead was dabbing at her arm.

His every instinct was to go to her, to care for her.

Instead he kept his distance, remembering how enervating it had been when his
mother had rushed to him the first time she'd seen him injured in a match. Her smothering
sympathy had done him far less good than the impersonal care of his manager and the
tournament medic would have.

She was an athlete. World class.

He respected that, and he would treat her accordingly.

Until the race was over.

FINISH: the end of the race, where all
hope is realized (or lost)

Why am I doing this? I must be crazy.

Forcing herself to get out of bed was one of the most difficult things Stell could
remember doing. She ached all over. The scrapes on her arm and leg burned, and she was
so stiff she could hardly move.

But move she must. Sign-in today started at ten, and Milt got really bent if the
whole team wasn't there on time. She stretched and twisted, moving slowly, breathing with
each movement. After the feeling that she might break passed, she performed the Salute to
the Sun twice, then worked through her usual
asanas
. Later, as she relaxed, she
realized she felt fine. Even the scrapes gave only minor twinges, rather than hot pain.

Stage 9 dipped down into the Hagerman Valley, giving the riders a view of the
spectacular Thousand Springs. Stell got one quick glimpse of the many waterfalls pouring
down the canyon wall, because she was in the middle of the peloton and didn't dare take
her attention away from keeping her place. She finished seventh, not too bad, but not as
good as she'd hoped. When she stepped forward as her name and place were announced at
the Awards ceremony, she felt a sudden, fleeting pain in her hip. When it didn't return for
the rest of the day, she gave it no more thought.

Adam was nowhere in sight. She felt somehow forsaken.

The next day was the longest road race of the Sawtooth Classic, nearly a hundred
miles across the sagebrush desert to Boise. As soon as Stell and Becky emerged from their
hotel in Twin Falls, they felt the hot, dry wind on their faces.

"I knew the cool weather was too good to last," Becky groused, "but I don't see
why summer couldn't have held off for another week."

"You should have been here two years ago," a woman from the Saturn team said
as she came up behind them. "One day it was a hundred and two in Boise." She wiped her
brow. "I've never been so wiped out in my life as after that race."

"One year we had snow at Galena Summit," another said. "I nearly froze."

"Better cold than hot," Becky said. "I can always add clothes."

There was general agreement as the group separated to go to the warm-up
area.

Stell was about to mount her bike when she heard Adam's voice. She turned.

"How are you?" He said, unsmiling.

"I'm fine."

"You did well yesterday. I had to miss the finish, but I saw a video of it this
morning."

"Not as well as I'd hoped."

His calm broke. "My God, Stell! Did you expect to win the damn race the day
after a bad crash?"

"I... No, but I'd hoped to be in the top five." She'd lost ground with the crash,
ground she might never regain. Hearing her name called, she said, "Look, I've got to go.
Thanks for caring."

He held her gaze with his. "I do, you know?"

She simply nodded, wondering if she was missing something. He was so serious
this morning.

"Good luck today."

"Thanks." She mounted her bike and rode away, forcing her thoughts to the
upcoming race. And away from Adam Vanderhook.

I am going to win.
I
am
going to win.

Once, during the warm-up, that curious, sharp pain lanced through her hip again
and was gone in an instant. Experimentally she detached her foot from the pedal and
stretched her leg out, then pulled it up against her chest. No strain, no hesitation in the hip
joint. Her muscles were loose, warm. Clicking onto the pedal again, she picked up her
cadence. Only a few minutes until the staging and she was still distracted.

Adam watched her join the other riders. If it weren't for the dark scabs on her arm
and leg, he'd not have known she'd crashed two days ago.
What a superb
athlete!

When he heard his own thought, he had to chuckle. When had he gone from
bitterness to admiration? From condemnation of amateur sports to total support?

Since he'd fallen in love with Estelle McCray, that's when.

* * * *

The race from Twin Falls to Mountain Home was sheer hell. Already warm at the
Start, the day grew hotter with each hour. Riding through Hagerman Valley was not too
bad. The Snake River kept the air moist and relatively cool. But when the peloton climbed
back out of the canyon, it was like climbing into an oven.

Stell knew she wasn't the only woman suffering from the heat. Requests for water
kept all the team and neutral support vehicles busy. At first feed, just coming out of the
canyon, she'd taken only a banana and some sports drink. By the time for the second feed,
she felt as if she'd used up all her available calories and then some.

What she really wanted was a half gallon of ice cream, not high energy snacks,
bland and slightly salty sports drink, and tepid water.

Chocolate ice cream with white chocolate chunks, fudge bits, and ribbons of
bittersweet syrup.

While she was eating it, she'd sit in a pool of cool water, shaded by a
wide-spreading, densely-leaved maple tree. Her boombox would be playing something mellow.
Randy Canon or David Benoit. Maybe she'd take a nap--

"Wake up, McCray!"

She came back to the present to see that she was dangerously close to the edge of
the pavement. Carefully she edged her way back into the pack, well away from that
crumbling edge, wondering how she could have been so out of it.

And I told Adam he was distracting me.

At the final marker sprint, she reached deep and found one last surge of energy.
Using it, she passed first one rider, then another.

Then they were on the edge of town. Stell upped her cadence and moved ahead of
the peloton, creeping up on the seven riders in the breakaway group.

She passed the last rider. Then the next. Another. Four ahead of her. She seemed
unable to catch them.

Spots formed before her eyes, but she stood on the pedals and went for it anyway.
Ahead she could see the banner and flags marking the Finish Line and she focused on that.
Noise surrounded her, seemed to push her even faster.

From the sides of her eyes, she glimpsed motion, bright color moving backward.
Then she saw, on the road ahead, the wide black stripe that was her goal. She reached. And
found...nothing.

Yet all around her she heard people calling her name. As she coasted across the
finish line, she tried to see through the haze of sweat and exhaustion that clouded her
vision. But there were only shapes, and formless, moving colors. A cacophony of sound.
And a road ahead that held no other cyclist.

Somehow she got her bicycle stopped. Her knees were rubber, her thighs jelly.
She set her feet on the ground, willing her legs to hold her up, and bent low over her
handlebars. No matter how badly she had done, she
would not
collapse right here
in front of everybody. All she needed was a moment to catch her breath.

Someone thrust a water bottle into her hand. "Drink," he commanded. Mindlessly
she drank, and found that the bottle held cool, sweet lemonade, weak and slightly salty, but
real fruit instead of the chemical concoction that Milt insisted they needed.

She choked, drank again. "Thanks," she gasped.

"Take some water, too. You look dehydrated as hell."

She looked up, aware of her surroundings now. "Adam?"

Before she could say another word, he pushed the water bottle toward her mouth.
Stell took a long swallow and realized that water, plain water, tasted even better than
lemonade.

Becky appeared behind Adam, looking worried. "Stell, are you all right?"

"Just hot," she assured her friend. She took another long swallow of water. "I
guess I didn't drink enough."

"I couldn't," Becky agreed. "I was sweating it off faster than I could take it
in."

Just them Milt joined them. "They're about ready to start," he said, gesturing back
toward the finish line.

It suddenly occurred to Stell that she'd made the top ten. Carefully she dismounted
from her bike. "Can you take care of this for me?" she asked her manager.

"I'll do it," Adam said. "You go on."

The finish line was about two hundred yards away. Every step hurt, although she
did her best not to let it show.

"Fourth place, Carole Furakawa," the announcer said. Stell realized she'd totally
spaced out the announcements of tenth through fifth places. If Carole was in fourth place,
then she 'd placed even higher.
I won! I really won!

Unbelieving, she watched Truda awarded the bronze, Erika Conrad the
silver.

"First place in Stage 10 of the Sawtooth Classic, Estelle McCray of the United
States!"

Across the heads of the crowd, she saw Adam. He was staring at her with a
curious intensity. What was he thinking?

As the Classic drew closer to its final day, the crowds at the finish lines increased.
Today there were more fans asking for autographs, more media people wanting interviews,
and more people who simply wanted to congratulate her. If she hadn't been so tired, Stell
would have enjoyed the glory. While it wasn't her prime reason for racing, she had to
admit that this momentary fame was balm to her ego. These people were the ones whose
cheers helped her across the finish line, whose cries encouraged any racer when her energy
flagged or her spirits sagged.

What she really wanted to do was get to the hotel in Boise and soak for about four
hours in a hot tub. Her hip hurt with a dull, barely discernible ache, reminding her of
toothaches she'd had, before they became acute.

I'm just tired,
she told herself.
The crash, then a couple of hard days.
And the heat.

Friday was a time trial, fifteen miles over rolling hills. Stell finished thirteenth,
Becky third, and Kat eighth. That evening was a reception at the hotel, a 'Welcome to
Boise' where she had to smile and smile. Ordinarily Stell didn't mind these social events,
understanding their importance. Tonight she simply wanted it to end. By the time she got
to her room, her hip was stiff and painful, as bad as it had ever been during her long
recuperation.

She soaked in the hotel Jacuzzi, then had a massage. Feeling limp and totally
relaxed, she went to bed, knowing that Stage 12 was going to demand all she had. Like the
other racers, she needed a day of rest.

Fortunately, there was a ten-day break before the next race on her team's schedule,
so she would have a few days at home, to check on her clients, now under the care of
another accountant, a skier, who sometimes gave Stell charge of his clients in the
winter.

Two more stages to go. Tomorrow's Criterium and then the final race on Sunday.
The weather was still hot, but today's forecast promised some relief on Sunday. She rolled
over, trying to find a position where her hip didn't ache.

* * * *

Adam found a prime spot to watch the Criterium, at a corner where the two loops
of the course passed. He leaned against a tree near a network camera boom, watching the
racers do their warm-up laps. He was about a block and a half from the Start-Finish line.
He'd walk up there during the last couple of laps.

After today's race, there was one more stage. Stell was in sixth place, overall, not a
bad showing, considering how badly she'd been injured, just a year ago, and the time she'd
lost on the crash in Stage 8. If she did well today and tomorrow, she could move up, but no
one he'd talked to thought she had a change at a medal.

How disappointed would she be? This was her first year on the Superbe Products
team and her first world-class race. He knew how fiercely competitive she was. What he
didn't know was how realistic she'd been about her chances of winning.

Sign-in was announced, and he listened as each racer's name blared over the
speaker. He clapped when each member of the Rozinski-KIWANDA team signed in, did
nothing at all when the announcer said, "Number 19, Stell McCray." Nothing except
breathe the same almost-prayer he'd said every day. "Let her be safe." So far only three
riders had dropped out of the race because of injuries. The word was that one of them
would never race again.

How would Stell face a prognosis like that?

Stop this! She's going to be just fine!

He was beginning to sound like a worried parent, not a hopeful lover.

The starting gun went off and a roar arose from the crowd at the Start-Finish. The
pack quickly disappeared around the first corner. It would be a while before they came into
sight. What was it he'd thought, the first time he watched a bicycle race? "...about as
thrilling as watching paint dry."

In what seemed like no time at all, the pack appeared behind him, heralded by a
swelling cheer. He turned, just in time to see the lead riders speed by. They were still so
close together that he couldn't pick out individuals, although he did get a quick glimpse of
hot pink, right in the middle.