Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) (8 page)

A branch flies over us and lands with a flurry of leaves in the crocodile’s open mouth. The croc’s jaws snap shut with a terrifying crunch. The prehistoric monster slides backward and begins to roll in the water, a tornado of teeth clamped around that branch, whipping it around and around.

“It will take her a few minutes to determine that she has not killed a prey,” Marco Senai informs us in his melodic African accent.

Then he grins, his teeth startling white against his blue-black skin. A drip of rain water falls from the tip of his nose. “I know crocodiles.”

Breathless and slimed with mud, Sebastian and I stare at him.

Now that the screaming has stopped, a loud whop-whop-whop overhead draws our attention skyward. But the helicopter is moving away, and we all look back at the roiling water. I wonder what the secret squirrels would have done if Sebastian was in the monster’s jaws instead of that branch.

“Marco!” His Italian partner, Suzana Mistri, waves from the edge of the jungle about fifty yards away.

Sebastian and I are still stunned by the course of events. We watch in silence as Senai and Mistri vanish into the forest.

The team that was in third place this morning has just leap-frogged us, which means that Cole and Rossi are probably ahead of us, too.

Right now I’m so grateful to be alive that I can’t summon my usual anxiety about not being in the lead. Keeping a wary eye on the swamp water, Sebastian and I move back from the shore to a grassy strip and spend a good five minutes de-leeching each other and cleaning the mud from our feet before we put on our running shoes again.

“I thought I was a goner.” I slide my wet socks in between my toes to clean out the reddish glop there. “Then I thought
you
were a goner.”

He shakes his head in disbelief. “I almost got eaten by a crocodile.”

“I didn’t know there
were
crocodiles.”

“Only a handful. They were mentioned in the briefing.”

“Huh. I must have slept through that part.” I feel like an idiot. “Why did you jump back in?”

Who throws himself in front of a crocodile? It seems much too heroic a gesture for someone who barely knows me. Sebastian didn’t even have a weapon of any kind.

My partner wrings out his own sock, dribbling reddish water onto the grass beside us. “I can’t cross the finish line without you.”

Can it really be as simple as that? In this race, you do have to save your partner to save your chance of winning. I guess I didn’t realize Sebastian Callendro was that much of a competitor.

I actually wish it would rain harder to get more of the mud off. There’s no way I’m going back to the water to wash now.

Soon we’re running again, now back on the route we saved to our wrist units. It’s probably the same trail that all the other teams are using. I wonder how many are in front of us.

When we arrive in camp, Marco Senai and Suzana Mistri are already clean, coiffed, and chowing down in front of the cameras. The screen displayed outside at the checkpoint shows Marco holding forth with some wild tale about running with lions. Every story sounds charming when he tells it. Dream Team Cole and Rossi emerge from the medical tent as Sebastian and I check in. It’s disheartening to know we have so much time to make up tomorrow.

A newsquacker sticks a microphone in front of my partner’s sweaty face. “How do you feel about slipping to third place, Sebastian? Do you think your father is watching from the White House?”

Sebastian shoots daggers at the guy with a fierce gaze, but then he says, “We are thrilled that Marco Senai is in first place tonight.”

The microphone slides my way. I simply say, “Ditto,” and then we stroll into the shower area together.

When I pull off my clothes, I find a fat leech nestled close to my lady parts, and another snuggled up under my left breast. Double ugh. They drop off after I coat them with soap. I get revenge when I squish them into the drain, although their flattened bodies are disgustingly slimy against the soles of my bare feet. It’s weird to think that the blood squirting out is my own.

The doctors assure me that I’ve had all the requisite shots to handle most diseases or parasites those leeches might pass to me.

“Most?” I yelp at the white-coated gal who palpitates my neck glands with plastic-gloved hands.

She clarifies. “We inoculate against everything we know about. But the disease environment is always changing.”

I should know that, with my mom and the constantly evolving RT44 and all.

When I reach the main tent, Sebastian is already moving down the smorgasbord. Tonight we have filet mignon and mushroom risotto and broccoli quiche and four kinds of roasted veggies. The dessert table features coconut pudding and an amazing three-tiered butterscotch cake. It’s all I can do not to drool into the serving pans as I fill my plate.

When I peel away from the food table, a cameraman zooms in to take a photo of my plate. Really? Are they comparing how much all the competitors eat? You never know what these ghouls will focus on.

I sit down next to Sebastian to watch the day’s vids on the screen opposite us. Right now they’re featuring a promo of the female competitors, a vid they filmed around two months ago. This is the first time I have seen the result.

The sports channels usually show this sort of film immediately before a race begins, on the first day. I’m guessing they’re showing it now because they’re still assembling shots of today’s race.

The first contestant featured is Madelyn Hatt. They focus on how hard she trains, showing her running on her own special rubberized track behind her house, lifting weights, doing sit-ups. Nearly every frame includes her father holding a stopwatch.

“Maddie is driven to succeed,” says a Phys. Ed. teacher they dredge up from her senior year in high school.

Her mother tells a sorrowful story about how Maddie used to run with her dog, a happy looking chocolate lab whose photo they flash on the screen for a second. The dog’s tongue-out smile makes me miss Joker.

“But now Hershey has passed,” Mrs. Hatt says. “Maddie dedicates every race to his memory.”

Catie Cole’s portion also shows the golden girl in training, leaping over hurdles on a track, her father clapping out the timing for her. In each frame, Catie’s workout clothes fit her perfectly, never creasing in awkward bunches like mine always do. The colors always complement her complexion.

Naturally the vid also includes a modeling shoot where she’s made up with red lipstick and tons of eyeliner.

They film her coaching Special Olympics sprinters. At the end of a short dash, she hugs each contestant. Catie’s invariably nice. It’s really hard to hate her.

My portion is at the end and shorter than most, just a scene of me running along a forest path. “African-American racer Tanzania Grey eschews tracks and exercise rooms for the rugged outdoors,” the voiceover says.

It’s all I gave the filmmakers. I don’t want to tell them that I can’t afford a personal trainer or membership in a health club. I suppose I could use the tracks at local schools and such, but on that the film is correct, I “eschew” tracks. I hate to run in circles.

The filmmakers always try to find some aspect that is either heartwarming or heart-rending for each contestant. I almost drop my fork when I see my track coach from my sophomore year in high school. “Tana’s a solitary creature,” he says. “After losing her parents at such a young age, that’s understandable. She is a gifted cross-country runner who truly enjoys the challenge of the natural environment.”

And then my fencing instructor says in her delightful French accent, “
En garde
, competitors! There is nobody stronger than Tanzania. She is fierce. In my class, she was known as Tana Touché.”

If Marisela saved my life, Coach Barnes and Madame Laurent saved my sanity by teaching me to run and to fight.

There are a couple of shots of me at the zoo, one where I’m scratching the baby giraffe’s head, and one where I’m forking straw into the tapir’s pen. I send a telepathic thank you to the filmmakers for not including frames of me wheeling a cartload of manure, which is what I do at least eighty percent of the time.

The promo vid for the male competitors begins. Sebastian Callendro is first up. They show him running cross-country before his true identity was revealed. Then a smug reporter tells how he figured it out—T.L. Garrison’s political history, the hospital records when Sebastian was born, the laser eyes, and finally, DNA from a popsicle stick tossed into the garbage.

Beside me, Sebastian tenses, then picks up his plate and stalks off to a chair in the far corner of the tent.

Bad move. Two Secret Service agents and two paparazzi follow, the newsquackers yelling, “Sebastian! Mr. Callendro!”

The suits insert themselves between Sebastian and the reporters. My partner sits on a folding chair, awkwardly clutching his plate to his chest while he forks food into his mouth.

On the screen, the newly outed First Son shakes hands with The President. Standing by his mother’s side, Sebastian focuses his gaze on his own shoes, embarrassed. Garrison smiles broadly at the camera, playing the proud papa. I wonder where Mr. Callendro, the man who actually raised Sebastian, was during that presidential visit. There’s a scene of The Prez examining a case full of Sebastian Callendro’s ribbons and trophies.

Then the film transitions to a much younger version of Jason Jones crossing a finish line to win his first race. He looks a little dorky, with protruding ears and big front teeth and a freckled face. Jason Jones, in the flesh, plops a plate down on the table a couple of places to my right. He’s still covered in freckles, but he’s grown into his ears and teeth. We nod politely at each other as he pulls out a chair.

With her back to the vid screen, Maddie Hatt slides her full plate onto the table across from me as the vid segues into more segments about the male competitors. Her dark hair, still wet from the shower, is already springing up into tight spirals around her forehead. That’s about the only thing we have in common, our annoying curly hair.

I check my watch.

“We’re twenty-seven minutes behind you,” she informs me, attacking her steak with vicious stabs of fork and knife. When she has sawed off a chunk, she balances it on her fork as she looks at me. “So you live by yourself?”

Why does she want to know? I’m a little worried she’ll send a thug to burn down my house or whack me with a piece of pipe when I least expect it. But I’m proud of my independence, so I say, “Yes, I have my own place.”

“Wow,” she murmurs, chewing. “And you work in a zoo?”

I push a forkful of the butterscotch cake into my mouth. “Um-hmm.”

She surprises me by saying, “Girl, I want your life.”

At first, her words hit me like she is saying she wants to
end
my life, but her tone isn’t threatening. Instead, it sounds almost as if she’s yearning to switch places with me. But then, most people don’t know what we Habitat Maintenance Technicians really do. The film made it look like I spend my days petting friendly exotic animals.

“I’d love to work with all the animals,” she adds.

“I don’t think you’d like it.” Communing with the animals
is
what makes the job at the zoo worthwhile, but I want to shock her out of any romantic notion she might have about me. “I shovel hundreds of pounds of shit every day.”

She snorts in a very unladylike way, and pushes a bite of risotto into her mouth.

I’m amazed—and suspicious—that Maddie’s trying to strike up a conversation with me. She never has before.

“Why would you want
my
life?” I ask. “Your parents are so supportive, and you have everything you need for training.
You
have a great life.”

She stares over my shoulder for a second, and I hear the voices of her parents as they approach behind me. Then Maddie’s hazel-eyed gaze swivels back to meet mine. “You wouldn’t be able to stand it,” she murmurs softly.

The Hatts stop just to the right side of my chair. “Maddie dear, come sit over here beside Jason so we can analyze the vids together.”

She sighs, but pushes her chair back and picks up her plate to join her parents.

The collage of film clips from today’s race start up on the screen. Our crocodile drama is playing and Sebastian has just collapsed on top of me when the day’s mail is delivered, along with our personal lockboxes. I have two dog-eared postcards. One features a nighttime photo of the galloping neon horse sign on the Dark Horse Networks building. It says
Proud to be your sponsor!

That makes me feel good even though I realize that message was written before the race began. Today, the marketing department might not be so happy that I am in third place. The other says simply
You can do it
. The image on the front is an aerial shot of green hills dotted with trees. I can’t read the city on the postmark, but the country is South Africa.

I turn the postcard over about six times, but there’s nothing more. Not a clue about who it came from—a fan? P.A. Patterson? I have the insane thought that my mom might have sent it, along with the necklace that’s in my personal lockbox right now. Maybe she’s not really dead, but hiding in South Africa. Maybe my dad is there, too, and Aaron.