Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) (4 page)

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.

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.

“Two.” This is the freakiest thing I’ve ever done.

“Three!”

I release my handhold and hang suspended for a fraction of a second as I watch the rope zing upward toward the cliff’s edge. Then the loop around the tree above releases its tension and I drop like a wrecking ball straight down into the water.

For what seems like eons, all I see is the blur of tea-colored water. All I hear is a roar. My ankle gets snarled in my climbing rope, and I reach to unclip it from my harness, but then my foot somehow comes free on its own and I claw my way to the surface. I’m moving way too fast. Sweeping is too gentle a term for what the river does to me. I’m shooting through space on an uncharted trajectory.

I bang up against a rock and ricochet off, traveling backward now. I struggle to turn onto my stomach. This isn’t swimming; it’s more like trying to crawl across a giant trampoline with six football players jumping up and down on it. Arms wheeling over my head, I stroke like crazy for the far shore, blinded half the time, fighting the vest while being grateful it’s keeping me afloat, wondering if I’m making any progress, trying to keep one eye out for Sebastian and one for the rocks ahead and one for the shore beyond. (I know that doesn’t add up and it’s probably why things are not going so well.) The climbing rope that’s still attached to my harness gives me a yank now and then to remind me that this is a deadly situation.

I hear shouting in the midst of the roaring and then I catch glimpses of Sebastian’s blue shirt between waves of muddy water. My partner is plastered to a boulder in the middle of the stream. His life vest is limp and flat. What the heck happened?

Then I shoot past and all I can think is
No! We can’t get separated! He can’t stop there; he’s only halfway across
. But there’s no way to backpaddle and these thoughts are a complete waste of what little brainpower I have left. Up ahead, there’s a bend in the river like a crooked elbow. If I can just make it to the inside of that elbow, I will land on shore.

Then, just before the bend, I slam up against the end of my rope. It yanks me underwater. I flail wildly. The life vest buoys me up, holding me about a foot beneath the surface, which is, of course, as good as being six feet down. Or in other words, drowning. I hold my breath as I reach for the clip to my harness, but then I realize that I’m moving slowly toward the shoreline. The rope, snagged somewhere behind me, is changing my course. I can see the shore, or at least I think I can—it’s an unmoving brown shadow, darker than the swirling brown water. But the pain in my head and the dancing black spots in my vision tell me I’m going to run out of air before I get there. I try a few froggie type swim movements, but with the pack and my running shoes and the inflated vest, I don’t travel in the least like an amphibian.

Just when I think I have to unclip before I pass out, the water shoves me to the right and my toes strike the ground. I crawl up the underwater slope on all fours until my head is above water. Then I allow myself a little break to gasp and gag and cling to a friendly rock for a second. After my head stops pounding and my heart rate returns to only double its normal speed, I stagger up the beach, putting some slack in the rope. Collapsing butt-first onto the sand, I tug off my streaming pack and my inflatable vest.

Then I look back for the other half of Team Seven.

And there Sebastian is, only halfway across this homicidal river, still perched on that damn rock. He waves at me like we’re on vacation. I curse and squint to bring him into focus. He’s still wearing his sagging life vest and his pack and climbing harness, but there’s no rope clipped to his D ring. The end of the rope he holds up is attached to the ring at my waist; he grabbed
my
rope as I floated past. My first thought is: he nearly drowned me. My second: he may have saved my life.

Now, if only I can repeat the favor.

I know it’s crass, but I can’t help it: I check the time on my wrist unit. We’re losing the advantage I hoped we’d gain on the other teams by doing this suicidal river float. We’re burning daylight. I sigh and look back at Sebastian, holding up my hand, signing
Wait
. He signs it back.

With water squishing out of my running shoes, I stagger up the rocky shore a few yards and then I walk the rope around the base of the tallest rock I can find there, leaving the end clipped to my harness. Then I face the river and Sebastian again and motion tying the end of the rope to his harness. He gives me a hands-on-head sign then a two-arm motion that says
Are you out of your mind?

I skip the crazy head sign and send the two-arm signal back—
What else can you do?
Then I check my watch again. Dramatically.

Finally, he shrugs, ties the rope to his D-ring and gives me a little salute reminiscent of movies about Roman gladiators.
We who are about to die salute you
. Then Sebastian launches himself in an impressive cannonball into the current. The instant the rope goes slack, I run down the beach to snug it up and—I hope—pull my teammate toward the shore. When the rope tugs on my harness, I lean against it and peer out into the churning river. I see Sebastian’s head, his long brown hair sleeked back like a river otter. He’s still riding the waves, moving way too fast as he approaches the bend in the river. He’s already past the point where I got out. Abruptly, his head disappears, and the rope yanks my harness to the side. I lean harder against the rope’s pull.

Sebastian is now underwater at the end of the rope, just like I was. I pray the rope is swinging him in toward this shore like it did me. But he’s already further downstream than I was, and the rope configuration is different, and his life vest is well, dead.

I hold my breath as I wait for him to emerge, scanning the water between the point where he disappeared and further downstream. If he unclips, surely I will feel the rope slacken, won’t I? But it could take a few seconds. Could the rope be caught around the base of the boulder where I wound it? I glance back at it. The rope, stretched around the rock a few inches above the ground, looks as if it could slide easily enough.

Then I remember that Sebastian can’t unclip; he has to untie a knot to get free. I frantically search the water. Silvery splashes of water in the sunlight, waves rolling up and down, thousands of gallons surging past at an alarming rate. I feel lightheaded. I can’t get my breath. Oh God, oh God, If There’s Anyone Up There, is Sebastian drowning? Is he unconscious at the end of this rope?

A shape emerges from the water. I think I see his face for just a second, but it vanishes so quickly that I wonder if I only imagined him surfacing. Did he get a breath?

My heart pounds so hard that I think the suspense might literally kill me. But then I realize the whop-whop-whop noise is not only my heartbeats. Thunder is reverberating from overhead. A helicopter drops out of the sky, hovering over the river, its rotors kicking up sand in my face. A guy dressed in a wetsuit and an orange vest stands spread-eagled in the open doorway.

No! While I don’t want Sebastian to die, the minute that frogman rescues my teammate will be the minute Team Seven is disqualified. The frogman tightens his facemask. He pushes a snorkel mouthpiece between his lips. I make a frantic crossed-hands motion to tell him to stop.

Then a brown head bobs up only a couple of yards from the river bank, and Sebastian crawls out of the water. I wait until he’s firmly on shore. I unclip and, doing my best to shield my face from the flying grit with an upraised arm, jog toward my teammate, who is hunched on all fours, choking and gasping and spitting on the sand.

The helicopter lifts a few feet but hovers overhead, its rotors adding to the deafening din in the river canyon. When I’m only a few feet away from him, Sebastian sinks back into a sitting position and turns. Still coughing, he raises his right hand toward the chopper, middle finger extended. Then he raises his left and echoes the sign. Only after witnessing Sebastian’s double bird does the frogman move back from the door. The chopper pulls up and peels away like some sort of malevolent dragonfly. It quickly vanishes over the cliff above us.

In the absence of the mechanical noise and flying sand, the canyon seems almost serene. I glance at Sebastian. “You okay?”

It seems like a lame thing to ask after all that drama.

He coughs in response but rises to his knees, pauses to slick back his hair, and then pushes himself to his feet.

“You’re bleeding.” He points to my leg.

Sure enough, there’s a gash above my knee about four inches long. Blood is pouring down my calf. It’s amazing what you can do to yourself in the water and never feel it. We walk back to my pack and I dig until I find the GluSkin and hand it to Sebastian. I mop off the blood with a kerchief and then twist the water out and dry off the gash the best I can with the wrung-out rag. Then Sebastian takes the GluSkin, twists off the cap with his teeth, kneels, and squeezes a line of GluSkin into my cut.

With a jolt, my nerve endings come back to life. My leg hurts like someone just thwacked it with an axe. Sebastian uses his fingers to hold the skin of my thigh, pressing the edges of the wound together, the tube of GluSkin caught between his teeth. I can’t help hissing at the flare of pain, and I put my hand on his shoulder to keep from falling down. His flesh feels solid and warm beneath his wet shirt. The pressure of his strong hands on my leg burn almost as much as the GluSkin on my raw flesh.

At least The President’s Son is proving to be gutsy and helpful. And he’s not hard to look at, either, even with his hair all wild and a crimson bruise quickly turning purple on his right cheekbone. But that damn helicopter…

When the white-hot pain recedes enough that I can talk instead of screech, I say, “That chopper almost got us disqualified.”

“I didn’t ask for it,” he says through clenched teeth.

The steam wafting around his head looks like smoke rising up off his temper, but I know it’s the tropical sun baking our wet hair and clothes. I’m steaming, too.

“I’m kind of glad you didn’t drown,” I say to soften my criticism.

“Likewise.”

I can’t resist needling him a little. “Isn’t a good thing that one of us kept her climbing rope clipped on?”

“Isn’t a good thing the
other
of us grabbed the end of that climbing rope?” he shoots right back. Then he checks his wrist unit. Dramatically.

We’re behind schedule. The first checkpoint is still ten miles away.

By silent agreement, we rise, peel off our running shoes, wring out our socks and then put them back on, tie up our running shoes again. We pack the harnesses, the rope, and our one functional life vest, squeeze more gel and water into our mouths, check our watches again, and then dash into the forest that rises up over the hills in front of us.