And they made her want to hide. For nine hours, her world had become the inside of the Citroën. Her heavy helmet buffered, but by no means blocked, the roar of barely mufflered racing engines. Her seat vibrating to that basso rumbled, when it wasn’t being slammed and jarred by rough surfaces and hard turns—which was continuously. The only breaks had been the two timing breaks at either end of the Selective Section and the fastest rest stop ever made by a woman in a full racing suit.
These dancing women were a shock to her world. Over the low growl of her idling engine, she could hear their festive band, the rumble of other cars, the harsh burrrr-ap! of a pneumatic impact wrench as someone had their tires changed—or perhaps more dire repairs.
The scent of hot metal and dust had been replaced by hot dust and cooling metal.
She really needed to get out of this car and her gear. Easing around the dance troupe, which was now doing something between a man-eating shimmy and a groin-wrenching hula, Zoe decided it would be a good thing to get Luke well away from them quickly no matter what claims he made.
With only a little direction, she wound her way through the sprawling camp to where Ahmed, Nikita, and Drake had set up. It was only late afternoon, but they had big floodlights rigged in a shop area made of a large pop-up canopy. The rest of their base was a big camper van and a well-stocked service truck.
She rolled up and parked the car where Ahmed directed her beneath the blinding lights.
Liesl greeted her two steps from the car with a videographer and an ice cold Coca-Cola. Because of the latter, it was hard to be angry about the former.
“We’re with Zoe DeMille, The Soldier of Style. How was your first-ever Dakar Rally stage?”
“Long,” Zoe had to reach deep for the bright laugh, but she found it. She was intensely aware of Luke as he swung wide around the camera’s field of view and came up behind Liesl and the videographer to watch her. Yellow racing suit unzipped far enough to reveal his black t-shirt like a deep cleavage on his SEAL-awesome chest. His eyes hidden behind mirrored shades. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked absolutely gorgeous. So male and powerful. Unlike the wilting mess she knew she was presenting to the camera.
“What part did you like the best?” Liesl didn’t even give her a chance to catch her breath.
The best part? Finding out that Luke still wanted to be with me. “I’ve always enjoyed racing on sand. There were only twenty kilometers on the beach today, but it made me hungry to tackle the dunes.” Sand was also the only kind of racing she’d ever done, so that easily counted as the best part of the driving.
“Twenty kilometers that did not go well for Sergey Kanski of Team Toyota,” Liesl informed the camera. “He finished seven minutes off the best time.”
“He’s a fine racer, even if I did manage to get by him on the beach. I used a trick I doubt he’ll ever fall for again.” Only seven minutes off the lead? She hadn’t seen him pass her again. Maybe on the Road Section…though she didn’t see how.
She herself had passed several drivers out on the track. Two in racing, one mired in a mudhole, and another car that had gone nose down into a deep ditch and had turtled onto its back on the far side. The two drivers had been standing to one side watching anxiously as a racing truck used a long strap to flip the car upright. She wondered if it was still drivable after it was righted or if they were out of the race in Stage One.
“Zoe? You do not know?” Liesl looked at her in surprise.
“Know what? I only just arrived.”
Liesl looked like she’d just swallowed the sweetest chocolate in the world. Zoe wondered where she could get some. Or anything else that wasn’t an energy gel.
“What would you say if I told you that out of ninety-three entries in the car category, you are currently standing third, only forty-two seconds off the lead?”
“What do you get if you multiply six by nine?” Zoe replied with the exact quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. After all, forty-two was the answer to “life, the universe, and everything,” according to Douglas Adams. Even if it no longer felt that way.
Luke’s bark of laughter and Liesl’s puzzled expression was Zoe’s excuse to escape. Only Luke understood that nothing was truly important other than finding Hathyaron and the answer to everything else, including the race, might just as well be forty-two. Hathyaron was the real question and they were no closer than they’d been nine hours ago.
Then she stumbled to a halt as she spotted Christian sitting in the shade of the canopy.
“How did you get here?”
“I hitched a ride on one of the helicopters.”
Zoe hadn’t paid much attention to them—which was a major mind warp as her entire job was all about tracking the helicopters of the 5E. It was like a part of her had gone missing. The Dakar’s helos—eight Airbus helos so she only knew them by their specs—floated overhead doing camera work, rescuing crashed drivers, and transporting race officials. Also, apparently, severely injured Legends.
“What about your back?”
He shrugged, then winced. After a sigh, he explained. “I have a back brace on under this shirt and enough painkillers in me to not care. But I cannot drive. They say I’m lucky I didn’t make myself paralyzed.” He sighed again, expressing exactly what he thought of his doctors. “You did very well today, Zoe, so you must keep driving. But this was the easiest stage with the shortest Selective Section, so you must step up your playing. Come. I have videos. I can show you some things you can do better. Then we must prepare your Road Book.”
Apparently reaching the end of the race had nothing to do with the end of racing. God but she was tired. Even the Coke, which was now empty without her noticing, hadn’t done a thing. Normally, that much caffeine and sugar would hyper her straight into space: don’t pass the stratosphere, don’t collect two hundred dollars.
She looked for Luke but he was nowhere to be seen. At least she knew he wasn’t off with Liesl—because she and her videographer were still hovering just as if they too had been manufactured by Airbus rotorcraft. She was asking questions about her thoughts during the transition moment after Christian had blown his back jumping the podium.
How was she supposed to remember something that long ago?
Almost eight hours.
“Just let me shower first,” she headed to the camper. She was slow to get there.
First, Ahmed wanted to discuss all of the details of how the car was performing. Was it pulling left or right, or was it running true? Any adjustments for the suspension that might improve cornering? Was the acceleration strong enough or did the turbocharger need tuning?
“It’s already strong enough to give me whiplash every time I need it,” appeared to satisfy him. It certainly earned her a brilliantly white smile. Moments later, he was pulling out air filters, checking oil, and all the rest of the things that the geeky part of her wanted to watch and the rest of her couldn’t care about at all until it got a shower.
Then Nikita pulled her aside and congratulated her on the stage.
“We need to find Hathyaron,” Zoe went for one of the questions that was plaguing her after Nikita had led her away from the others.
“Drake is out circulating with the crews right now. He’s listening for Pashto- or Urdu-speaking teams, even their accents. No luck so far.”
“Good idea,” Zoe wavered on her feet, then realized she was slowly being cooked alive. Nikita had led her out of the busy tent and back into the sunshine. Finally tracing the problem, Zoe unzipped the flame-retardant racing suit right down to her shorts. The hot afternoon air was a cool balm in comparison.
“You need a shower,” Nikita took a step back and pretended to hold her nose.
“Duh!”
“The shower in the camper isn’t very big, but you can try.”
“Try what?”
“To shower with Luke, of course. Though I still can’t picture him with a woman.”
“I’d have thought you could pic
ture him with too many women.” Neither Zoe nor her imagination needed help imagining Luke Altman with a long line of shapely women.
“They don’t count,” Nikita shook her head. “My commander used to have lifelong bachelor stamped on his dog tags. Now not so much.”
“Whoa, Nikita. We’re sleeping together. That’s all. Using each other for sex,” then she sighed, “and not much of that lately.”
“Lately? You’ve been together six days and you’re already sleeping together without sex?”
“That doesn’t mean anything.” But it did. None of her relationships had ever lasted to the point where sex wasn’t a nearly nightly (and morningly) mandatory event. The problem had been that when the sex calmed down from dating heat to relationship pleasure, her relationships had invariably faded with them. If she understood what was going on, she and Luke had already made the transition due to circumstances beyond their control. And they’d done it without everything falling apart.
“What are you two ladies talking about?” Luke stepped up to them.
“You, of course,” Zoe riposted, then wished she hadn’t.
Luke’s eyebrows raised above his mirrored shades.
“Don’t worry, boss, none of it was good,” Nikita patted his arm, then walked away. Luke didn’t even turn to watch her go.
“Here,” he held out a paper plate.
Zoe’s body kicked in all at once like her engine dial had just been set to Four—full power. On the plate were two long kebab skewers of grilled steak chunks, with scallions and cherry tomatoes interspersed between chunks. Beside it was a large bread roll and a chimichurri dipping sauce. The feast for her eyes was assessed by her nose as exactly what she needed—together they transmitted their doubly reinforced data stream directly to her stomach, which growled loudly enough to make Luke chuckle.
“Speaking of gods…” She grabbed a skewer, dipped it into the sauce, and slid off the first chunk between her teeth. The outer char and inner marinade combined to make a small piece of heaven. The peppery meat accented by the cool cilantro and sharp vinegar of the sauce made her want to eat slowly to appreciate every bite—and to scarf the whole thing down in a flurry of greed.
Luke rustled up a pair of camp chairs and set them in the shade as far from the bustle as possible.
Definitely speaking of gods, Luke looked as delicious as their meal as he slouched down and sighed happily.
“Any thoughts?”
His leer answered that well enough. She needed a temporary subject change if there was a chance she was going to finish her dinner rather than dragging Luke into the trailer and ripping his clothes off.
“Other than that?” She told him what Drake was listening for out among the other teams.
He nodded that it was a good idea, but grimaced on its chances of success.
“Yeah, my thoughts too. I’m starting to think he isn’t Pakistani at all. If he’s a foreigner, he could be anyone.”
Luke grunted agreement.
“So how do we find him?” She voiced the question for both of them. Their shared silence lasted long enough for her to start on the second skewer.
“Shit!” Luke’s final assessment on the situation matched her own.
It seemed to take the fun out of the evening.
Zoe had looked so small out of the car. The contrast from Zoe the driver to Zoe standing so much shorter than everyone else was almost surreal. So powerful when wrapped in steel, and so petite when standing beside it. Even the car was taller than she was.
Yet she was the one they all mobbed. Liesl, Christian, Nikita, Ahmed: they all wanted a piece of her. Well, so did he. The long silence of racing fit him well. He’d enjoyed the task of a single focus instead of the normal twenty that a mission required. Turns, speed, timing were all he could control while in the car. No phones or radios were allowed for the Dakar teams except for an emergency satellite phone—with brutal penalties for calling anyone other than the race officials to report a breakdown or accident.
Being cut off had let him shed the mission from his high-priority task list.
He’d stuck with that upon their arrival: listening to Zoe spar happily with Liesl. The woman never ran out of energy. And he didn’t want to be running out of energy when they got off alone somewhere—so he’d followed his nose to the catering area just two rows over. He even ran into the Malles Motos crowd, but declined their invitation to join in, apologizing by holding up the two plates of food he was already carrying.
A long day of racing, arriving in camp to good people and good food—life wasn’t bad at all.
Except this wasn’t his life, as Zoe had just reminded him.
Hathyaron the arms dealer simply had to be here. Zoe had been absolutely right in connecting the dots he’d missed of the heavy tire tracks in the Pakistani soil, the high-tech garage, and The Dakar Rally poster.
To date they’d been moving on the idea that he was Pakistani and that would make him stand out. Except it hadn’t. No team from there. No flight that could be traced back.
“Definitely a foreigner.” Luke nodded over Zoe’s shoulder. She turned in time to see Drake talking to Nikita and shaking his head sadly. No luck on catching an Urdu-speaking mechanic.
She slumped lower in the chair, like all of her supports had just been pulled out.
“Something you need to know about SEALs, Zoe.”
“Why doesn’t this sound good?”
Luke wasn’t sure what she meant, so he kept on anyway. “We train constantly. But there is a great deal of waiting as well. A sniper may lie in wait for days before they get their target in their sights. Patience is hard, but we have thirteen more stages. On this stage we learned he wasn’t Pakistani. That’s progress.”
“That may be the longest speech I’ve ever heard you give, Luke.”
“Huh.” Maybe. But he liked talking to Zoe.
“You’re right though. When I fly, there is always something I can be doing. We have our ‘Road Sections,’ flying from the airport of origin to the mission area, but during the ‘Selective Section’ of the mission itself, there is never any true pause. We’re constantly reviewing details, shifting for different angles and better visuals, tracking our team and what situations they’re headed into, relaying communications, and the like. Once we enter the battlespace, there’s no moment for true rest.”
Somehow, Zoe had reached deep and shifted back to her optimism. He could see it in her, sitting upright once more and resuming her dinner. Damn but he was a lucky bastard to have her on the team. Which wasn’t the only place he was lucky to have her.
“No true rest here either,” Luke leered at her.
The smile she returned as she suggestively slid the last piece of meat off the skewer with her teeth flash-heated his body. He was halfway to his feet to drag her into the camper when Christian hobbled up and handed him a small roll of paper—four inches wide and far too long. Tomorrow’s Road Book.
Luke was at least pleased that Zoe’s groan matched his own.
It meant that the next couple of hours would be spent sitting around a table together with Christian, reviewing the course and marking up the scroll. Christian liked lots of colors on his markups and had made Luke do that on today’s: red for upcoming hazards, bright blue for particularly tricky navigation areas, green for places to make up time, fuchsia for timing waypoints (only a few of which were included; the rest were stealthy ones, hidden along the route at unexpected intervals, but couldn’t be missed without penalties), and on and on. Luke had thought about making a color guide to go along with interpreting Christian’s version of the Road Book route guide. He was going to go to one color: the bright blue had stood out best in the bright sunlight.
He looked at Zoe for a long moment, still holding the little roll.
She looked back at him, once again slumped in the chair.
“Showers first,” he declared. “We’ll start this in an hour.”
Christian smirked. It took all of Luke’s sel
f-control to not put the man down and give him more than his bad back to think about.
He must have read Luke’s mood, because the look disappeared quickly enough. Then he held out his hand, “At least I can start on marking the Road Book.”
Luke tucked it into his pocket, earning him a slightly more cautious frown. Christian was starting to wise up. Luke wanted his own markings on the roll…and only his.
The shower did nothing to ease the heat of the day. It was too small to share, but the tiny stall had clear glass sides. Zoe had shoved him in first, then leaned against the door offering ribald suggestions as he took a combat shower: thirty seconds pre-soak, water off for shampoo and soap lather, one minute rinse.
While he was toweling off, Zoe slipped in. After some of the comments she’d made, he almost took her then and there without letting her shower first. She seemed to have tapped directly into his blood flow control, allowing none of it to go to his brain.
He leaned against the doorframe to watch her shower as he dried himself off. But he couldn’t think of a word to say. He remembered the look of her naked body on the Senegalese beach, but that view had been very brief before they came together. He’d never simply looked at her naked form. Her hair darkening with the water changed her appearance dramatically. Instead of a cheery blonde fluff to her shoulders, it was a dark curtain down to her biceps that made her blue eyes shine forth each time she glanced his way.
When she stepped out of the shower, he couldn’t wait another moment and grabbed her.
“I’m still all wet.”
He tackled her with his towel. Squeezing all the water he could out of her hair, he began working down her body. He’d backed up into the tiny hallway and she clung to the bathroom’s doorframe for support as he worked her over. Her eyes slid shut and her breathing went short and sharp as he applied the soft towel to her lovely form.
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