The fact that she’d become a target for rape, by his best friend, in his auto shop, had almost killed him. Shattered by that truth, he lay in the medical tent and looked like he’d aged a century. She only felt as if she had.
“How’s your dad?”
“He’s asleep now. The doctors knocked him out. They swear that there’s nothing physically wrong with him, but he collapsed like he’d had a heart attack—standing beside me one moment and down in the dust the next.”
“Where are you? I’ll come and—”
“No, Nikita. I’m okay here with him. But I can’t leave him here like this and I can’t face Luke. You have to drive with him. Together you can find Hathyaron.”
There was a long silence. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have a FIA license. None of us do except for Christian and Luke. You know Christian’s back wouldn’t survive it. No point in getting a fake one, no one else knows enough to race even if the officials would let us add a team member. Without you, they’ll withdraw from the race.”
“I,” Zoe searched inside and knew the answer. “I just can’t.”
“You know that Luke feels—”
“Don’t tell me!” She didn’t want to know. Couldn’t know. The blustering bastard had wounded her father past any recovery. In a twisted way, he’d raped her father’s past just as surely as “Uncle Bob” had raped hers. She’d thought Luke could protect her; instead he’d permanently wounded the one man she’d ever loved—the only pure thing in her entire life.
“Okay,” Nikita’s voice was soft. When Zoe didn’t answer, “You sure there isn’t anything I can do for you?”
“I’m sure.”
A long silence later Nikita whispered, “Love you, Zoe.”
“Love you.” Zoe listened to the soft beep and dead air after Nikita terminated the call. She had one friend in the world. That much she could be thankful for.
26
Luke didn’t eat. He didn’t go in the camper. Not a chance he’d sleep.
Instead he sat out by the car.
He spent two hours meticulously reviewing and marking the Stage Eight Road Book, knowing it was pointless. Zoe wasn’t coming back.
Somewhere way past midnight, Nikita came out to sit with him. She didn’t say a word, simply dropped her phone beside his on the table and sat with him in silence.
She knew…something. But a bond tighter than superior officer and tighter than team membership (which was a hell of a bond in ST6) made her keep her silence. She was the closest thing he had to a friend, but she still didn’t speak.
This went beyond friendship. Far enough beyond that she hadn’t even told Drake—the man she’d married. Loved enough to marry.
His need to protect Zoe was an ache that ran through his entire body. Was that reason enough to marry?
Idiot! The one person Zoe needed protection from was him. Goddess Zoe, running Number Three in her rookie Dakar, needed his protection like she needed a hole in the head.
Nikita said only two people had known who had raped Zoe until he’d opened his yap. He still didn’t know. Nikita was one. Which meant the rapist was the other.
But, if her father hadn’t known about it… And her attacker was really dead…? Then who was the other person? How many times he’d trodden that loop of reasoning through the long night he no longer knew.
An hour later, he was still nowhere and Nikita still hadn’t spoken a word. She’d simply sat like you would with a dead comrade on the long flight back to Dover Air Force Base before they came to bury him in Arlington National Cemetery.
There was a tradition among SEALs. When the coffin lid was closed for the last time but before it was laid in the ground, every SEAL in attendance removed his SEAL trident pin and pounded it into the lid with the side of his fist. When Chris “The Legend” Kyle, the American Sniper, was laid to rest, a hundred SEAL tridents were pounded into his coffin’s lid.
He half expected Nikita to pound one into him. At least that would make sense. Without Zoe he was a dead man.
Instead, she finally rose to her feet. Reaching down, she tapped the unlock code on her phone and walked away. He could see that it was on the recent calls list. At the very top was Zoe’s name.
He watched it for the thirty seconds it stayed lit.
He watched it for the five seconds it dimmed before it locked.
And he watched it lock and go dark.
Luke wanted to talk to Zoe more than anything in the world, but he had no idea what to say.
Just before dawn, Liesl showed up. Apparently a glance was enough for her to assess the whole situation. He couldn’t imagine that she was the other person who knew the truth of Zoe’s past, so her deep sigh must be for the loss of her insider’s scoop. Confirming his guess, she plummeted into the chair. She plinked her fingernail against Nikita’s phone beside his. Whether she recognized it or surmised the reason it sat on the table didn’t matter.
“Welcome to the human race.”
It took him a moment to understand that someone was actually talking to him. He looked over at her in surprise.
“I don’t need to be a genius to know that you aren’t used to screwing up even if its written all over your goddamn face. I know what you are. Unlike Christian Vehrs, I’ve covered war zones.”
Luke had never been comfortable with Liesl’s knowing looks; at least now he knew why.
“You’re clearly Spec Ops. SEAL, Delta, maybe Green Beret, but I don’t think so. The feel is wrong. You see everything as a threat. Rangers do that too, but they tend to be overeager. I’ve learned that no one except a Spec Ops warrior sees the world as clearly as a journalist—clearer. Every detail. You probably knew it was me coming just by the sound of my footsteps long before I entered the far end of the lane.”
He would have under normal circumstances. The bivouac was dead silent, not even the cooks were awake yet. Instead he’d barely noticed her before she sat down next to him.
“Zoe is a puzzle I haven’t quite unraveled yet. Spec Ops in everything but size. Did you know that her standard response to a military fan is that she’s a clerk in intelligence? It’s brilliant in its way, forestalling all questions. Except clerks can’t drive world rally cars in their first-ever race like the very best Dakar Rally racers. She’s…ah! She’s a pilot, isn’t she?”
Luke kept his face neutral.
“But she doesn’t see the world the way you do. She walks like a well-trained soldier but also like a civilian. Yet you and she are here together with absolutely no prior history of racing. Yes, I found old rosters that showed neither of you had been in any of the races your vague histories imply you were. What kind of Spec Ops pilot has no field experience? Even the Air Force rescue guys get out of their helicopters once in a while.” Then Liesl whistled softly in surprise. “Drone?”
“They prefer RPA—remotely piloted aircraft.” Luke couldn’t believe that he’d just confirmed every one of Liesl’s conjectures.
But she showed none of the triumph he expected. Instead she simply nodded, fitting the pieces together in her neat, journalist’s mind.
“You can’t—”
“Nicht dumm! National security and all that. I’m a German citizen, but I’m not stupid enough to think that would protect my freedom for a second if I were to betray a black ops mission—which is what this has to be. Besides, I don’t believe in doing that. I want my sources to tell me their story because they want to, not because they want a moment of fame for revealing state secrets—even if it’s anonymous fame.”
Luke slumped back in his chair. Could anything else go wrong?
“What will you do if Zoe kommt nicht zurück?”
If Zoe didn’t come back, there was no chance to complete the mission. They couldn’t stay in the competition. Couldn’t be out in the field looking for Hathyaron.
Without Zoe, he—
He couldn’t think about that.
“This mission of yours? It’s ba
d?”
The biggest arms dealer in Southwest Asia about to slip through his fingers? The one who’d supplied the opposition in at least the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and who knew how many ISIL insurgents and… Yeah, it was bad.
“Does she know that?”
“Better than anyone.”
Liesl nodded. “Gut! Now you must decide what to do when she comes back.”
“But—”
Liesl laughed softly. “How little you know her if you think she could walk away from this. Now you must find a way to make sure that she doesn’t walk away from you afterward.”
She rose to her feet as if to go.
“Any brilliant ideas?”
Liesl brushed at his hair like he was a sweet little boy. “You’ll figure it out.”
Then she walked away into the breaking predawn light.
27
Zoe stood at the end of the row, watching the team area.
Ahmed was polishing the Citroën—as if it wasn’t about to spend nine hundred kilometers traversing the roughest conditions on the planet. Drake and Nikita were breaking down the camp, getting ready to move it to the next bivouac. Christian was hovering.
Luke sat in a lone chair beside the car, as if he had been carved from stone on that very spot. He looked even worse than she felt.
Good!
She checked her watch. Ten minutes until their assigned start time.
Zoe waited until there were only six left, then stepped out into the service lane.
Luke jolted to his feet before she made it three steps. He watched her all the way in. No smile—which was good, because it saved her trying to punch his lights out. No frown. Just watching.
She walked right past him and stepped into the trailer, making sure to lock the door behind her. She allowed herself three minutes to try and wash the sleepless night off her face and get dressed.
At two and a half minutes to the start, she stepped back out of the trailer. She had her knife strapped on the inside of her forearm, in the perfect position to drop into her palm if she needed to stab somebody.
Luke—her prime candidate at the moment—glanced down to it, then back to watch her face.
She barely paused in front of him, “If you say one word not pertaining to the race or the mission, I’ll walk away and you’ll never see me again.”
Zoe didn’t even wait for his acknowledgement. She managed to climb into the driver’s seat without breaking down, without screaming, without her heart shattering any worse than it already was. But that was all locked away on the inside, and she’d never again share what was inside of her with anyone on the outside. Never.
She had the engine started and was already backing up while Luke still had a foot on the ground. He dove in and strapped into his harness while she drove up to the Start Line outside the bivouac’s entry.
Waving and smiling to the wild mob of her personal Brigade who waited just outside the gates was a strictly mechanical act. Many of them reached out to touch the car as it went by. They were rabidly excited by someone who didn’t exist outside of her social media persona. The Soldier of Style knew no more about herself than Zoe DeMille did.
However this mission turned out, she was done. She’d serve out this tour and get out of the Army. Maybe she’d go work in her father’s auto shop. Having lost herself there, maybe she’d find herself by going back.
The timer handed her their card, then began counting down from ten.
She was done with the Army.
Five.
And she was done with Luke. That was a hard thought—no matter how she hardened herself to take it, the idea was a knife in her already dead heart.
“Zoe?”
“I warned you to shut up!” Her yell at Luke wasn’t quite a scream, but it was close.
She couldn’t do this.
But as she reached out to kill the engine, Luke pointed silently toward the timer.
He was glaring at her when she turned to face him. “Already ten seconds late. Are you refusing the Start? You know that incurs a fifteen minute penalty.”
Zoe did know that. She couldn’t imagine why she cared, but she knew that.
She shifted into first and drove away.
When Luke called out the first turn, she let the racing take over. Just race. Then you don’t have to think. Don’t have to think about the pain on your father’s face when you told him his best friend had raped you repeatedly. And don’t think about the half lie you told him when you said you’d kept your silence because you didn’t want to hurt him.
Stage Eight was a blur of snapshots.
Much of the track wasn’t dirt, but rock. A whole different technique of driving that she had to learn on the fly.
Cerro Mulas Muertas—the Dead Mules Volcano. Towering up to almost twenty thousand feet, only a little shorter than Denali in Alaska, it dominated the high, arid, dead plain.
The names of the local geography leapt at her like personal attacks: Lake of the Dead, Crags of the Dead, Ravine of the Dead Mules, the Dead Mountain… Muertas. Muertas. Muertas. It fit her mental state perfectly as she plunged over ash ridges, wove around sharply porous boulders of lava that would as soon shred her tires as look at her, and wondered if she was driving on the Moon…or was simply so disconnected that it felt that way.
She remembered nothing else. Didn’t hear that she’d moved up to second. Didn’t recall a word she’d said during the mandatory stop in the media interview zone. Didn’t care when Christian told her she was the prime feature on today’s broadcast.
Didn’t even care who carried her to bed in the camper, glad to simply be held for a brief moment in the misery of the last two days.
28
Liesl was looking aloft when Zoe crawled out of bed the next morning. Coffee and medialuna did nothing to convince her that consciousness was a worthwhile endeavor.
“How long do I have?”
“Depends if you get your act together today better than yesterday?”
“My act?”
“That is the correct idiom, ja?”
“Ja.”
“What do you remember about yesterday’s drive?” Liesl turned from her inspection of the sky.
Zoe didn’t answer, because she didn’t have a good one. She remembered little more than the pounding, aching silence in the car as she drove.
Liesl returned to her inspection of the sky. “Is the bottom painted blue to hide it? It is very hard to see as it circles up there so high.”
Zoe looked up for a long moment before she spotted the tiny dot, the only thing moving across the blue sky other than a few early-morning hawks. It was about the size of a dime held three car lengths away. Someone had decided that the mission was important enough for Sofia to fly Raven down to South America to help.
The mission.
She hadn’t given it a single thought yesterday.
By the time she looked back down at Liesl, she felt as if she was standing there naked with no secrets left in her life. She should have asked what Liesl was looking at, rather than simply accepting her question. Liesl had clearly figured out not only that this was a military operation, but also what Zoe did for a living and that someone would be covering for her.
“No,” she replied carefully. “They’re a dulled aluminum.”
“Interessant,” was all Liesl said. “It is time for you to act your act.”
“The idiom didn’t work there, but I get the point.”
“Good. You should also know that another of your compatriots is out of the race.”
“Compatriots?”
“United States. He was a car driver with a Brazilian navigator.”
Zoe closed her eyes. “What happened?” Still the ground seemed to lurch beneath her feet.
“Frame failure.” Not unheard of.
“Grind to halt?”
“In mid-jump. The car came down in pieces. The driver and co-driver are both in the fourteenth hour of surgery.”
What the h
ell was Zoe doing here? She was a pilot, not a racecar driver. She wasn’t even that: she’d decided to quit. She’d be a car mechanic. And she’d never get behind the wheel again.
“I am going to warn you now,” Liesl was once again staring aloft. “After today’s race I will be interviewing you about the terribly handsome man who carried you to bed last night and threatened to maim anyone who disturbed you.”
Zoe looked around for who that might be, even though she knew.
Luke. Again her protector. And her destroyer.
If only she could find some way to forgive him, but that didn’t seem likely.
29
Zoe was far more functional in Stage Nine than she’d been in Stage Eight. She wasn’t driving quite as aggressively, which Luke appreciated. He’d never had a death wish, but Zoe had given him a taste of what it must be like to have one.
After he’d put her to bed last night, he’d made a point of going up to Ahmed and Christian and telling them what a magnificent car they’d built. Luke had no question that it had saved his life any number of times during the rough stage.
This morning, Zoe kept leaning forward to the limits of her harness and looking upward—once almost eating a boulder that was in their way as they drove around a scrubby tree.
“What are you looking for?” He risked the question because maybe something was wrong with the car. A crack in the top of the windshield he couldn’t see, or maybe the mounting seal coming apart—which wouldn’t surprise him after the beating the Citroën had taken yesterday.
“Sofia,” Zoe’s voice croaked with disuse. It was the first word she’d said to him since her initial threat.
Luke leaned forward to look upward and finally spotted a flash of sunlight reflected off a high-flying craft. He wished it was legal to have a screen in the car with the data feed from the drone, but getting caught with one was grounds for immediate disqualification—which they couldn’t afford.
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