Hearts Racing

by Hodgson, Jim

  Faith smiled back, but said, “Don’t get cocky. It’s my job to look at you.”

  “All right, all right. So anyway, these guys have you worried?”

  “Well, not the guys so much as what I saw in the basement.”

  “You looked in there? And to think I felt nosey just wondering about it. You actually looked!”

  Faith protested. “I didn’t mean to! I was just walking around and I saw Miriam coming out. I happened to be where I could see what was behind her too.”

  Buck leaned forward. “Well, what was it?” Faith leaned in too. He could smell her, a mix of fresh smelling soaps and shampoo. Was it vanilla? No, lavender. Maybe vanilla. He wanted to jump on her and put his face in her neck and sniff for an hour. God. No he didn’t. They were working together, and he was a professional. Ugh.

  “If I tell you, you have to promise it’s just between us. I want to mention it to LeMond, though.”

  “Okay, okay, I won’t tell a soul.”

  She bit her lip again. “Guns,” she said. “I saw guns.”

  Buck sounded incredulous. “Why would they have guns? Are you sure?”

  “Racks and racks of them.”

  Buck thought about it. Hunting? No. He certainly hadn’t seen anyone headed out for a hunt. “You mean like shotguns? Bird hunting guns?”

  Faith shook her head. “No. Like people hunting guns.” She raised her arms to mime hip-firing machine-gun style. Her face bore such concern that it made him worried too. He nodded. She knew what she saw.

  A knock at the door shocked the hell out of both of them. Faith gave a yelp. Buck stood and opened the door to reveal LeMond, who looked taken aback.

  “You guys having a séance or something? Some kinda weird, anti-carbohydrate ritual?” he asked.

  Buck cocked his head, felt the extra weight of his towel turban, and then spoke seriously. “We’re praying for a better coach.”

  LeMond looked hurt.

  Buck punched him playfully on the arm. “You know, LeMond, we actually want to ask you something,” Buck said, whipping the towel off his head.

  LeMond waved him off with a hand. “Later. Let’s eat some dinner. Miguel is here, and there are a bunch of people to meet as well.”

  “Come in for a second. This is important,” Buck insisted, but LeMond had already turned and was headed down the hall.

  “Not as important as me eating some of Miriam’s food,” LeMond said, heading down the stairs. Well, he had a point there. Buck could smell the aroma of dinner wafting up from the kitchen. After a long day of training, his stomach was ready to be filled. The smell made it give a little wiggle and growl.

  Buck turned to Faith and shrugged. She shrugged back. They’d corner him later. And he did have a point about Miriam’s food.

  Buck went back through the bathroom to hang up his towel then headed downstairs to the dining area, where the cooking smells grew stronger, making his stomach leap around like a squirrel in a knapsack.

  LeMond wasn’t kidding. There were a lot of people here. Between riders, Miguel, and the new additions, there were more than a dozen faces at the long table. A smaller table had even been drawn up to give more room. The riders and the new group were chatting amicably as though they’d all known each other quite some time. They spoke to one another in musical, consonantless Spanish.

  LeMond waved Buck over when he saw him standing at the end of the table, and Faith soon followed down the stairs behind him. He introduced each of the men to Buck, who did his best to remember their names as they were introduced. He didn’t manage to remember any of them, though, because the thought of guns in a storage room directly below his feet was occupying all his available brain cells. Well, the guns, and the memory of Faith’s naked body. Which he had to stop thinking about immediately or he was going to suffer a personally embarrassing condition right here at the dinner table.

  Miguel greeted him warmly and asked how training was going. “I see you’ve met my associates,” he said, smiling. Buck nodded but didn’t know what else to say about the associates. He wanted to ask who they were and what they were here for, but Miguel had done so much for him and the team that he didn’t want to seem rude or ungrateful. He decided to just let it go until he could speak to LeMond about it.

  Miriam provided a feast of comforting delights: adobo pork with onions and peppers, camarones con crema, chile verde with the most tender chicken Buck and Faith had ever eaten, all with enough rice, beans, and homemade tortillas to make them wonder why the French were considered to reign supreme with their rich cuisine.

  There was a tense rise at the dinner table when Miriam brought out a covered pot still-steaming from beneath its lid. When she uncovered it to reveal a stewy mix of meat and . . . other things, the Spanish-speakers all went silent. Until Jose said, “Qué bien!” and the rest started filling tortillas with the hearty-smelling food.

  “What’s that?” Faith asked.

  “Lengua,” Jose said as he held his tortilla up like it was some religious relic. “Beef tongue.”

  “Si,” Alfredo said, already done with his serving.

  “Muy delicioso,” Alfonso added mid-bite.

  Jose laughed when both Buck and Faith gave each other looks. “It’s not quiche, but it has its moments.”

  Buck didn’t go for the fancy stuff, which often happened to be the guts and snails and whatever else the French had injected into North American cooking over the years. But the tongue wasn’t guts; it was a muscle. Just one that happened to come from inside the cow’s mouth.

  “I hate quiche,” Buck said with a shrug, and then he filled a tortilla for himself, stopping short of taking a bite to see Faith watching him intently. “What?” he asked, tortilla still at the ready.

  “It’s nothing. Just that there’s a ton of protein in—”

  Buck interrupted her by stuffing the whole thing in his mouth, like the mere idea was enough to get him to eat whatever they put in front of him. They shared a laugh and drew attention from the rest of the table, and soon everyone was laughing and joking again, finishing up everything Miriam had put on the table.

  After dinner, the riders filtered upstairs to wind down for bed. Faith left with a meaningful look at Buck, who understood it to mean “I want to know anything you get out of LeMond.” Buck gave her a nod to let her know he got the picture.

  LeMond and Miguel stayed at the table, talking about news from New Lyon and Miami. Buck waited for them to be done, feeling awkward at not really being part of their conversation, hanging in the periphery for LeMond to stand up so he could shadow him and get some answers.

  During a lull in the conversation, though, Miguel turned to him. “Wasn’t that an excellent dinner?” Miguel asked, with his trademark smooth style.

  Buck nodded. “Miriam is very talented.”

  Miguel brightened a bit. “Did you hear that, Miriam?” he said, raising his voice so she could hear him. He continued speaking in Spanish, presumably translating the complement for her benefit. From the kitchen came a cooing sound of pleasure. She appeared in the doorway and gave Buck a smile. Buck smiled back.

  “Do you have a big day of training planned for tomorrow?” Miguel continued.

  “Oh yes. We’ll have our usual WOD—er, that’s a ‘workout of the day’ Faith will plan for us, and then, when we’re good and wrecked from that, we’ll go out on the bike and really get to work.” Buck kept his tone light to make sure Miguel understood it would be hard, but that he also looked forward to it.

  Miguel seemed to understand and laughed. “Well, in that case, I expect you might want to get as much sleep as you can, no?”

  LeMond said nothing, just looked on with a smile on his face.

  Huh. Was Miguel sending him to bed? It sure felt like two parents waiting for their kid to s
cram before getting to the adult stuff. But Buck wanted to get some real answers. “Actually, I was hoping to have a word with LeMond after you two were finished.”

  “Ah, I see,” Miguel said. He nodded, looked at his hands folded on the table, and then looked up again. “Would you mind if I kept him? We have a few things to discuss and I wouldn’t want to trouble you with them. I’m sure he’ll be available for speaking with his prize athlete tomorrow, yes?”

  Now LeMond spoke up. “Prize athlete?” he asked, mocking.

  Buck laughed. What could he do? His benefactor, his only hope for racing at Nationals, wanted to speak to his coach in private. He pushed back from the table. “Yeah, sure. You guys go ahead. I’ll catch you tomorrow, LeMond.” He waved goodnight. The men said their goodnights as well.

  In his room, Faith appeared in the bathroom door. “Well?”

  “They’re still talking and they asked me to give them time. I didn’t feel like I could say no.”

  “Huh,” Faith said tonelessly. “So you got sent to bed.”

  “That’s about the size of it, yeah.”

  She lowered her voice to a stage whisper, breathy but with enough force to be heard. “Something weird is going on here.” Her face was troubled, concerned, gorgeous. He felt the urge to go to her, squeeze her, kiss her, tell her everything would be okay. Instead, he just said, “Yup.” Yup? What am I now, he thought, a puppy? Yup!

  She gave him one more meaningful look—he found this one a bit harder to translate—then said goodnight and headed back into her room, where she closed her door to the bathroom. Buck heard her settle into bed. That body of hers. Settling into bed. Oh, man.

  Yeah. A lot of weird things were going on here.

  Chapter 15

  Faith couldn’t shake it. That feeling something weird was going on. The guns. LeMond not wanting to talk to Buck. Last night it had seemed like LeMond was just busy, but he was nowhere to be seen in the morning. Usually he liked to give the riders a pep talk before they headed out on the bike, but today he was like a whisper in a wind tunnel. The guys all completed their morning WOD—looking strong and balanced, if she did say so herself—and then ate some lunch and began preparing for a training ride. They hung around to see if LeMond would show up but finally just decided to get their ride in without a pep talk.

  Now it was the afternoon lull when the facility was quiet. Faith reviewed materials for the next day’s workout and planned accordingly. Then she went for a stroll.

  The guys who arrived the day before were roving about, doing maintenance work on the facility. One was using a lawn mower. Another used a string trimmer to clear weeds. The rest were monkeying with the gate, oiling it or something. She went to see what they were up to.

  They looked at one another as if not sure whether they should be allowing her to see what they were doing, but in the end, they just nodded and went on with their work. They were installing a new keypad with what looked like a thumb scanner. A video camera went up as well, giving a wide view of the gate and the road to it.

  Why all the security, she wondered. Well, she guessed if you’re hiding a shitload of guns in your basement, you want to know who’s knocking on the front door. She felt self-conscious now, like she was being added to some kind of investigation list just by knowing the guns were there and by seeing all this going on. She had to talk to LeMond today or leave on her own. She could get back to New Lyon somehow.

  The sound of car tires on the road drew her eye, and her skin went cold. Her joints all went solid and her insides dropped. She felt like they were falling. Like her body was falling without her.

  The car coming down the road was Barker’s. Oh Jesus. Oh god. What would he say? How much did he know? What if he found out about the guns? She didn’t even know how she would explain these men working on the gate.

  The men looked around nervously, too. One reached a hand for a toolbox nearby, lifted a top tool tray out of it, and then kept his hand inside. Another—the man working on the keypad—gave him a head shake, and the first removed his hand.

  Barker drove up, smiling, the car window already rolled down halfway. Well, that was something at least. She forced a smile onto her face.

  “Do you see, ma chérie?” he asked out the window. “Do you see how good I am? I found you!”

  “You did,” she agreed, forcing a bigger smile. She held out her hand to the car window and he took and kissed it. He was growing some kind of mustache, and the hairs poked the back of her hand.

  “I know you’ve been missing me, so I decided to pop in and say hello. Why don’t you show me around?” he said.

  The Miami guys looked nervous, but what was she supposed to do? So she showed Barker where to park his car. Thank God the gate had been open. If he’d arrived at a locked gate, he might have thought she was living in a compound of some kind—a cult of suspicious cyclists. Well, was she? She looked around at the stout buildings. If she tried hard to think about what the word “compound” meant to her, yeah, this was kind of a compound.

  It’d be best to keep the tour short. She’d just show Barker the gym area where she worked and that would probably be enough. He’d go back to New Lyon and grow his mustache and continue to be insufferable. Then, one day, she’d be married to him. Brother, she thought. Michael. Keep that in your mind. All of this is for my brother and family.

  As she led Barker into the gym, she saw a couple of the Miami guys crossing the parking area heading for the basement. Play it cool, she told herself, play it cool. Barker just wants to show that he knows more than you think. It’s a power thing. Take it easy.

  “Do you know how I found you, ma chérie?” he asked. He was like a child with a secret. He couldn’t wait to tell her how clever he was.

  “No?”

  “Your phone!” he said. She’d never seen him so pleased with himself. “I have access to all kinds of data now, you know, and the phones record their position. It was a simple matter to ask for your exact location, and then I just looked on a map!”

  She forced a laugh. “You are very resourceful.”

  Obviously he’d shown enough pride even for his sense of grace. “Well, you know, I try,” he said. Then, as an afterthought: “Oh! I thought you might like to know—I checked in with your brother. He’s doing quite well. He’s been lifting weights and is quite strong, I’m told.”

  “Oh! I, uh . . . Thank you. That’s nice of you.”

  “You’re welcome. Shall we see some more of the facility?”

  “Yes, of course.” She showed Barker her gym: the stacks of bumper plates, the racks of bars, the boxes for jumping on.

  He was complementary, and, thanks to having taken CrossFit classes himself, knew more or less what he was looking at. “Someone must really have some money to outfit you like this. Who was it you said you were training again?”

  “That would be me,” Miguel said. She hadn’t heard him come in, but there he was in the doorway, looking like the textbook’s definition of smooth businessman. He strode across the floor with his hand out to shake, and Barker took it. “You must me Monsieur Barker. Mademoiselle Racing has told us so much about you. I am Miguel Costilla.”

  Barker glowed under Miguel’s gaze. He appeared pleased to be properly greeted, and if anyone knew how to greet a person properly, it was Miguel. “Oh,” Barker said. “Bon soir, monsieur Costilla. How nice to make your acquaintance.”

  “I understand you two are to be married.” Miguel smiled. Two of his Miami men came in. One was carrying a tray with tea cups on it.

  “Yes, we are to be married. Mademoiselle is quite happy,” Barker was saying, distracted by watching them enter.

  Miguel raised his eyebrows in a pleased expression. “Ah! Here are my associates. May I offer you an espresso, Monsieur Barker?”

  Espresso? Faith though
t. She hadn’t seen an espresso machine anywhere.

  “Mais oui,” Barker said.

  But as he reached a hand out to take a cup, the Miami guy, quick as a flash, grabbed the arm. The other man darted around Miguel and grabbed Barker’s other arm.

  Barker grunted with surprise. “What’s the meaning of this?” His arms were being held away from his body as he was patted down.

  “I do apologize, monsieur,” Miguel said, sounding as though he truly did feel the situation was unfortunate. “I am sorry to say that we will have to detain you here for a while. You will not be hurt.”

  Faith couldn’t believe this. Miguel was going to ruin everything! “Miguel! You can’t grab him like this. People know him!”

  “Do not worry, my dear. It is unfortunate, but we cannot let him return to New Lyon just now. As I said, he will not be harmed.”

  The Miami guys finished patting Barker down and handed his cell phone to Miguel, who nodded and slipped it into a pocket. He waved at the men, and they marched Barker out the gym door.

  “I demand to know the meaning of this!” Barker called over his shoulder, causing one of the men to tug him and force him forward again. “Faith, you bitch! What the hell is going on here?” He continued to yell as they walked him across the parking area.

  Miguel turned to Faith. “I understand that you have seen some . . . things.”

  No use lying about it. She’d definitely seen some things. Racks and racks of things. She nodded.

  “I must tell you that for your own safety I have not been completely honest with you about my intentions. But I will make everything clear. We will wait for the riders to return and then we will gather and talk. Ah, here they are now.”