Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1)

by Pamela Beason

  I shiver.

  “Leave her alone.”

  Sebastian has finally come to. His voice sounds raspy. His throat is probably as dry as mine.

  “Give us water,” I tell the man at the door.

  Black Net exchanges a few hostile-sounding words with the thug beside me. Camo Mask straightens and radiates hostility for a minute. But then he decides to fulfill my request and moves toward the sink on the opposite side of the room.

  Black Net leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

  “What’s going on?” Sebastian croaks. “Where are we?”

  I answer his questions in reverse order. “I don’t have a clue where we are. These guys want to trade you for U.S. intervention in their country. They shot us with tranquilizer darts and loaded us onto a helicopter. I’ve been out since then.”

  Camo Mask is back with a plastic bottle and a crooked straw poking out of the bottle neck. He holds it in front of my face. I’m worried about what could be in that water, but I’m also dying of thirst, and how much worse could this situation get? My lips fumble for the straw like a baby rooting around for the nipple. I take a long suck of liquid. It seems to be water, although I can discern a few minerals in there, too. It tastes a little like the glacial runoff that took down Team Eight earlier today. Or maybe that was yesterday? I suck down half the bottle before our captor pulls the straw out of my mouth and walks to Sebastian.

  Sebastian struggles, thumping the chair on the floor. “I can’t feel my hands or feet.”

  He’s shivering, too. It’s not particularly cold in the room, but we are both still wearing our sweat-soaked running clothes. I long for the windbreaker I carried in my pack.

  Camo Mask feels Sebastian’s fingers, then holds the straw to his mouth. My partner sucks down the rest of the water. The straw is gurgling in the bottom of the bottle when a voice hails Camo Mask from the other room. Camo jerks the bottle away and walks back through the connecting door, shutting it with a clang behind him. Then we hear what sounds like an argument between two men.

  “I don’t suppose you speak whatever language that is,” I say.

  Sebastian sighs heavily. “Tana, I’m so sorry.”

  I echo some of his first words to me. “You didn’t ask for this.”

  “Neither did you.” He thinks for a minute, and then suggests, “Maybe the drone captured the kidnapping?”

  “I have a nasty feeling that these guys are in bed with our drone drivers.”

  He stares at me, waiting. Deep purple circles ring his eyes, which are threaded with spidery red veins. Whatever was in that dart really did a number on him.

  I switch from my low murmur to a whisper. “I recognized a voice. It was Hasanov. And I think I heard Blondie, too.”

  “Agent Macey?”

  I nod.

  “How in the hell are we going to get out of this, Tarzan?”

  It’s a good question. I move my gaze from wall to wall, surveying our prison. I don’t have any suggestions.

  The door opens again and Camo Mask returns. Black Net follows him, carrying a camera. This cannot be good.

  Camo stands between Sebastian and me until Black Net has the camera ready. At his colleague’s nod, Camo digs his fingers into Bash’s hair, pulling back his head, then takes out his knife again and puts it to my partner’s throat. Then he yells loudly and terrifyingly in his language as he jerks on Bash’s hair. The knife point digs in, leaving a small cut that dribbles a drop of blood down The President’s Son’s throat.

  Bash stares defiantly but doesn’t make a sound until Camo Mask releases him and turns to me.

  “Leave her alone!” my partner shouts. “I’m the one you want.”

  Camo Mask waves his knife back and forth in front of my face, shouting menacingly. I’m so focused on the horrific possibilities inspired by this gesture that it takes me a moment to register that his colleague has lowered the camera.

  Camo Mask sheaths his knife again, and I take a breath of relief until he pulls a syringe out of his pocket and pops the plastic cap off.

  “Good night, Princess,” he croons in English as he plunges the needle into my neck.

  Chapter 18

  When I open my eyes next, I’m lying on a mattress on the concrete floor of a windowless room. In one corner are two buckets and a small cardboard box. A thin blanket covers me. I roll over and find Sebastian lying on his own mattress, staring at me. He’s wearing black sweats, and there’s another pile of gray clothing between us.

  “Gray for Miss Grey,” he says.

  I sit up. A long-sleeved sweatshirt and long sweat pants. Generic, no labels. Men’s size small. No underclothes, but I guess that’s to be expected when your captors are men.

  I stand up and begin to peel up my sticky tee shirt. “Think you could turn around?”

  Sebastian sighs and rolls over to face the wall. I change quickly, grateful for the warm dry clothes, although as I pull them on, I am reminded of how badly my skin is chafed from sliding down the glacier.

  My head hurts. My mouth has a tinny taste. “What do you think they injected us with?”

  “Does it matter? I feel like I’ve been drunk for a week. At least I think this is what it would feel like. Without the fun.”

  I rub my finger against the sore spot on my neck as I walk the full length of our jail cell. I’d estimate the room to be ten feet by eight feet. The steel door in the end wall is, of course, locked. Cement block walls. No windows. Like the previous room, there’s an opening near the ceiling crisscrossed by embedded bars, for ventilation, I’d guess. The walls and the air feel clammy. The single light bulb overhead is surrounded by a rusty grid dome bolted into the ceiling. This room was designed to be either a storage closet or a jail cell.

  The box on the floor holds food—crusty bread, cheese, and some mangos. One bucket is filled with water, and there’s a plastic cup sitting beside it. The other bucket is empty.

  “What do you suppose the empty bucket is for?”

  “Use your imagination,” Sebastian says in a dull voice as he pushes himself into a sitting position against the wall.

  Oh. Duh. I guess we’ll need the bucket sooner or later. I pace a couple lengths of the room, already starting to feel claustrophobic.

  “Still,” I say, “I think this is an improvement from being zip-tied to chairs.”

  My partner makes an incredulous noise. I know he’s blaming himself for us landing here. Truth be told, I’d like to blame him, too. But it’s not his fault. I’m upset that I had the bad luck to be partnered with Sebastian Callendro, though. I wonder if the race is over. I envision Catie and Ricco dancing easily across the finish line, winning the million dollar prize.

  Unless I can summon a miracle from inside this prison cell, there’s no hope for Bailey. Tears pool in my eyes, and I turn my face to the wall and bite my lip to stifle a sob.

  “You don’t deserve any of this, Tana,” Bash says, his voice cracking. From the corner of my eye, I see him cover his face with his hands. “I had a decent life, before that damn reporter and the damn popsicle stick. Before I ever met T.L. Garrison.” He spits out the President’s name like it’s a bad taste in his mouth.

  Suck it up, Robinson-Grey. You are not the only one suffering here. I wipe away my tears and try to adjust my attitude.

  He says, “I should never have entered this race.”

  “Yes, you should have, Bash. It’s your right.”

  I realize that racing holds the same value for Sebastian Callendro as it does for me. When you race, it doesn’t matter who anyone else thinks you should be. A win—or even a finish—is an individual accomplishment that nobody else can give you or take away from you. Sebastian was a competitive runner before he was The President’s Son, and odds are that he’ll still be one after Garrison is out of office.

  His eyes are wet when he turns to face me. “When we get out of here, Tana, I will find a way to make this up to you.”

  “Let’s focus on that
first part: when we get out of here.” I am grateful that I still have all my fingers and both ears. I am grateful I haven’t been raped. I am grateful I have dry clothes. I am grateful that, for this moment, I am alive.

  I drag the food box over to our mattresses. “Lunch?”

  Or maybe it’s dinner; I have no idea how much time has passed. Sebastian sits up as I pull out the baguette and a hunk of cheese. No knife, of course, so we have to rip the bread apart and break up the cheese with our fingers. The mangos are particularly messy, but sweet and juicy. When we finish our dessert course, Sebastian rouses himself to go dip up a cup of water, which he brings back and courteously hands to me first.

  “There’s no window—they have to open that door even to see us,” I say. “Maybe we can find a way to jump them.”

  “They will have weapons,” Sebastian says. “Think we can knock them out with a plastic bucket or a stale baguette?”

  “Team Seven is immortal,” I remind him, using his words from last night. “We have survived crocodiles, land mines, falling into a crevasse, and sliding down a glacier.”

  “It was only one crocodile.”

  I toss him an exasperated look. “Could you be a little more gloomy?”

  He presses his lips together for a second as if he’s trying not to smile. “And you forgot about almost drowning in that river on the first day.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right. So we are totally immortal.” I’m glad to see he’s getting back to his old self. At least I think this is his old self; how would I really know? “Lucky that I got captured with The President’s Son. Your father will have the special forces out looking for us.”

  “Yes. It only took them a decade to find Bin Laden. I’m sure they will find us eventually.”

  He seems determined to be pessimistic.

  “I’m sorry we’re here, but I’m glad I’m not alone. Team Seven will survive.” I hold out a fist for him to bump.

  He doesn’t. Instead, he stretches out his legs on the mattress and then holds out his arms to me. I sit down between his legs and lean back against his chest. He puts his arms around me, just like Emilio used to. A little zing of guilt shoots through me. But surely, in these circumstances, Shadow wouldn’t begrudge me the small comfort of human contact.

  The faint sound of voices wafts in through the grate above our heads. So we’re still in the same building with our captors. I’m not sure what difference that makes, but it’s information. I try to determine how many voices there are. Still only two, I think. I only heard two men before.

  Sebastian rests his chin on my shoulder and we both stare at the door on the opposite wall.

  “I won’t let them take you, Tana,” he whispers, his breath tickling my ear.

  “Ditto, Bash.”

  Our hushed voices make our words seem like a holy vow. For some reason, it feels like my next line should be, “Let us pray.”

  But I’m not exactly religious, so instead, I murmur, “Let us plot.”

  Sebastian’s arms tighten around me. “Amen.”

  Chapter 19

  I never realized how hard it is to tell time without a clock or a phone or even daylight. Our captors don’t ever switch off the overhead light, so it’s eternally, infernally bright in our cell. Sufficient time passes that we eat all the food in the box, and we both use the disgusting bucket several times, and now our cell reeks accordingly.

  We exercise, doing pushups and jumping jacks. We tried sit-ups, but we discovered those motions had a tendency to open up various scrapes and scratches on our backs and thighs.

  I have one spot that feels infected on my back under the waistband of my sweats, so I tug my pants down to my hips to keep the rubbing to a minimum. The gashes on my thigh and my chin itch like crazy, and Sebastian is always fingering the spots on his neck and temple, so I’m guessing those irritate him, too.

  My head itches with dried sweat and dirt. At least I hope that’s what’s making it itch. If we have bedbugs sharing our cell with us, there’s nothing we can do about it. Sebastian scratches, too.

  Three years ago I learned that it’s impossible to maintain a state of high anxiety for more than a couple of hours. I know that at any moment I could be raped, shot, stabbed, beheaded, or all of the above; but by the time I’ve chewed all my fingernails down to the quick without any of those happening, I transition into a state of dullness.

  To pass the time, we rearrange our cell—move the mattresses closer to each other, position the toilet bucket in the farthest corner from our ‘kitchen corner,’ which is next to our ‘bedroom’ and contains our food box and water bucket. The food and water attracts one cockroach, which Bash flattens with his shoe. Afterwards, we’re kind of sorry we killed it. Life seems precious right now.

  Instead of discussing the tortures that might be in our future, we make small talk. First up is music—call me perverse, but I like country. You can almost always decipher the words, and those songs tell a story. Sebastian wrinkles his nose when I explain this. I have pretty much the same reaction to his affection for jazz. I can never find the melody in those tunes. We exhaust that topic pretty quickly. We clearly won’t be singing a duet anytime soon.

  Favorite things to do aside from running: mine is reading true adventures, like books about exploring Antarctica or deep-sea diving. Another perversity of mine: I read print books—I can get them for free from the library and there are no batteries to recharge. I love the way I can travel around the globe and conquer any obstacle in a good story.

  “I like to build things,” Sebastian tells me. His ‘real father’—the man who raised him—is a house builder and took Sebastian along on his jobs. “When I don’t have classes and homework,” he says, “I volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.”

  Along with the garbage mining, this reminds me that my partner has more of a social conscience than I do. In comparison, I seem like a self-absorbed girl. I spend most of my time just trying to survive.

  He describes his dorm room and the campus of Enciron University. It sounds nice.

  When I explain my daily life to him, he makes few remarks. It does sound pretty pathetic, but I’d give anything to be reading in my tiny shed apartment and cleaning cages at the zoo right now.

  We discuss where we’d like to travel. Sebastian wants to go to Cuba and see the Caribbean, since his mother has told him all about it. For the same reasons, I want to see Zimbabwe, but I remember at the last minute to say Tanzania instead.

  We examine every inch of our prison. Sebastian lifts me up so I can try the grate. It’s made of rusty criss-crossed rebar sunk solidly into the concrete. We have nothing to saw through the metal with.

  Through the grid I see the room in which we were first held hostage. A slender man enters through the adjoining door and fills up a pitcher with water from the faucet. He has skin about the color of mine, and a neatly trimmed beard.

  Through the open door behind him, the end of a sagging, broken-down couch is visible, along with another man’s camo-clad legs and boots, and the edge of a table. I can hear a television or radio, too. There seem to be only two men, but the constant electronic voices make it hard to be sure about that.

  Our captors must be as bored as we are. I wonder if they take shifts or if the same two are always with us.

  We repeat the lift process to check the dome grid over the ceiling light. The bolts that hold it against the cement ceiling are rusted solid in place. I’m not quite sure what we’d do if we could pull it off—maybe use the metal grid as a very awkward weapon? But examining it is something to do, along with checking the view through the ventilation grate.

  A couple of times per day—or maybe it’s night—our captors rattle our door. Each time, that small sound instantly revives my terror. Tanzania Grey’s beheading plays over and over again in my mind. At first, the thought of such a death makes me nauseous with terror. Eventually I become outraged instead of petrified.

  The first time our captors come in, we are both in bed asleep,
blankets over our heads to block out the overhead light. Sebastian and I startle awake simultaneously, knowing it’s too late to put our escape plan into effect. My heart pounds as one faceless man points an automatic weapon at us. He moves the barrel to aim at me, then Sebastian, then me again. He yells at us in his language—Arabic? Farsi? Pashto? Urdu?

  Why don’t they offer these languages in high school instead of French and Spanish?

  The other masked guy tosses in a new food box, slaps down a new bucket of water along with an empty one. Then he carries out the toilet bucket. Then they are gone again. It takes hours for my heart and brain to adjust to the fact that I am still alive. I already want revenge, and they haven’t even killed or tortured me yet. We vow never to sleep again at the same time, and to wear our shoes at all times.

  Of course we try to pick the lock and pry the door open at least a dozen times, but we don’t have anything stiffer or smaller than the plastic thingies on the ends of our shoelaces, so it’s not surprising that nothing budges.

  We try to imagine what the government is doing to find us—using spy satellites, Navy Seals, the CIA, Interpol. I bet there’s a lot of nasty finger-pointing going on in the White House and Congress.

  How much longer will we be held here? We pace and exercise. We create and discard multiple plans about what we will do the next time the door opens. We try to devise tasks to keep our imaginations away from what might happen next.

  Halfway up the wall behind the door, there’s a patch of dark mold. It starts out in the shape of Australia, but Sebastian and I take turns scraping at it with the edge of our water cup. Bash manages to scrape it into a rough silhouette of a beach with a palm tree. I change the cloud in the sky to a couple of flying birds, but as I’m finishing, my throat suddenly gets tight and dry, and then I realize that I’ve recreated the tattoo I saw on the ninja’s neck three years ago. I quickly scrape away all traces of the second bird.