“I didn’t just come to visit,” Sebastian finally says. “I came to collect on our deal.”
I wet my lips with my tongue, anxious about what he’s going to ask for—a contract to pay back the money? Kinky sex?
Like everyone else in the world, Emilio saw photos of our prison in that now famous underground bunker, the mattresses side by side.
“Were you sleeping together?” he demanded via videochat. I knew he was thinking that he and I had not yet made love, and now I was sharing my body with The President’s Son.
Sometimes I feel like I know Bash a lot better than I know Emilio, even though Bash and I were only together for ten days and I grew up with Emilio during the last three years.
Of all people, Emilio should understand why I will always have a special relationship with Sebastian. Together, we have survived a battle. Emilio will always have his war buddies, and I will always have mine.
“Yes, Shadow,” I answered. “We were sleeping together.”
It wasn’t even remotely sexual. I’m not saying sex never crossed my mind, because I did wonder if I was going to die a virgin. But when you think you’re going to be killed at any moment, you just want to feel someone’s arms around you.
That someone takes my hand now. “Amelia Robinson,” he murmurs.
My blood freezes in my veins. My heart skips a beat. Has he put it all together?
“How did—” I stutter. Has he told the government who I am, or did they tell him?
“Your nightmares. Aaron. Your tales of Mount Baker. An old photo on the Net.”
Oh God, he found the one photo I can never figure out how to take down, a photo posted by my middle school, showing the track team medalists. I’m in the middle of the group and although I was only thirteen then, I’m still recognizable to anyone searching for my face.
“And another thing.” He turns to his beater truck, pulls open the passenger door, and extracts a small package, untidily wrapped in brown paper and taped as if it’s already been opened.
The return address, written in pencil, says P.A. Patterson, from a P.O. Box in Johannesburg, South Africa. My mouth drops open. “Where did you─?”
“It was mailed to me,” he explains. “With a letter that asked me to get it to you.”
Holding my breath, I unwrap the paper to reveal a padded envelope that has been slit open. I extract a beautiful carving of a running cheetah. And a note: Please contact me, Amelia. – [email protected].
Anxiety sweeps over me like a wildfire. Who the hell is P.A. Patterson? What does this mean? I’ve been studying the photos of my parents from the scrapbook, trying to identify all strangers, looking at those scans of accounts and reports, looking for clues.
“Sorry, Tana. I wanted to be sure it wasn’t anthrax or a letter bomb, so I opened it,” Sebastian murmurs, touching my hand.
His gaze is as laser-intense as always. He asks, “What happened to Amelia Robinson?”
For a second, it seems as if time stands still, and all I can hear is the rush of my own blood in my ears.
Can I share my history with Sebastian? Government lackeys follow him everywhere. Words don’t seem safe, so I just shake my head.
“I haven’t told anyone.” He puts both his hands on my shoulders. “I will never tell anyone.”
I look deep into his eyes. For more than three years now, I have so desperately wanted to tell someone. I so badly need an ally.
Sebastian Callendro and I have faced death together. If I can’t trust him, I can’t trust anyone.
I pull him down to sit on the front porch step. The sun sets over the Olympic Mountains in the far west as, finally, after three years, I tell another person about what happened to my family in Bellingham. An entire household erased overnight. A teenage girl on the run from enemies she can’t identify.
“It sounds crazy, even to me,” I conclude.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned since becoming The President’s Son, it’s never to underestimate what evil lurks in the hearts of men.” After a beat, he adds, “And women.”
I grin at that; I know he’s thinking of Agent Macey. I remember our guards—all male. “But mostly men.”
He sighs. “You’re probably right.”
I look at the note again. “Please contact me. No way in hell am I going to do that.”
He stands and holds up his right hand. “I solemnly swear to always protect your secrets, Tanzania Grey.” He lets his arm drop back to his side. “Now, it’s your turn to pay up.”
I push myself to my feet so I can look him in the eye. “What do you want?”
His laser-green gaze searches mine. “I want you to teach me how to disappear.”
This startles me. I had nothing to lose by disappearing; he has everything. “But college, your family…”
“The semester is over. I’ve signed up for correspondence work for the next two. Garrison will be out of office in ten months. I only need you to help me vanish for one year.”
With his haircut and goatee and mustache, he is already halfway to a totally different person. I sag with relief and plant a brief kiss on his lips. “That I can do.”
Tonight, when I say good night to the world, I will tell the stars that am grateful for finding a friend so excellent that we can trust each other with our lives.
~ END OF BOOK ONE ~
Acknowledgements
I owe a big THANK YOU and hug to the following readers, whose excellent advice helped to shape RACE WITH DANGER:
Jeanine Clifford, astute reader/reviewer
Robert L. Slater, author of The Deserted Lands series
Eireann Carter, reader extraordinaire
Sara Stamey, author of Islands
Virginia Herrick, most excellent Professional Editor
Books by Pamela Beason
The Neema Mysteries
THE ONLY WITNESS
THE ONLY CLUE
The Summer Westin Mysteries
ENDANGERED
BEAR BAIT
UNDERCURRENTS
The Langston Green Romantic Suspense Series
SHAKEN
BOOK 2 – COMING SOON
Nonfiction E-books
SO YOU WANT TO BE A PI?
SAVE YOUR MONEY, YOUR SANITY, AND OUR PLANET
Keep up with Pam on http://www.pamelabeason.com
The sequel to Race with Danger is in the works. Here’s a preview of Chapter 1.
Race to Truth
Chapter 1
Ski to Sea. Anyone who has ever spent much time in the town of Bellingham, Washington knows that name. Ski to Sea is a one-of-a-kind 93-mile race from the North Cascades to Bellingham Bay on Memorial Day weekend. It’s the ultimate relay, with seven legs, each showcasing a different sport.
At the start, thousands of cross-country skiers stampede across the snow to complete a four-mile loop. They hand off to their downhill skiing or snowboarding teammates, who loop around the mountain for several miles until they reach the runners. The runners then dash down the switchbacking mountain highway for approximately eight miles to hand off to the road bikers, who then, after pedaling for forty-plus miles, pass the timing chip off to the canoe teams on the Nooksack River. The canoeists then paddle like crazy for nearly twenty miles to meet up with mountain bikers, who ride like maniacs on a course of around fourteen miles to Bellingham Bay. In the final leg, kayakers give it their all, paddling a five-mile course around buoys in windy Bellingham Bay.
The first kayaker to extract himself or herself from the cockpit at the landing site and run up the hill and ring the bell wins it for the team.
You might think that such an exciting contest would receive worldwide attention, but aside from athletes around the world that seek out such events, most people outside of Bellingham have never heard of Ski to Sea. I suspect that’s because A) the race is hard to film since the course is stretched out across the wilderness, but mainly because B) no corporation has yet found a way to make big money from Ski to Sea.<
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And, also because of B, there’s no monetary prize for the winners. Sometimes local companies cough up prizes like gift certificates for pizza, sports merchandise, and one year, even plane tickets, but it remains a race where athletes compete for fun, not for cash.
The race evolved from the original Mount Baker Marathon, which was a contest that started way back in 1911 for big prize money. It’s kind of hard to imagine the antiqueness of it all way back then, and of course it was all men in those dark ages. But what an adventure! Each competitor had to make it from Bellingham by train or car to the base of Mount Baker. Then he ran up the mountain and back down, connected with his transportation, and raced back to town. So although each team had a driver for those antique cars or an engineer for the train, there was only one athlete in those days. The first contestant back to the finish line in Bellingham won.
The original race was, needless to say, treacherous. Runners fell in crevasses, officials damn near froze to death on snowy mountain flanks, cars were wrecked, and a train was derailed when it hit a bull on the tracks. It was definitely the extreme endurance challenge of its day.
Having grown up in Bellingham, I always wanted to participate in the Ski to Sea race. In the modern version, each team consists of eight athletes, two for the canoe race and one for each of the other legs, and each athlete is allowed to compete in only one leg. The race is a lot safer these days, but perhaps not as exciting as the old days and definitely not as financially rewarding for the winner, although seeing all the different sports is uber-cool. Still, athletes and wannabes come from all over the world just for the fun of participating in Ski to Sea.
One Bellinghamster, Alexander Armand, has tried for the last decade to persuade the Ski to Sea organizers to allow a more extreme competition with just one athlete doing all seven legs of the race. Armand was always a bit of a local legend, because he’s Bellingham’s only Olympian athlete (marathon and hurdles) to date. He has skied, ran, biked, and paddled the whole course by himself four and three-quarters times. He never did it on race day—the officials prevented that—but always a couple of days afterward, with a handful of friends to schlep his bikes and canoe and kayak. He didn’t quite get to finish his fifth attempt because he dropped dead of a brain aneurism in the mountain bike section last year.
I was devastated to hear that news, because Armand is one of the few heroes I admire. When my time is up, I hope I depart the planet like he did, outdoors in nature, doing something I care about.
Anyhow, death has made Armand an even bigger local legend, and this year, as homage to him, the Ski to Sea Committee has agreed to allow ten extreme teams to participate. They couldn’t bring themselves (or more likely, their insurance advisors) to allow solo competitors like Armand wanted. Instead, each extreme team will consist of three athletes, who can divide up the seven legs anyway they want, with the caveat that no athlete can compete in more than three legs. The extreme teams will also have separate awards from the regular competitors. Everyone is excited to see if these smaller teams will make better time or if allowing them in the race will be a major disaster.
The organizers are thrilled that the addition of the extreme teams has finally attracted media attention. This year two television companies plan to have drones film the whole race for the very first time.
I am honored that I was asked to compete in the second position—running, road biking, canoeing—on the Way2Go Extreme Team. The email came a couple of months ago via my loyal sponsors, Dark Horse Networks. The message was from someone called JJ, captain of the Way2Go team, who said he knew my history in endurance racing. I don’t know this JJ, but if he’s one of the small group of fans who follows endurance racing, he would know my name. In the last year, I won the Women’s Division of the Patagonia Marathon and placed second in the Grand Canyon Challenge.
So, yes, cross-country running—I can do that in my sleep. As for biking, I don’t have a car, so I commute by bike the thirty-eight miles from my house to my job at the zoo on most days, so my legs are ready. Canoeing is new to me, and I’ve only been on a river three times, but I’m strong and my partner will surely have more experience.
I am nervous when I get off the train at the Amtrak Station in Bellingham. I pull my shawl forward to hide my face as I wait for the crew to unload my bicycle from the luggage car. With luck, I won’t look familiar to anyone. Since I fled from this place at the age of fourteen, I have aged four years, grown nearly five inches, gained thirty pounds, and completely reinvented myself.
Today, I am traveling under the name of Sunita Brown, although the invented name I use on a daily basis is Tanzania Grey. I am dressed in a salwar kameez—the uber-comfy tunic, pants, and shawl combo that many Asian women wear. I even pasted a bindi between my eyebrows. Traditional Hindu women wear red powder circles, but nowadays you can get all colors and shapes of bindis in little peel-off sticker packs. Today mine is a maroon velvet dot with a silver diamond on top. Quite attractive, if I do say so myself.
In combination with my bronze skin and dark hair I inherited from my white mother and black father, this costume instantly transforms me from an American teen into a young woman from India or Pakistan, not an uncommon sight in the hi-tech regions of northwest Washington.
I’m excited to be back in my home town. I’ve missed it terribly.
But I’m frightened, too. There’s always the chance that my race invitation is a setup. JJ might be luring me into a trap. And even if he’s not, there’s the possibility that my parents’ murderers will discover me here, at the scene of the crime.
~END OF PREVIEW~
If you’d like to be notified when the next book in the Run for Your Life series is available, please visit http://pamelabeason.com and sign up for my mailing list. I promise not to share your contact information or use it for any other reason other than book announcements.
About the Author
Pamela Beason is the author of the Summer Westin Mysteries and the Neema Mysteries, as well as several romances and nonfiction books. She has received the Daphne du Maurier Award and the Chanticleer Book Reviews Grand Prize for her writing, as well as several other awards. Pam lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she gets out into the wilderness as often as she can.
Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) Page 18