Race for the Gold
Probably someone out for a walk, not unusual, except that the person appeared to have come from the direction of the athlete housing. So what? he asked himself again. An athlete or trainer out for a stroll, nothing more, winding down just as they were. Nonetheless, prickles of unease danced along the back of Max’s neck as he noticed that the person had a small bundle under one arm.
“Be right back,” he called to Laney, and for some reason he could not explain he found himself following.
“Max?” Laney called from behind him. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. Walking quickly, he closed the gap.
Whoever it was didn’t notice his approach until they were nearly to the wooden dock that served as an overlook and a cast-off point for fishermen trying their luck in the lake. The figure gave a surreptitious glance around, stealthy and unsettling.
“Hey,” Max said.
The form jerked.
Max saw he’d been right—the stranger held a bundle in his arms, which he now readied himself to throw into the water.
“What are you doing?” Max said again.
He heard the sound of running feet and Laney sprinted into view. Max knew suddenly what was in that dark bundle, and he also knew he would not let it go to the bottom of the lake. He reached out to stop the outstretched hands, trying to seize the wrists.
Something sliced through his forearm in a sizzle of pain. He heard Laney cry out as he pitched backward into the water, the weight of his body punching through the thin crust of ice at the lake’s edge.
* * *
Laney hadn’t realized she was screaming as she ran. No words, just an explosion of emotion. Events unfolded in rapid-fire, just as they did in every race. The shove. Max crashing into the water, chips of ice spiraling upward luminous in the moonlight. Movement, darkness, an endless moment of fear.
Then Max’s head popped up. The person who’d pushed him slipped, fell forward before getting up and running along the trail. She didn’t think, just moved, muscles overriding good sense as she closed the gap and hurtled onto the shoulders of the person who had just shoved Max into the pond.
“What are you, crazy?” she grunted.
He, it was a man, she concluded quickly, was sturdy and strong and her fingers lost their grip on the slippery fabric of his ski jacket. She fell to one knee and the man wriggled out of her grasp, grabbed the bundle from the ground and sprinted away. She could run him down, she knew, but she was not sure she could restrain him.
Scrambling to her feet she turned to the water. “Max,” she screamed as loud as she could.
Beth Morrison raced up, dressed in a warm jacket and jeans. “What...?” she started.
“In the pond,” Laney said by way of an answer, yanking off her shoes.
“You’re not jumping in there,” Beth said, clutching Laney’s arm.
Laney shrugged her off and made for the edge of the dock.
“No,” Max shouted from the pond. “Laney, do not jump into this water,” he hollered. “I’m okay.”
She knew it was not true. At her feet was the proof. Drops of blood dotted the snow, and she was pretty sure whom it belonged to. She pushed to the edge of the dock.
“No, Laney. He’s coming out,” Beth said, grabbing her again. “Look.”
Max was indeed making his way to the dock, swimming where he could until he reached the iced edge and then cracking his way through. “He needs help,” she said. “He’s got a bad hip.”
Jackie Brewster hurried up, her cheeks pink, breathing hard. “He’s perfectly fit, and you are not to go in that water, either one of you,” she commanded, unzipping her jacket. “I will if necessary.”
“He’s my trainer...” Laney began. Friend. Confidant. The one who knows me best, her heart filled in. She hesitated, body leaning toward Max, jaw clenched.
“Exactly why he does not want his world-class athlete diving into freezing water,” Jackie snapped.
They stared, riveted, tracking Max’s progress as he swam laboriously to within several feet of the dock.
Laney dropped to her stomach and stretched out her hands to him, her torso hanging over the wooden slats.
“You’re going to fall in,” Beth said, clutching Laney’s legs.
“And so are you,” Jackie added, grabbing Beth around the waist.
Laney snatched up Max’s wrist. She could see pain rippling across his face along with the determination.
“Don’t, Laney,” he said tightly. “Your shoulder. I’ll get out myself.”
He referred to the shoulder she’d dislocated while weight training six months before. “My shoulder is fine, and if you don’t take my hand I’ll jump in and shove you out.”
The muscles in his jaw worked overtime but he clasped her palm.
Together the three of them managed to haul Max out of the frigid water and up onto the dock where he sat, his knees shivering.
Laney put her hands on his shoulders. “Max?”
“Don’t get wet,” he said. “Either one of you. I don’t want anybody...”
“Catching pneumonia,” Laney finished. “I know, I know.” In spite of his commands, she took hold of his arm. “We’re getting you inside.”
He climbed to his feet and shook off the assistance. He gripped his forearm.
“Can you make it?” Laney asked, the darkness working against her as she tried to look him over.
“Of course,” he growled. She probably should have taken offense at his tone, but she knew she would have answered the same way. The mind overrides the body. Mental toughness. They’d steeped themselves in it. Terrible patients, both of them.
They made it back to the athlete dorms and hustled him inside to the dining room. Laney snapped on the lights and Beth began a violent sneezing fit that earned her a worried look from Jackie. Laney ran to fetch a blanket that she draped around Max’s shoulders.
“What happened?” she demanded. “I turned around and you were off chasing someone to the pond.”
Blue lipped, Max took a corner of the blanket and applied pressure to his arm.
Laney pushed closer. “Bad?”
He shook his head, sending icy droplets flying.
Jackie frowned. “Did the man have a knife?”
“No.” Max turned to Laney. “Do you have your phone? I need to call security.”
She fished it out of her pocket and handed him the phone. “What happened? You have to tell me. Was it the same man from the parking lot?”
“Didn’t see his face.”
“Why...?”
He held up a calming hand the same way he always did when she wanted to be skating hard and fast and he forced her to stop and recuperate. Think it through, Birdie, was his never-ending mantra.
She was thinking it through, and the mental energy was getting her nowhere except to a state of near panic.
He tried to dial the phone, but his fingers shook too much so she took it and punched in the numbers before handing it back to him.
“I need to report a problem,” he said before giving a cursory summary and hanging up. “They’re on the way.”
She was pacing now, short, frantic circles as she texted her father.
“Laney, sit down, please,” he said, moving another chair closer. “With me.”
She forced herself into the chair. “Why did you go after the guy in the first place? He was built like a brick wall.”
He jerked. “How do you know that?”
She sighed. “I tried to tackle him.”
His eyes widened and a tinge of color flooded his pale cheeks. “You...did what?”
Jackie gave him a weary nod. “That’s what I thought, too.”
He took her hand and squeezed it hard. “Dumb, Laney. I don’t even have to say why, do I?” he asked in clipped tones.
“No, so don’t bother. It was just as dumb as you taking on the guy and winding up in the lake.”
“I’m...” Max broke off and blew out a hissing breath.
Laney shrugged. “Anyway, he got away and that’s that. Why were you after him in the first place?”
Max heaved a deep sigh, reining in his temper she surmised.
“I saw someone down by the pond, ready to heave something into the water.”
“And you didn’t think it might be a good idea to let him chuck it in and then figure out what it was later?” Beth said, arms folded.
“I knew what it was and I didn’t want it to get wet or trapped there when the rest of the lake froze over.”
“Why?” Laney nearly shouted. “What was it?”
In the dim light his electric-blue eyes were dark and flat. He leveled a look her way that pricked her nerves.
“I think it was your missing skate.”
For a long, silent moment, they all stared at Max.
“Why,” Laney started slowly, “would anyone want to toss my skate in the lake?”
Beth folded herself in a tight hug. “To hide the fact that they tampered with your blade.”
The sound of approaching feet signaled the security team.
“It all sounds so cloak and dagger,” Jackie said. “Are you sure, Max? Very sure?”
He pulled up the ruined sleeve of his running jacket, exposing the neat slice that bisected his arm. “Look like the mark of a seventeen-inch steel blade to you?”
Something cold and ugly slithered up Laney’s spine. “That’s exactly what it looks like,” she whispered.
FOUR
The security people contacted the police, and Max went over the scenario all over again after he was allowed to pull on dry clothes. He’d refused the hospital trip, of course, knowing the wound did not require stitches, and allowed Jackie to patch him up with the first-aid kit. He’d been cut dozens of times in the course of his short-track career. It came with the territory.
The wound stung, not enough to bother him, but two details would not stop circling in his mind. First, someone had taken Laney’s skate. Though the guy had somehow managed to pick up the bundle and take it with him, there was no question that someone wanted to get rid of the evidence. Dressed in dry clothes, holding a cup of hot tea at Laney’s insistence, he felt cold through and through. Who would do something that might result in a racer getting seriously injured? Who wanted her to lose that much?
The second fact that ate at him was Laney’s reckless move down by the pond. Maybe he’d been cavalier in his actions, too, but she was not allowed to be. He interrupted her pacing and pulled her to the corner of the dining room while an officer by the name of Bill Chen interviewed Beth and Jackie.
He remembered Chen’s face from the dozens of interviews he’d done after he regained consciousness those painful years ago—the fringe of salt-and-pepper hair, the five o’clock shadow on the round chin no matter what time of day Chen showed up. The officer had been polite and patient, teasing out information as best he could in between Max’s surgical procedures and periods of sedation.
It hadn’t made any difference. No matter how many times Max had gone over the details of the accident, he could not describe what he hadn’t seen in the first place, since his back had been to the car that hit them and he’d been lost in Laney’s eyes just before his life was ruined.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Max told her. “But you’ve got to promise me you’re going to be smart and safe until we get it straightened out. Doors locked, don’t leave your equipment out in the open.”
“Don’t take candy from strangers?”
“It’s not funny,” he snapped.
She cocked her head, mouth quirked in that way that showed the one small dimple in her cheek. “It looks bad, but really, I’m sure there’s no one after me. Why would there be? I’m just not that important.”
“I don’t know, but I think someone damaged your skate and tried to cover it up.”
She laughed. “That sounds like a bad TV movie. Who would bother?”
“Laney, for every gold medalist there are plenty of losers who would have done absolutely anything to win.”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t used to be so cynical. When you lost, it was one race, one day. You didn’t let it define you.”
He shoved his fingers into his wet pockets, fingers automatically feeling for the scissors that weren’t there, the ones he’d used to cut out little paper animals of every description, a hobby he’d acquired at seven years of age. “I didn’t even get the chance to lose, and I’m angry about that. You should nurse a little anger, too. It will fuel you to the finish line.”
“Then I don’t want to be there.” She trailed fingers along his arm. “I’m going to win because I’ve trained hard and I love the sport and I want it. But if I don’t, I won’t consider myself a loser.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And I don’t consider you one, either. Never have.”
“It’s not about me anymore, as you said. It’s about you. You’re going to get your chance to win that medal.”
“And if I don’t?” He could see the troubled curve to her lips, the heavy lashes that framed her eyes. “Will you see me as a loser, too?”
“No,” he said, throat suddenly tight. “I would never think of you like that. Ever.” Laney, you could never be anything but amazing to me, said the tender part inside him, the only part left that was any good.
“Then why don’t you extend yourself the same courtesy?”
The words hung between them, and he could not think of a single proper way to put the twist of feelings in his gut into words. He reached out and took her by the shoulders. “Listen, this isn’t a joke. You have to be careful.”
“Because I’m your athlete, and you don’t want me to get knocked out of competition again?”
He could not stand that hazel gaze, the unspoiled sweetness that he had no right to enjoy anymore. Swallowing hard, he nodded. “Yes. That’s right.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Max, sometimes I think you forget that what we do isn’t all that important in the scheme of things.”
His stomach tensed. She was losing her motivation, the drive to win. Maybe he could have a buddy of his, a sports psychologist talk to her. “You’ve got...”
Now it was Laney who held up a calming hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I want to win that spot on the team more than anyone else in this building, and I’m going to do that. I’m chasing that medal with everything in my possession, every ounce of talent and hard work that I can bring to bear. But what I do is skate fast. I’m not changing the world. They’re just races. And, yes, I’m going to skate the fastest short-track races in history because that’s what God made me to do, but racing is just one thing, one small part of who I am.”
He could not understand why she looked happy, uncertainly poised as she was on the greatest competition threshold of her life, with someone trying to make sure she did not get there. All she did was skate fast? Just races? He blinked. “I don’t get you sometimes. It wasn’t a small part of my life when I had it. It was my whole life.” And it should be yours, too.
“That’s where you made your miscalculation, Mr. Blanco. You skated fast because that’s what God made you to do, but that was just one heat.”
He felt a flash of pain. “You can say that because you can still race.” Suddenly he wanted to cut down her joy, to diminish that incomprehensible happiness from her face. “What will you do when it’s over?”
She smiled, a big wide grin that seemed to light a candle in the depths of her pupils and ignite the shame deep down in his own gut.
“Then I’ll find out what He wants me to do next.”
He stood, agog, until she lifted on tiptoe and aimed a clumsy kiss that landed at the corner of his mouth. “I’m so relieved that you’re all right. You are more to me than the man who will help me stand on top of the podium.” Then, with the gentlest of caresses to his cheek, she moved away to greet her father.
He realized he was staring at her, so he gathered up his wits and joined Mr. Thompson, who listened to the whole story again, his face grave as the police finished their interviews and promised to check in the next day.
Laney reached a finger out and wiped at a grease stain from her father’s chin. “What did you get into, Dad? Were you working on the cabs?”
He swiped as the smudge. “Yeah. Got a loose belt that needed attention.”
“I thought Mike handled that for you.”
Mr. Thompson rolled his shoulders. “We all pitch in.”
Tanya emerged in the hallway, wrapped in a bathrobe, long brown hair neatly braided into two plaits. “What’s all the noise? I was going to get a snack from the kitchen.”
“In your track shoes?” Laney said.
Tanya looked down at her expensive trainers. “Since I stepped on a nail last season, I don’t go anywhere in bare feet.”
Beth and Jackie joined them and filled Tanya in on the events. Tanya poked a finger at Beth’s shoulder. “How’d you get involved in this? And where’d you go? Thought we were going to watch a movie.”
Max registered for the first time that Jackie and Beth were both dressed for going outside.
Beth waved a hand. “I wanted to talk to my boyfriend, Cy.” Her eyes narrowed, shifting slightly to Jackie. “There’s no privacy anywhere around here, so I went outside.”
Jackie’s lips thinned. “Arranging a meeting?”
“No,” Beth shot back. “I don’t want to get grounded again for sneaking out,” she snapped, words rich with sarcasm. “But I’m going to be twenty next week, and technically I’m a legal adult, and you’re not my mother.”
“You’re far from an adult,” Jackie said smoothly.
Beth flushed. Tanya took her by the arm. “Come back to the room and tell me what Cy said. I’ve got to live vicariously through you, you know, and the other girls are going to want to hear all about the skate-in-the-pond adventure.”
“Ten o’clock lights out,” Jackie said to their retreating backs. Neither girl turned to acknowledge the remark.
“Ten o’clock curfew,” Jackie called again.
“I know, I know,” Beth snapped.
“Then stop testing,” Jackie said, matching Beth’s volume and then some. “And don’t forget what you’re here for.”
“Doesn’t matter if I forget. You’ll remind me,” the girl said with bitterness before she allowed Tanya to lead her away.
Max could read nothing from Jackie’s expression. “Were you checking up on her?”
Jackie gave him a blank look. “What?”
“You were outside, too, during the pond incident. Were you checking up on her?”
Jackie sighed, shadows of fatigue darkening her skin. “She’s impulsive, immature. She needs a mother as much as a coach. I’m not very maternal.” Jackie spoke as if she was talking to herself. “Her mother is the CEO of the biggest mining company in the world. She gave Beth everything, but you can’t give somebody drive. You have to be hungry to have drive.”
Max knew exactly where his own hunger had come from. It was born in the antiseptic waiting room where he’d taken off his shoes and practiced his wobbly skating skills on the linoleum while his four-year-old brother Robby had endured treatments for leukemia. The disease had taken his life anyway, a few days before his fifth birthday.
Lap after lap had buried the need deeper. He would control his own body to the point where he was the best in the world, invincible. His own parents had means, but Beth’s mother had billions. And Laney’s birth mother? She’d had the need only to feed her habit, from what he’d learned. Maybe Jackie was right; they both hungered in their own way. He was not sure what to say, and he saw from the uncomfortable look on Laney and Mr. Thompson’s faces that they shared his unease.
“Beth’s going to do well,” Laney said softly. “She’ll dig down deep to get what she wants.”
“She wants a mother, not a coach,” Jackie said, still gazing down the darkened hallway. “But she’s not going to get that from me.” Jackie shook her head and seemed to rouse herself from her thoughts. “I had four brothers.”
“No kids?” Mr. Thompson asked.
She answered dreamily, “A son. He’s a trial lawyer.” She thumbed her phone to life and showed them the photo of a dark-haired, thick-browed man. “Lives with his dad. Fortunate for him, because mothers make their kids weak,” she said with a glance at Laney. “You’re better off without one.”
Max saw Laney flinch, and he frowned at the massive insensitivity, but Coach Jackie appeared not to notice.
Mr. Thompson put an arm around Laney. “She did have a mother, a good woman who loved her enough to let her be who she was meant to be.”
Jackie smiled. “And a father who didn’t let the mother get in the way.”
Dan’s face tightened and he squeezed Laney closer as Jackie said good-night and left.
“She’s harsh,” Max said, trying to gauge Laney’s reaction.
Laney broke into her customary smile. “Maybe we could learn from her.” She put on her best scowl. “It’s time for bed everyone. Especially all those who have recently jumped in freezing-cold ponds and such.”
He chuckled. “You taking over my job?”
“Of course, so go take your supplements, drink eight glasses of water and get to sleep fast so you’ll be your cheerful good self tomorrow at training.”
“Is that an order, Laney?” he teased.
“Absolutely,” she proclaimed, kissing her father, taking Max’s arm and propelling him toward the exit.
Max allowed himself to be swept along in the tide of Laney’s cheerful conversation, but he knew she must be wondering, as he was, who had taken her skate and tried so hard to get rid of it.
As they walked past the windows, he had an uncomfortable feeling that there were more problems waiting in the darkness.
* * *
The gray predawn did nothing to lighten the tiny bathroom as Laney ruefully consulted the little notes she’d taped to the bathroom mirror reminding her which of the taps in the shower was for the hot water. Many a scalding she’d endured before she’d swallowed her pride and wrote the messages to herself. Hot and cold, only two choices and it frustrated her to no end that she could not remember that simple detail, one even a child could manage.
So you need a note, Laney. So what? The needles of hot water soothed her muscles, still sore from the crash. A slight pain in her shoulder reminded her that the day had gone from a crash to a tackle, which seemed hard to believe as she greeted another morning. Whatever had happened, she was determined not to let it deflect one iota of mental energy from her training. Run the day or it will run you, Max always told her.
Somehow the image of Max disappearing under the water stubbornly refused to leave her head. At the moment he sank, she had not cared about anything else in the world but that he should resurface unharmed. He was her trainer and friend, she reminded herself. Of course she would feel that way. But something new and different circled inside her chest, a feeling that she’d not experienced in a very long time, irregular and delicate as a bird hopping from branch to branch. She pressed her hands to the wet tile and tried to refocus.
There was one thing and one thing only that could drive every thought and care from her psyche, and that was training. Long, grueling, bone-crunching training. The surge of fire in her belly urged her on as she dressed and packed her gear for the oval. Her second pair of skates, her only other pair, was packed safely in her bag, along with the EpiPen she’d fortunately never had to use.
Needles, she thought with a shudder. A person could live a very happy life without ever having a close encounter with one. She’d had plenty after the hit-and-run accident. Cubby grudgingly awakened and ate his cat food topped with a small piece of chicken she’d swiped from the kitchen. In stealth mode, she let herself out, locking the door behind her.
The other doors along the hallway were closed. At 5:00 a.m., the girls would be clinging to those last few hours of sleep. No sound of anyone stirring, even Mama Love, the team chef, who she knew liked to get a good start on the breakfast preparations. Laney took an apple and a hard-boiled egg from the snack drawer in the fridge and let herself outside into the cold.
“Good morning.”
She jumped a step backward from the security guard.
“You scared me.”
He smiled politely. “Sorry. Checking on the dorms. Going out?”