She soon ran out of slope and the luge slammed into a red canvas-covered foam wall. Lara jumped from the sled and ran back about ten feet. She sprinted for the wall, and from several feet away, she jumped and caught her hands on the top edge. Arms still exhausted from her rope climb, Lara struggled to pull herself up. In her mind, she heard Jackson and Caden both urging her on. As she swung her knee up and over the top, another luge slammed into the foam wall ten feet away, almost shaking her loose. She still had a lead, but someone was right behind her.
A row of elevated rings stretched out into the distance, hung from a minimalist structure. Monkey rings, like an old-school playground, all made of high-tech plastic. Her arms ached already. The first ring was five feet away. Lara leapt from the top of the wall and caught the ring with both hands. As she swung toward the next one, a tiny shock ripped through her shoes, shooting pain into her feet. Damn! They were sending pulses of electricity under her. She yanked up her legs and grabbed the next ring. Keeping her lower half in a tucked position added strain to her abdominal muscles and slowed her down. She wondered if the guys were feeling the shock too. Were the viewers punishing her for being in the lead?
She was in the lead, wasn’t she? Makil had to be back there somewhere. She hadn’t seen his luge move ahead of her.
The rings went on for hundreds of feet. Lara’s arms and abdomen burned with the strain and she was grateful for the gloves. What would happen if she slipped? Would she pass through the layer of shock and land safely on the three-foot-thick pads? She kept grabbing rings, one hand after the other, making small grunting noises from the effort to keep going. The slap of flesh-on-metal closed in behind her.
The end of the structure was twenty feet away. Lara pushed herself but didn’t sense any gain in speed. She was maxed out. She made it to the small platform, crossed it, and saw the slide on the other side. She dropped to her butt, lifted her feet, and slid to the arena floor, made of old runway tarmac.
A single, freestanding escalator rose in the air a hundred yards away. Lara sprinted for it. Pounding footsteps were right behind her, coming at an angle from the right. Jason! Being in the middle, with a straight shot at the escalator, gave her a fraction of an advantage. Lara pumped her arms for all she was worth, her sprint workouts at the track paying off. She hit the escalator first, guessing correctly that the steps were coming down and she’d be working against them.
Taking long strides to hit every third step, Lara began the climb. The escalator was about forty feet long with a twenty-foot rise and was just wide enough that a competitor could pass her if he had the strength and speed. Over the noise of her own labored breathing, she heard Jason sucking wind at her flank. He seemed close enough to reach out and grab her. That kind of contact wasn’t allowed, and with cameras recording every move, she didn’t think he would.
About halfway up, Lara’s lungs began to burn and her throat was as dry as an August day in Arizona. She felt herself slow down. God, this was insane. It could take forever. She pushed on, climbing and climbing and getting almost nowhere.
Behind her, Jason yelled, “Get out of my way!”
Lara ignored him and made a final burst for the top. Another short platform and another escalator. This structure headed back down, but of course, the steps were rising. Legs weakened from her intense climb, Lara stumbled her first step on the escalator, twisting her ankle a little as she landed. A shock of pain traveled up her shin. She fell forward, but grabbed the rails before landing facedown on the moving stairs.
Lara switched strategies and pushed off the rails to vault to the bottom, touching her feet to the upward- bound steps as little as possible. She stumbled off the escalator and looked up for the next obstacle. All she saw was a red ribbon stretched across the middle section of the arena about thirty feet away. Reporters and cameramen waited on the other side.
Ignoring the pain surging everywhere and never once looking over her shoulder, Lara sprinted for the finish.
Chapter 32
Three weeks earlier, Mon., April 24, noon
Paul took a diet pill, ate half his sandwich, and rushed outside. He stood near the bus stop, with no intention of going anywhere. Sweat broke out on his upper body as he waited for Camille to come out of their work building. The summer heat was coming on. Soon he would have to stay inside as much as possible. When he spotted Camille in her white sundress, he stepped behind the bus sign so she wouldn’t see him.
After a minute, he glanced back and watched her walk toward Broadway Bistro, the restaurant she frequented but never invited him to. He suspected she was seeing someone else. She’d canceled their date at the last minute on Friday, saying she wasn’t feeling well, then hadn’t returned his texts over the weekend, except once to say she needed rest.
Paul hadn’t seen her in the office that morning and he thought she was avoiding him. He hurried after her, not bothering to be discrete. Camille never looked back, so he followed her to the restaurant, admiring the way she carried herself, shoulders back and head up. Paul envied her natural confidence.
From inside the restaurant doorway, he saw her take a seat in a booth where another woman waited. Were they lovers? Paul saw the hostess eyeball him, so he stepped back outside. Okay, so she’d met a friend for lunch. It didn’t prove she wasn’t seeing another man or that she wasn’t breaking up with him.
He spent the rest of his lunch break walking around the block, sweating in the ninety-degree heat. He figured he burned at least three hundred calories.
Back inside, he went through security and stepped on the elevator. An older co-worker named Marlie was on board. She leaned over and pushed the button for the third floor. “By the way, Paul. I’ve been meaning to say that you look terrific. You’ve lost a lot of weight and it really shows in your face.”
“Thanks.” Did she not realize he’d had two cosmetic procedures? Was she unobservant or just trying to be polite?
“What’s your diet secret?” She smiled and touched his arm.
“I’ve been taking a supplement called MetaboSlim.”
Marlie looked alarmed. “Health websites say there’s a chemical in that stuff that is really bad for you. I think it cause changes in your brain chemistry.”
“But it’s FDA approved.”
“That doesn’t mean much anymore.”
Paul was irritated with the conversation. It wasn’t her business. “I’m only taking it temporarily. I’m almost at my goal weight.” The elevator stopped and he stepped off without saying anything else. He’d tried to quit the MetaboSlim recently, but the first day without it, he’d become too depressed to function. Now he was trying to cut back slowly.
At five, he strode down to Camille’s office and walked in as she prepared to leave for the day. “Can I walk you to your car? I’d like to talk.”
“Of course.” She smiled, her beauty taking his breath away. In that moment, Paul believed everything would turn out well.
He waited until they were in the parking lot to speak. A few other employees were getting into their cars, but they seemed focused on going home.
“Camille, are you breaking up with me?”
“No. It was just one date and I wasn’t well.” Her tone was sharp.
“You’re angry with me because I haven’t managed to get Morton fired.”
“Not angry. Just disappointed.” Camille climbed in her car and rolled down the window. “Can you make it happen?”
“I’m trying, but I’m not really a hacker and I can’t get into his WorldChat page. He pays for extra security and changes his password every day.”
“If I get a sleazy photo of him, can you post it somewhere it doesn’t belong?”
“Of course.” He would find a way. Paul hated admitting to his lover that he was failing the one thing she’d asked of him. “We’ll see each other this Friday? At my place?”
