Read Online Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) by Pamela Beason - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Pamela Beason
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instead of running this time, I’m forced to swim through a river of blood to find Bailey, Aaron, and Sebastian.
I wake up when I feel fingers crawling across my back.
Chapter 5
I yelp and roll over. The elephant hair cord saws into my neck as I whip my elbow around to give my attacker a blow to the head.
Sebastian jerks away, slapping his hand over his right eye.
“Sorry,” he grunts, sliding back to the edge of my cot. He’s wearing only a pair of boxers.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snarl, pushing myself to a sitting position. That’s all I need right now, to have a partner I can’t trust to keep his hands to himself while I’m sleeping.
“I thought I saw lights.” He rubs his brow. “Something was glowing on your back.”
“Oh.” Now I’m mortified. “The fireflies.”
I turn my back to him and jerk on the tail of my sleep shirt, pulling it down so he can see the tattoos that cover my right shoulder blade. “They have this special ink that lights up when I have strong emotions. I was having a bad dream.”
“Cool,” he says. “Not the dream, but the tats.” He rubs the tip of his index finger over my shoulder. His touch gives me goosebumps. “Why fireflies?”
I twist around again to give him a shrug. “For my mom and dad. I like to think there are fireflies in heaven.”
“But why the third one?”
I can’t tell my race partner about my brother. “That’s me.”
“Why doesn’t that one light up?”
“Because I’m still here.” I certainly can’t tell him about how I don’t know whether Aaron is still on earth or not.
“I get it,” he says, sitting back. Then he stands up off my bed and turns his back to dress.
I hear the steady drum of rain on the outside of our tent, so today we will run in the wet. It’s so humid here anyway that it probably won’t make a lot of difference. While I dress in my normal running gear, I worry about my dream. That I would have nightmares about my parents and my brother is understandable, especially after seeing that pendant. It’s a post-traumatic stress thing.
But why did my dreams include Sebastian and Bailey? Why is my subconscious already trying to count the living among the lost?
My neck is ringed by a raw red stripe where the cord chafed it when I rose up to whack Sebastian. The mark stings a little. I pull the necklace off over my head. No way will I wear that pendant during the race. Whatever it means, I don’t need an audience all over the world to see it. I put it in my personal lockbox to be transported to our next stop.
We confer in the main tent over breakfast, Sebastian and I and two of our keepers, who are dressed in identical black rain suits, which must be regulation secret squirrel storm wear. The weather is already hot, and wearing one of those has got to be like walking around inside your own personal sauna. Outside the tent flap, the downpour blurs our jungle surroundings.
We focus on the map stretched across our breakfast table. The second checkpoint on the island is on the far side of what appears to be a swamp or a marsh. But in my experience, wetlands marked on maps aren’t necessarily deep, or even always present. Sebastian and I agree that if the area’s not as soggy as it looks, there might be animal trails through it that we can follow, or if it is a swamp, there will be trails around the worst parts. So we plot a course directly to the water’s edge and then around it to a military road on the other side. There’s not a lot of choice in the terrain today; most of the racers will probably take the same route, so we don’t have any time to lose.
I vote to carry our climbing rope and harnesses. You never know what you might encounter on this island. Sebastian agrees to the rope but only one harness, which actually makes more sense; every ounce counts. As we choke down a tasteless mix of carbs and protein and vitamin glop in the wee hours before dawn, we watch the vids
I wake up when I feel fingers crawling across my back.
Chapter 5
I yelp and roll over. The elephant hair cord saws into my neck as I whip my elbow around to give my attacker a blow to the head.
Sebastian jerks away, slapping his hand over his right eye.
“Sorry,” he grunts, sliding back to the edge of my cot. He’s wearing only a pair of boxers.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snarl, pushing myself to a sitting position. That’s all I need right now, to have a partner I can’t trust to keep his hands to himself while I’m sleeping.
“I thought I saw lights.” He rubs his brow. “Something was glowing on your back.”
“Oh.” Now I’m mortified. “The fireflies.”
I turn my back to him and jerk on the tail of my sleep shirt, pulling it down so he can see the tattoos that cover my right shoulder blade. “They have this special ink that lights up when I have strong emotions. I was having a bad dream.”
“Cool,” he says. “Not the dream, but the tats.” He rubs the tip of his index finger over my shoulder. His touch gives me goosebumps. “Why fireflies?”
I twist around again to give him a shrug. “For my mom and dad. I like to think there are fireflies in heaven.”
“But why the third one?”
I can’t tell my race partner about my brother. “That’s me.”
“Why doesn’t that one light up?”
“Because I’m still here.” I certainly can’t tell him about how I don’t know whether Aaron is still on earth or not.
“I get it,” he says, sitting back. Then he stands up off my bed and turns his back to dress.
I hear the steady drum of rain on the outside of our tent, so today we will run in the wet. It’s so humid here anyway that it probably won’t make a lot of difference. While I dress in my normal running gear, I worry about my dream. That I would have nightmares about my parents and my brother is understandable, especially after seeing that pendant. It’s a post-traumatic stress thing.
But why did my dreams include Sebastian and Bailey? Why is my subconscious already trying to count the living among the lost?
My neck is ringed by a raw red stripe where the cord chafed it when I rose up to whack Sebastian. The mark stings a little. I pull the necklace off over my head. No way will I wear that pendant during the race. Whatever it means, I don’t need an audience all over the world to see it. I put it in my personal lockbox to be transported to our next stop.
We confer in the main tent over breakfast, Sebastian and I and two of our keepers, who are dressed in identical black rain suits, which must be regulation secret squirrel storm wear. The weather is already hot, and wearing one of those has got to be like walking around inside your own personal sauna. Outside the tent flap, the downpour blurs our jungle surroundings.
We focus on the map stretched across our breakfast table. The second checkpoint on the island is on the far side of what appears to be a swamp or a marsh. But in my experience, wetlands marked on maps aren’t necessarily deep, or even always present. Sebastian and I agree that if the area’s not as soggy as it looks, there might be animal trails through it that we can follow, or if it is a swamp, there will be trails around the worst parts. So we plot a course directly to the water’s edge and then around it to a military road on the other side. There’s not a lot of choice in the terrain today; most of the racers will probably take the same route, so we don’t have any time to lose.
I vote to carry our climbing rope and harnesses. You never know what you might encounter on this island. Sebastian agrees to the rope but only one harness, which actually makes more sense; every ounce counts. As we choke down a tasteless mix of carbs and protein and vitamin glop in the wee hours before dawn, we watch the vids
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