Chapter One
The man startled Morgan, coming up beside her to match her pace, reducing the length of
his stride to compensate for his longer legs. Her headphones had masked the sound of his
footfalls, and she had been too preoccupied to be aware of anyone behind her. The running
path was usually hers alone at this hour, when most souls were still snug in their beds or
putting on the coffee pot. Few were willing to brave the cold dawn. Winter was coming, and
the ranks of fair weather joggers, so resolute in April, had thinned with the autumn
leaves.
She shot him a look devoid of either challenge or allure, and kept her headphones on to
discourage conversation. She didn’t care to race, and she wasn’t interested in hearing his
well rehearsed pickup line. Her morning runs had always been a time of solitude and
meditation, and she needed those things more than ever now.
He just grinned back and cocked a finger in the air by way of greeting, then looked
straight ahead and held his place beside her, not close enough to be threatening, but
disinclined to renounce his post position.
All right, she thought, I know how this game is played.
As a child, she had often annoyed her older brother Robby with the echo game, imitating
every one of his words and gestures. The game was the most fun for her when he became
exasperated and began to threaten. Then she would shout his own words right back at him.
“Stop that!”
“I’m telling Mom!”
“I mean it!”
“It’s not funny anymore!”
Eventually he found a way to defeat her. As soon as she began the game, her brother
would drop to the ground and start doing pushups. She was a strong girl, but more than two
or three ‘boy- style’ pushups, with only her toes and palms on the floor, were beyond her
ability.
Game over.
That had been years ago, of course, when Robby was healthy.
But running was her forte, and this cocky Lothario was about to learn a lesson. She
guessed that he was new to jogging, his sweats had a fresh pressed look, and his shoes
were barely scuffed. Perhaps he had seen her here on other mornings, and thought that this
would be a clever way to meet her. She dismissed the thought as paranoia. She didn’t
regard herself to be beautiful enough to merit a stalker, especially one handsome enough
to meet women without subterfuge. Anyway, tending bar taught her to see trouble coming,
and this one ranked low on the creep scale.
So she would test his stamina and see what price her companionship was worth.
It was three miles around the lake, an easy enough run at a moderate pace. The course
was mainly level. A busy street paralleled the path on the left, with condos beyond. On
the right was only water. She had been taking it easy, wanting to make the run last, but
was capable of much more. So she picked up speed, and smirked as she saw him begin to drop
back.
Her triumph was brief. In a moment he erased her lead and drew alongside.
All righty then!
She stretched out her long legs, relaxing into the long lope that had served her so well
in her competitive years. At such times, she felt as though she were being drawn forward
by an invisible force, and the rhythmic slap of her feet against the earth was merely a
metronome ticking off the miles. The music swelled in her earphones, carrying her along.
It was a new age mix, heavy on the wind chimes and Gregorian chants, but selected for its
steady beat.
Her companion drifted away from her side momentarily, as they purled past a fat man
grinding along on a bicycle, then they flowed together again. She glanced at her silent
companion, expecting to see him sweating and laboring to keep up, and was annoyed by the
indifferent ease of his stride.
A test of endurance began. Many runners could match this pace for a few hundred yards,
but oxygen starved muscles eventually lose strength and falter. She expected to outlast
him easily, yet they strode on for more than a mile, arms pumping, plumes of steam
exploding from their mouths and trailing in their wake.
As they made the last turn, she could see her finish line ahead, the bench where she had
stripped away her sweatshirt and dropped it beside her water bottle and towel, ignoring
the chill air on her bare arms, knowing that the run would warm her. When she saw the gym
bag beside her gear, his gym bag, she reacted with a hitch in her stride, as she thought
again of the possibility that this meeting had been no accident.
Taking advantage of her moment of hesitation, the man began to sprint.
Cocky bastard! She had nearly convinced herself that he had reached his limit, that pure
stubbornness was allowing him to keep up with her. It was daunting to know that he still
had unsuspected reserves.
But so did she.
Grimacing, she shifted into overdrive, feeling the thrust of her hips as they
transformed each step into a bound. Just before he reached the bench, she flanked him, and
was gratified to see his surprised sidelong glance.
Laughing like a schoolgirl, she slapped a hand on the back off the bench and slid to a
halt.
For a time, neither of them spoke. They just paced and gulped air and grinned at each
other, sharing the rush of oxygenated blood and endorphins pumping through their bodies.
He was a good looking guy, after all, and she was slightly ashamed that she hadn’t spoken
to him yet. She slipped the headphones off and draped them over her shoulders, threading
her ponytail through the metal head band and fluffing her hair a bit, then abandoning the
effort when she realized that she was unconsciously primping. As though to mock her, the
music took on a romantic character, lush with strings and piano. She could still hear its
ironic whispering.
Angel on the right shoulder, devil on the left her mother used to say.
“Shall we call that a draw?” he said at last.
She shrugged magnanimously, “Fair enough.”
He opened his gym bag and brought out a towel, mopping his brow as he extended a hand.
“Brian Boison,” he said.
She stopped with her hand halfway up.
“THE Brian Boison?”
He let his hand drop. “I’m flattered that anyone remembers.” Morgan detected the accent
then, that sort of mid-Atlantic polyglot only jet setters speak. He had roots in France
and England, but the U.S. had awarded him a fleeting celebrity.
“You took the silver medal!”
He nodded ruefully. “Exactly. No one remembers number two.”
She recalled that she had been about to shake his hand and took it now, trying hard not
to appear star struck.
“What brings you to this corner of nowhere, Mr. Boison?” she asked.
He looked a bit embarrassed when he answered, and the music whispering from her
earphones chose that moment to hit an ominous minor chord.
“Actually,” he said, “I came to meet you, Ms. Mayfield.”
She let go of his hand and threw a meaningful glance toward the street that paralleled
the path, filling now with commuters, some of them no doubt sturdy males who would be
honored to aid a lady in distress.
“An explanation would be good right now,” she said evenly, “before I have to start, you
know, screaming for help?”
He laughed disarmingly. “Shouldn’t you be wondering how you managed to run a silver
medalist to a photo finish?”
“You let me.”
He shook his head, smirking. “I’m not in contest condition, maybe, but I wasn’t holding
back.”
She wasn’t buying any of this. “First you stage this little race to meet me. Then you
pretend to be somebody famous so I’ll be flattered.” She blew at a lock of hair that had
come loose and strayed into her eyes. When it persisted, she tossed her head to banish
it.
“There is a phrase that covers situations like this,” she said, “restraining order.” She
spoke the last words slowly and clearly, through her teeth, so that there would be no
question about her seriousness.
Laughing, he dropped down onto the park bench and put his laced hands behind his head,
crossing his legs at the ankle. “You have a quick mind,” he said. “You aren’t easily
flattered either. I like that.”
“I’m also immune to cheap charm,” she said. “How do you know my name?”
“It’s a long story,” he said. “I’m cooling down here. Let’s go get a cup of coffee and
I’ll explain everything.”
“I have to get to work,” she lied. It was early, and the bar didn’t open until noon.
“No you don’t.” She was really learning to hate that goofy grin. “I’m buying.”
“So who are you, and how is it you know so much about me?”
She wasn’t as nervous now. The coffee shop was a safe and familiar place to her, and he
seemed less of a threat with a table between them. He had displayed only polite attention
as they ordered coffee and bagels. Whatever he had on his mind, it didn’t seem to include
any salivating or heavy breathing
He opened his wallet and laid it on the table with his driver’s license showing. “I
don’t have my silver medal with me today,” he said dryly.
“I can’t believe that you came here just to meet me,” she said. “Were all of the
supermodels and starlets busy this week?”
He winced a bit at that. His fifteen minutes of fame had included a few affairs that had
been extensively covered by the supermarket tabloids.
“I regret to say that my interest in you is more professional than personal,” he said
sincerely. “You are a very attractive woman, beautiful, intelligent, strong, loyal,
dutiful.”
She snorted, “Puhlease!”
“It’s true! You dropped out of high school, even though your grades were excellent and
an athletic scholarship was waiting; because your brother needed your help.”
She shrugged, trying to ignore the fact that he knew entirely too much about her. Her
brother’s condition was a private matter, but hardly a secret.
“We never knew our father. Mom worked herself to death for us. No one else was stepping
up.”
“Your brother has a wife,” Brian reminded her.
“With two kids to take care of, they never saw his sickness coming. How much health
insurance do you buy when you’re twenty two? I do what I can. Bartenders aren’t exactly
rolling in cash, even if the steelworkers do over tip me.”
She smiled self consciously as she spoke. She was modest, but not blind. Hard work and
running had given her a body that was graceful and muscular. Her mother had given her big
brown eyes, pert features, and glossy auburn hair. Two weeks after hiring her the bar
owner had added up his receipts and doubled her pay.
“I understand that there is a clinic in Switzerland with an experimental treatment that
could help him,” Brian said sympathetically. “They may even have a cure.”
She nodded and sipped coffee. It gave her an excuse to look down and hide the tears of
frustration that burned unshed in the corners of her eyes. She blinked them angrily away.
“It doesn’t come cheap though.”
“He is one of the reasons I am here.”
She smirked. “Do you have a check for me from the Brian Boison Medical Endowment Fund?”
He shook his head. “Silver medals aren’t worth much. I don’t even get to do sneaker
endorsements anymore. I make my living by representing the interests of a certain wealthy
client who wishes to remain anonymous for now.”
“This reads like dialogue from some bad novel,” she pulled a paper napkin out of the
dispenser and blew her nose noisily. “You’re telling me that some crazy rich guy sent you
to find me?” She barked once with incredulous, bitter laughter.
“He is eccentric,” Brian said dryly. “Only poor people are crazy.”
She bit off the laugh and pushed the bagel around on her paper plate with a forefinger
before she picked it up. “Thanks, but charity isn’t my style.”
“It isn’t charity,” said Brian. “It’s a job offer.”
“I already have a job.”
“My client would send your brother to that clinic in Switzerland and pay you fifty
thousand dollars if you spend a month in training at his facility.”
She had been in the process of spreading cream cheese on her bagel. Her hand froze as he
mentioned the sum. She was good with numbers, and even as she glanced up warily a small
part of her mind was dividing fifty thousand dollars by thirty days and comparing it to
the income of a pretty barmaid on a Friday night.
“What kind of training are we talking about?”
“You are familiar with the sport of harness racing?”
“Sure, horses pulling carts around a track. I’m sorry to have to tell you that I don’t
know much about horses though.”
“There aren’t any horses involved in this sport. The carts are drawn by humans—women
usually.”
She looked around for a hidden camera, expecting to see the guys she worked with at the
tavern hiding behind the cash register and stifling laughter.
“This is a joke—right?”
“No joke. I know, this isn’t something you usually see on television, even cable
wouldn’t touch it, but it is a real sport. The competition is earnest, and considerable
sums are bet on the outcomes. Talented runners are in high demand.”
“There is something you aren’t telling me about this,” she sniffed. “What? Do they race
naked or something?”
He sipped coffee to buy time before he answered, burned his mouth and slopped a bit
reacting. She mopped the table between them with a napkin, reacting automatically with a
bit of instinctive barmaid behavior she instantly regretted. He might take it as a sign of
weakness, the meek little woman cleaning up to mask her discomfort.
“Well,” he stammered, “the harnesses are rather brief.”
She snorted. “Bits in the mouth too, I suppose?”
He nodded.
She folded her arms across her chest. “Tails?”
He held up his hands defensively. “I know where you’re going with this. It may not be
what you think. The competitors are highly regarded and well rewarded.”
Her face was tight. “I may be a small town girl, but I have been on the internet, and I
read a lot. This is some pervert thing, right? Ponygirl racing to feed the fantasies of a
bunch of rich old degenerates?”
“Well, if you want to put it in the worst possible light,” he sighed.
“You’re nothing but a procurer!”
He blushed. “I prefer to think of myself as a talent scout.”
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