Page 25 of Light My Fire

He knew that kind of fatigue—the kind that made him collapse in a corner, breathing hard, wrung out and dizzy. And in his dreams, it brought him back to the beginning.

Every time, he started as it should be—on top of the mountain. Pristine white snow frosting the slope below him, a biting wind chapping his lips, the heat of his blood pumping through his veins as he stared down the marked racecourse. Beside him, three other racers were lining up, shaking out, keeping loose. And in backdrop, the crowd pressed along the perimeter, all the way to the bottom, some two miles long, their cheers a low hum in the back of his mind.

Stay low. Out fast. Tuck in the jumps, not too much air, tight in the curves, jockey for the inside position.The first thirty seconds mattered the most in the snowboard cross, a free-for-all derby that resembled a hot-rod race on snowboards. The fastest one down the slope won. No points, no tricks, just an all-out fight to the finish line.

His breath formed in the air. Silence in his ears, waiting for the whistle.

Every muscle strained, poised—

They pushed off.

Every time, he rode the course with perfection. Tight air off the first three steps, a hug in the first curve, and he pulled away from the pack, just one racer in front of him. Jordi Wescott from Maine—they were buddies off the course. Hot behind him raced a guy from Montana University, and a newcomer out of Washington state.

Two slots left to fill on the Olympic team.

Tucker owned one of them. His thighs burned, but he stayed low, right on Jordi’s line around every curve, searching for a hole, a cut to the inside.

He found his chance as he came off a jump just a hair faster than Jordi, staying so low he felt himself burn through the air. He landed beside Jordi and edged him out, taking the inside cut, pulling ahead.

Three more turns—nearly to the end. The crowd thundered. He found air off another jump—

He’d wanted it too much, maybe, but he leaned too far over, trying to stay tight, and in that moment, the ground rushed up. Too fast, too hard. He hit, jerked, and his knee turned to fire.

The board whipped around, his edge snagged on the snow. The momentum threw him onto his back. He skidded into the sideboards as the other racers whizzed past him.

Usually, right then, he woke himself up, the cry of frustration razing through his subconscious into the milky night. Other times, he just lay shivering, his knee on fire, his future burning down around him.

But every single time, whether he awakened into the soot-strewn dawn or simply wept in his dreams, he heard her voice.My son, Tucker. The Olympic champion.

Mom—

“Tucker!” Hands shook him, and for a split second, he was back at home in Deep Haven, tangled into his comforter, the dawn barely hinting through the louvered window shades in his tiny bedroom, his mother waking him for early practice. He half expected to see her—her tired-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing her uniform, on her way to the morning shift at the Blue Moose café.

It took a second to realize that no, he was lying on the soft tundra of some remote Alaskan mountain, a woman shaking him—not blonde, her hair sable and waterfalling down upon him.

“Tucker!”

Her panic had him bolting upright, the blanket sliding off him. “What?”

And instinctively, he shot a look at the fire line, his pulse in his throat. Watch Out Rule number eighteen—never nap close to a fire line. But they’d killed it, and Skye—

“They’re gone, Tuck! They’re gone!”

Stevie. The girl from the bar. No—the US marshal.

He’d held her hand last night. Had wanted to pull her into his arms, stop her shivering.

Now, he stared at her, trying to untangle her words— “What—who…what?”

“The prisoners. They’ve escaped.”

Stevie stood up and strode away as he scrubbed a hand through his sooty hair, feeling yesterday’s battle in his stiff body. Prisoners—

Wait. The morning sun rose high—he guessed it was nearly five, but he’d been a bad judge of time since coming north. Riley was up and on his feet, his golden brown hair nearly blackened with soot and matted from sleep. Viking Seth had risen also, staring at Tucker with not a little confusion in his expression.

Tucker did a quick scan of the camp. Where Eugene had lain remained only his blanket, tangled on the ground.

“My PG bag is gone,” Seth said, holding his sleeping bag. “It was right by my head, but it’s gone.”

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