Free Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) by Pamela Beason

taken in camp last night. The male member of Team Three—Chris Ferris—failed his drug test. The vid shows him protesting, saying he didn’t take any illegal substances, and I can’t help wondering if The Mad Hatter has struck again, because Madelyn Hatt and Jason Jones came in only a few minutes before Team Three arrived. But maybe Chris is simply lying. After all, whoever says, “Whoops, you caught me?”
    The limping gal on Team Six has a pulled hamstring that prevents her from continuing, which I try to feel sorry about. I do genuinely feel sorry for her partner, because his teammate’s injury means he’s automatically out of the race, too.
    Now we’re down to eight teams, and some of those are so far behind us that unless something major happens to the front runners, they’re not real threats. Catie and Ricco are in second place. Senai and Mistri, third. Fourth belongs to Hatt and Jones. Both Maddie’s parents and Catie’s father are—as usual—in camp with them. On the vid, Mr. Hatt’s face is tense and his hands are clutched into fists as his daughter gallops into camp, but then he glances at the camera, smiles, and throws his arms around Maddie. It must be nice to have parents that worry so much.
    Along with a gray-bearded suit, the female suit is again in our entourage this morning—the blond with her hair twisted up tight at the back of her head. Obviously there’s a whole team of professional sheepdogs tracking Sebastian on this island.
    During breakfast, the blond lays her smart phone down beside Sebastian’s plate.
    He pushes it out of the way without looking at the screen.
    “What?” I stretch my arm across the table to grab the phone.
    Blondie pulls the phone out of my reach and steps back into her position along the wall. The disrespect is really annoying.
    Then, drug tests taken, foot blisters checked and bandaged, clean dry sponsor-labeled clothing layered appropriately, we start off before the first rays of light, at a whispered signal given by Mrs. Wrinkle as she stares blearily at an antique stopwatch. She must have stayed up all night.
    Our start seems sort of anticlimactic. No cameras, no fanfare. Only the Secret Service suits (and presumably, their drone overhead) watch us jog into the trees.
    The sun is barely up when we reach the edge of the wetland. Water gleams between the reeds as far as we can see, but there is also what looks like an old dike extending out into the swamp. Perhaps it was a road at one time, but it has definitely been abandoned now. The dirt pathway dips and rises and is dotted with young trees that have sprouted in the dirt. The dike or road or whatever it was has been gnawed by water on both sides down to a narrow strip. But if we can get through that way, it would cut off at least a mile from the route around the swamp.
    “It’s my turn to decide the course,” Sebastian reminds me. “I say, we risk it.”
    “Not afraid of those dire warnings about water in the briefing?”
    He shakes his head. “I faced anacondas in the Amazon.”
    I now know he took second place in his race there last year; no mean feat. I was lucky to get third. The men’s race comes before the women’s in the Jungle Marathon, so our paths never crossed.
    The main problem with following this uncharted route is that we have no idea what we might run into. Our wrist units show only the route we marked for the day and how far we are from that line; there are no other distinguishing features to help us.
    As we set out on the rough path, I try not to think about how this elevated strip would be the logical spot for snakes to sun themselves and the most likely travel route for a tiger. There is a trail of sorts along the top, but it’s often so narrow we have to squeeze between saplings to continue. The rain continues to sheet down, as warm as bath water, but not nearly as comfortable. Our clothes plaster themselves to our skin. Rivulets run down our legs into our running shoes, and bits