Free Hearts Racing by Jim Hodgson

lose nothing by asking. He’d already closed her gym. What else could he do?
    To her amazement, LeMond had been absolutely right. She’d said she was going to be working to train some geriatrics out of town for a few weeks, and Barker had barely even looked up from his computer. She’d gone to his office to talk to him about it face-to-face rather than calling, thinking it might work better than a phone call. And she wore her beret and a nautical striped shirt so she’d look as French as possible and thus hopefully appear to be the future wife Barker wanted her to be. But he hadn’t even looked at her, really. She’d just said she would be out of town for a few weeks, and he’d said okay, fine, and that he’d miss her.
    Maybe he hadn’t heard her. She’d better go on and get going before he realized what she’d said. She left, then went back to her own flat to pack, expecting the whole time to get a text or a call from Barker saying “Wait, what? Where are you going? No chance!” But the call never came.
    She rode to the facility in LeMond’s car, with Buck’s bike on the back and Buck himself in the front seat.
    The drive was nice, and the hours passed easily with the excitement of a new adventure and the possibility of a good result at Nationals.
    “LeMond, have you seen the Nationals entry list?” Buck asked. “Do you know who we’re up against?”
    “No one you can’t handle,” LeMond said. Faith noted to herself that he hadn’t really answered the question.
    Buck noticed it too. “Heh, okay, but have you seen the list?”
    “We’re here!” LeMond declared.
    They’d been driving down increasingly worse roads for the last few minutes, LeMond steering the car off the highway to surface streets, then through a small town’s industrial area, out of the town on a two-lane road, then onto what was little more than a dirt track. They’d ended up at a fence across the dirt road that looked like it hadn’t moved in a hundred years. All around, huge trees and dense underbrush pressed close to the road. The trees were hung with a grey moss that looked like thick curly hair.
    To the left of the fence, there was a box on a pole. On the front of the box was a keypad so old it looked like it couldn’t possibly transmit anything except possibly a skin disease. But LeMond jabbed at a few buttons anyway, and the gate began to draw to the side with barely a sound.
    Faith was surprised that the gate moved at all, let alone soundlessly. Someone must be oiling it regularly, just not cleaning it. Maybe they wanted it to look old like that. Hmm.
    LeMond drove through the gate, following the road as it took an immediate left to avoid a barrier of concrete. If someone tried to crash in here, Faith thought, they’d get through the gate but not through that barrier.
    She began to feel a bit uneasy. It was as if this place were trying to look unused but was actually something else. She tried not to think about it. At least she’d be working again.
    LeMond stopped the car in a courtyard surrounded by a few concrete buildings with corrugated metal roofs. They looked like they’d been built for purpose more than for aesthetics, but the huge, mossy trees arching over them gave the whole scene a look that was not without appeal.
    Double doors in the building closest opened, and a man stepped out. He was thin but moved like an athlete. Faith spotted it at once. “He looks like a cyclist,” she said.
    “Sure does,” Buck said.
    “Why don’t you get out and meet him?” LeMond asked, smiling.
    They did. He turned out to be Jose, one of the Miami riders. Jose’s English wasn’t great, and he spoke no French at all, but he smiled and waved them through the doors. Inside, Faith gasped. They’d just walked into a fully outfitted gym with gleaming top-of-the-line equipment she’d never been able to afford at her old place. Everything was there: Power racks, pullup bars, parallel rings, climbing ropes, and racks upon