Armstrong might be free. Or a baseball player, any baseball player.”
“But none of them ever graced the cover of People with the headline Meet America’s Darling.”
“You have me mistaken with someone who wants to return to their past. Find another redemption story. I’m not biting.”
The phone clicked and Micah stared into the silence of the receiver. What did she think running a race was if not an attempt to return to her past? When he set the phone back down in the cradle, he knew he had her. He simply needed the right bait.
* * *
“YOU CAN’T PLAY that trick a second time,” Ruby’s cousin Haley said, the exasperation in her voice loud and clear, even over an echoing cell connection. “You know Aunt Julie called my mom, right?”
“There has to be something else you need to do for the wedding that your favorite cousin and best friend is essential for.”
“Aunt. Julie. Called. My. Mom.” Haley huffed. “Like I was a teenager sneaking out to a college party.”
“And the dress shop.”
“What! Really?”
“I should have foreseen that, honestly. Mom has always been thorough.” Only as Ruby realized that neither her brother nor her sister had managed to sneak out of the house as teenagers did she wonder if her mother had been as ignorant of the doping as she’d claimed.
“I can barely stand this sneaking around, and you live it every day, Ruby.”
“I rarely have to sneak.” Like the crazed wife in the attic, unless she threatened to make the papers, her parents simply pretended she wasn’t there.
“You really should move out.”
“I know.” Haley had been telling Ruby to get out on her own for years now, since that first sponsorship offer had come in. Ruby was more tempted now than she had ever been. She could make friends other than her cousin. Maybe even invite a man over, if she could find one who wasn’t constantly trying to one-up her, or one who didn’t lord her past over her.
Micah? No, he failed the second criteria. And he could probably fake liking her enough to interview her, but not beyond the cameras rolling. She wasn’t sure she’d trust him even if he were nice to her.
Who was she kidding? It wasn’t as though she could afford to move out on her own. Her only skill was winning middle-distance races. And all the money she had from sponsorship was frozen while the two lawsuits against her by a shoe company and a sports-drink company moved through courts at their glacial pace. She’d question the credentials of any school that wanted her for a coach, and any private athlete who hired her would be tested for drugs so often their veins would collapse. Her college major and the degree it was printed on would be worth money only if she put it on eBay and accepted bids.
None of which she would say out loud, even to her cousin, who already knew it all. “My parents were there for me when I needed them. And they still want me here.” A close-enough interpretation of the look of panic her mom got whenever Ruby mentioned looking for an apartment.
“Your dad went all lawyer-happy when you needed him. And your mom fell apart. And they want you at the house because they fear the gossip, not because they like your company.”
In this, her cousin was both right and wrong. Both her parents had been available and supportive—or at least available—when Ruby had needed them. But the last time their support had come in the form of a hug was five years ago. All of which only made Ruby more determined to run another race. No matter what her parents thought, running had always been for her.
“Plus,” Haley continued, “before you run another race, how do you know that reporter isn’t looking for you?” Was her cousin trying to convince her to move out or to hide in a bunker?
“According to NSN’s website, he’ll be at a Brewers game that weekend because they’re honoring some ex-player he’s going to interview. In fact—” Ruby’s excitement grew with every word she spoke, both at the thought of another race and beating Haley in this argument “—because the Brewers are in Milwaukee and I’ll be in Indiana, I’ll be farther away from Micah than I have knowingly been in five years.”
Haley let out a big puff of air. “Fine. But I think you’re overplaying your hand. Move out of that house. Get a job. Live a normal life.”
“Just one more race.”
“Said the addict to the heroin needle.”
* * *
AS MICAH REWATCHED some of the film Amir had taken of Ruby, an itch developed between his shoulder blades. There was something off about her stride and a look of pain on her face that couldn’t be the fifty-kilometer run, because she was only five kilometers into the race, which had been her best distance as an Olympian. He looked at her finishing time, which he’d written on a sticky note and stuck on a printout of the photo of her with the American flag high over her head. The itch paced in a circle between his scapulae, nearly wearing a line in his skin.
Ruby had been slow. Even assuming she was trying to get her ultra legs under her, she had still run a slow race. And if she was only running one race—as she claimed—he thought she would have put everything she had into getting the best time possible. Four hours and forty-three minutes was someone’s best time for a fifty-kilometer race, but it sure as hell wasn’t Ruby Heart’s best time.
Micah shifted his shoulders around but couldn’t get the itch out of his back. He drummed his fingers against his desk, then pressed Play on the film again. Ruby had tossed her hat in an attempt to hide from him and Amir, which meant the camera had much better shots of her face, even through the drizzle that had plagued the race. He slowed the film, reassessing what he saw. The look on Ruby’s face wasn’t pain—it was restraint.
Even if she was consciously holding herself back, he knew top athletes as well as he knew his own grandmama, and she couldn’t have been happy with that time. The four hours and forty-three minutes would needle at her brain and pride until she had to see if she could finish better. And even if she was curtailing her normal power for a very good reason, her natural competitiveness would win out. A woman who cared enough about an Olympic gold medal to stick a needle in her arm wasn’t going to let such a poor time stand as the only record of her ultra career.
He stopped the video and opened a browser. She had run one 50K race and he would guess she would run another. Micah navigated to an ultramarathon website and started searching. He stopped when he came to the trail run in Indiana in three weeks. A 50K, with at least a few spots still open. Easy driving distance from Chicago. The arrow of the mouse twitched on the screen as he considered the chances she wouldn’t be there.
If he was wrong, well, he and Amir would have more footage for NSN’s series, so the entire trip wouldn’t be completely wasted. But he wasn’t wrong. He would see Ruby’s tight ass and sleek thighs encased in running shorts as certain as the yuppies at Wrigley Field would spend more time on their cell phones than watching the Cubs play. Micah picked up his phone and called his boss.
* * *
THREE WEEKS LATER, Amir slid into the driver’s seat of the production van with a huff that Micah ignored. His photographer was a baseball fan and had found the last trip out to an ultramarathon—this one in Idaho to film Currito—to be “about as fun as watching a slug climb a rock.”
Despite Micah being a sports guy, Amir’s slug description sounded more interesting than a baseball game to Micah, a secret he would take to his grave. Watching the ultramarathoners push their bodies to the limit of possibility fascinated Micah, and he felt a certain kinship with a sport based on the idea of giving the middle finger to the world’s perception of what was possible for one body to achieve.
What had possessed Ruby to even try an ultramarathon?
They were on I-94 when Amir asked the question that must have been gnawing at his brain since he’d learned