“I am.” A sound caught her attention. “I hear a foghorn.”
“We must be close. Give me your pack.”
She ran faster. “I’ve got it.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I do.”
As the sounds of traffic grew louder, Millie accelerated. But doing so wasn’t easy. She felt heavier, not from the forty pound weight strapped to her back, but from Jace’s obvious lack of confidence in her abilities. She would show him.
“There’s the flag,” he said.
Across a multilane street on a large expanse of green grass, a familiar looking flag furled in the breeze. They’d found it. Thank goodness.
“I see it.” Millie also saw two other racers, both wearing black, and her relief vanished. “There’s another team.”
Jace took a step off the curb. A yellow taxi zipped dangerously close. She grabbed at his backpack as he jumped back on the curb.
He didn’t notice. Frustration crossed his face. “So close, yet so far.”
“Close enough.” Millie released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Beating one team isn’t worth risking your life for.”
“Right,” he agreed. “No risking death unless we see two.”
Maybe she should have let him take his chances with the traffic. At least then he couldn’t come back at her and say she’d held him back. “Two teams?”
“Okay, Freckles. Make that three teams.”
The black team huddled over their clue. They ran to the parking lot bordering the water on the far side of the grass.
“We don’t know how many teams are ahead of us,” she said.
“Or behind us.”
Jace’s playful smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, softening the chiseled planes of his face. Tingles filled her stomach, the way they had during The Groom, but she knew the reaction had as much to do with his upbeat attitude as his grin. Millie felt herself being sucked into the depths of his steady gaze. And a part of her wanted to go.
Not good. Not good at all.
Millie looked into the rushing traffic to break the contact. She tapped her toe against the sidewalk eager for the light to change.
Distance. She needed distance. And a new teammate.
“Seriously,” Jace said. “All we have to do is catch up to the team ahead of us and we’ll be fine.”
“Team?” She squinted across the lanes of speeding traffic to search for the black team and any others who had found the clue box, but saw only men playing Ultimate Frisbee and a dog walker being pulled by five dogs. “Don’t you mean teams?”
“Think positive,” Jace encouraged. “Isn’t that what your father would say?”
Millie’s insides twisted. “Uh, sure.”
Her father might say those words to an audience at one of his sold-out seminars or to a reader of one of his eight bestselling self-help books, but Carl Kincaid would never say those words to his only child now that she was all grown up and a disappointment to him.
Instead her father would tell her to give up before she made a fool of herself again. He would tell her she was wasting her life teaching special needs students. He would list all the things keeping her from living up to her potential.
Millie took a deep breath. The only thing that mattered was how she saw things. Not her father. Not Jace.
Besides she’d already told herself to think positive. No big deal.
The traffic’s green light changed to yellow. Jace stepped off the curb. Millie held her breath as a florist van ran the red light.
The walk sign flashed.
He grabbed her elbow. “Go, go, go.”
Millie jerked her arm free and sprinted. She crossed the multilane boulevard ahead of Jace. All of her energy focused on the flag and the clue box beneath it. The scents of salt and freshly mowed grass replaced the smell of exhaust from the street behind her, but she heard the traffic pick up and allowed herself a moment’s relief. The light must have changed. Any teams behind them would be stuck. Good.
Fueled by adrenaline, she beat Jace to the clue box and grabbed a pouch. Unless, she realized with a start, he let her get there first. Her spirits sagged.
“Five left,” he said with satisfaction.
She tugged at the zipper to find forty dollars—a twenty, a ten and two fives—two maps, a credit card and clue. “What?”
“There are five pouches left. We’re in third place.”
Not last. Thank goodness.
In spite of all her training, all her pep talks to herself, Millie could hardly believe it. “Wow.”
“We’re doing great.”
She nodded. “For now.”
“Think positive,” he reminded her. “What does the card say?”
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s time to leave the beautiful City by the Bay so make sure you take all your belongings with you, including your heart. You will find a car parked nearby. Drive yourself to the airport (SFO) and fly to Los Angeles (LAX) where you will find a car waiting for you. To locate your next clue you’ll have to search among the Cherry Blossoms for the Irises and the Apples.”
“Nearby?” Jace spun around. “That could mean anything.”
“The black team went this way.”
Millie didn’t want to waste a single second. Clutching the clue pouch, she ran to the parking lot separating the Marina Green from the water. She found only random cars in every make and color imaginable.
He scanned the parking lot in the opposite direction. “That doesn’t mean they knew where they were going.”
“No.” His lack of faith annoyed her. “But they didn’t come back.”
In the distance, she saw a large building with an American flag and pennant flying overhead. Closer was another building, a small square at the edge of the water surrounded by a chain link fence. And then she saw the green and blue banner. Excited, she grabbed his arm. “There!”
She didn’t wait for him. She ran toward the flag and found six black Mercedes SUVs parked side by side.
“Good eyes, Freckles.”
Jace opened the driver door and grabbed keys from above the visor. He removed his backpack, opened the trunk and dropped his pack inside.
“I’ll take that.” Jace tossed Millie’s backpack into the trunk. “You’ve got the clue. You navigate. I’ll drive.”
Of course he would want to drive.
Wordlessly she climbed into the back seat. Her cameraman jumped into the passenger seat. The audio guy sat next to her. Jace’s crew had said goodbye to them at Coit Tower.
He started the engine. “You buckled up?”
Millie fastened her seat belt. “Yes.”
“Here we go.”
As he backed out of the parking spot, she unfolded one of the maps from the clue pouch. She located the San Francisco International airport. “There are two ways to get to the airport. They look about the same distance. The difference will be the traffic we hit.”
He drove past the building with the flags she’d noticed earlier. The St. Francis Yacht Club.
He