Hearts Racing Read Free Page A

sure. “Your time is okay,” she said. “But obviously we need to work on your shoulder mobility.”
    “Okay, how do we do that?” he asked, toweling his face and neck.
    “Not today,” she said, shaking her head. “You do a baseline and then you leave. That’s your first day at CrossFit.”
    “Aw, come on! I’m used to working out for hours. All day.”
    “That’s not how we do it.”
    He threw his towel down. “This is so stupid,” he mumbled. A flash of anger rose from her toes, up her legs, and crashed over her body like a wave. Stupid, huh? He was picking up his towel now, putting his warmup suit back on, preparing to leave. “Hey, at least we don’t wear cologne to work out around here,” Faith said.
    Buck gave a bark of a laugh, a dry sound without mirth, and headed for the door. He waved as he was on his way out.
    She wondered if she’d ever seen him again. No, she would call LeMond and tell him she didn’t want to see him again.
    LeMond answered on the first ring. “How was it?” he asked.
    “He was pretty fast.”
    “You sound testy. Are you sure it went okay?”
    “Yeah, yeah. He’s just . . . strong willed, I guess. Cyclists are just weird people.”
    LeMond laughed now. “True enough, but weird in what sense?”
    “For one thing, he wore cologne. What a creeper.”
    “Ah, no he didn’t. Buck doesn’t wear cologne. Ever.”
    “Aw come on, I smelled him,” Faith said. “It was like I was sniffing—” she searched for the words. “A drug. It was like sniffing a drug.”
    “Maybe. But I can tell you it wasn’t cologne.” The old soigneur gave a knowing chuckle a parent might give a child speculating about Santa’s origins.
    “How do you know?”
    “Because Buck Heart can’t afford cologne. He has nothing. Nothing but cycling. That’s his cologne.” She was quiet. LeMond went on. “What was his time like?”
    “One of the best this gym’s ever seen,” she said with a sigh.
    LeMond chuckled again. “He’s quite something, isn’t he?”
    Faith made a dismissive sound, like “pflegh,” to show she disagreed. Pflegh? She’d never done that before.
    LeMond only laughed again.
    “Stick with him, please. For me. I appreciate it.”
    She agreed then hung up the phone. She set it on her desk and stared at it.
    Pflegh.

Chapter 4
    Buck unlocked the outside door of his flat. He was lucky to have this place, close enough to a station that he could walk easily. People complained about the French occupation, but the occupiers had done a lot on the transit front. He remembered being a kid, before the French rolled through the former United States and New Lyon was still called Atlanta. There was a train system, but it didn’t have many stops. As a result, it didn’t make much money, so it didn’t expand, and no one rode it. Now there were stations everywhere.
    Inside, he left a baguette and bottle of La Victoire in the kitchen. The French had done a lot for wine production in the former US. Buck could afford a bottle here and there. Of course, he might also end up working at one of the state funded wineries if he failed at cycling.
    The French put their stamp on everything. His building looked just like a Parisian apartment. Only six stories high, lest it obscure the view. But what view? It wasn’t like there was an Eiffel tower in New Lyon. There had been an arch near a shopping center that resembled the Arc de Triomphe, but the French had ordered it demolished soon after the occupation. They’d been so offended by the steel-beam-and-sheet-rock version of the Arc, they’d made former Atlanta city officials clear the rubble after it fell.
    Buck turned on the TV: the reports were that French troops were still battling in Mexico. Latin America was proving a much tougher opponent than the US. The French had “liberated” Quebec, wrapped up the rest of Canada, and then surged through the contiguous US. No one could believe that the same country who'd built the completely