Riley's heart pounded and her lungs burned from breathing hard and fast. A familiar tune was stuck in her head.
"Follow the yellow brick road…"
As tired and winded as she was, Riley couldn't help but be amused. It was a cold early morning, and she was running the six-mile outdoor obstacle course at Quantico. The course was nicknamed, of all things, the Yellow Brick Road.
It had been called that by the US Marines who had built it. The Marines had placed yellow bricks to mark every mile. FBI trainees who survived the course were given a yellow brick as their reward.
Riley had won her yellow brick years ago. But every now and then, she ran the course again, just to make sure that she was still up to it. After the emotional stress of the last couple of days, Riley needed some full-on physical exertion to clear her head.
So far, she had overcome a series of daunting obstacles and had passed three yellow bricks along the way. She had climbed over makeshift walls, pulled herself over hurdles, and leaped through simulated windows. Just a moment ago she had pulled herself up a sheer rock face by a rope, and now she was lowering herself back down again.
When she hit the ground, she looked up and saw Lucy Vargas, a bright young agent she enjoyed working and training with. Lucy had been glad to be Riley's workout partner this morning. She stood panting at the top of the rock face, looking down at Riley.
Riley called up to her, "Can't keep up with an old fart like me?"
Lucy laughed. "I'm taking it slow. I don't want you to overdo it-not at your age."
"Hey, don't hold back on my account," Riley yelled back. "Give it all you've got."
Riley was forty, but she had never let her physical training lapse. Being able to move fast and strike hard could be crucial when battling human monsters. Sheer physical force had saved lives, including her own, more than once.
Even so, she wasn't happy when she looked ahead and saw the next obstacle-a shallow pool of freezing cold, muddy water with barbed wire hanging over it.
Things were about to get tough.
She was well bundled for winter weather and was wearing a waterproof parka. But even so, the crawl through the mud was going to leave her soaked and freezing.
Here goes nothing, she thought.
She threw herself forward into the mud. The icy water sent a severe shock through her whole body. Still, she forced herself to start crawling, and she flattened herself as she felt the barbed wire scrape her back slightly.
A gnawing numbness kicked in, triggering an unwanted memory.
Riley was in a pitch-dark crawlspace under a house. She had just escaped a cage where she had been held and tormented by a psychopath with a propane torch. In the darkness, she'd lost track of how long she'd been in captivity.
But she'd managed to force the cage door open, and now she was crawling blindly in search of a way out. It had rained recently, and the mud underneath her was sticky, cold, and deep.
As her body grew ever more numb from the cold, a deep despair crept through her. She was weak from sleeplessness and hunger.
I can't make it, she thought.
She had to force such ideas out of her mind. She had to keep crawling and searching. If she didn't get out, he'd eventually kill her-just as he'd killed his other victims.
"Riley, are you OK?"
Lucy's voice snapped Riley out of her memory of one of her most harrowing cases. It was an ordeal that she would never forget, especially because her daughter later became a captive to the same psychopath. She wondered if she would ever be entirely free of the flashbacks.
And would April ever be free of those devastating memories?
Riley was back in the present again, and she realized that she'd crawled to a halt under the barbed wire. Lucy was right behind her, waiting her for her to finish this obstacle.
"I'm OK," Riley called back. "Sorry to hold you up."
She forced herself to start crawling again. At the water's edge, she scrambled to her feet and gathered her wits and her energy. Then she took off down the wooded trail, certain that Lucy wasn't far behind her. She knew that her next task would be to climb across a rough hanging cargo net. After that, she still had almost two miles to go, and more than a few really tough obstacles to overcome.
*
At the end of the six-mile course, Riley and Lucy stumbled along arm-in-arm, panting and laughing and congratulating each other over their triumph. Riley was surprised to find her longtime partner waiting for her where the trail ended. Bill Jeffreys was a strong, sturdy man of about Riley's age.
"Bill!" Riley said, still gasping for breath. "What are you doing here?"
"I came looking for you," he said. "They told me I could find you here. I hardly believed you wanted to do this-and in the dead of winter, too! What are you, some kind of masochist?"
Riley and Lucy both laughed.
Lucy said, "Maybe I'm the masochist. I hope I can run the Yellow Brick Road like Riley can when I'm her ripe old age."
Teasingly, Riley said to Bill, "Hey, I'm ready for another go at it. Want to join me?"
Bill shook his head and chuckled.
"Huh-uh," he said. "I've still got my old Yellow Brick at home, and I use it as a doorstop. One's enough for me. I'm thinking about going for a Green Brick, though. Want to join me for that?"
Riley laughed again. The so-called "Green Brick" was a joke around the FBI-an award given to anyone who could smoke thirty-five cigars on thirty-five successive nights.
"I'll pass," she said.
Bill's expression suddenly turned serious.
"I'm on a new case, Riley," he said. "And I need you to work with me on it. I hope you're OK with this. I know it's really soon after our last case."
Bill was right. To Riley, it seemed like only yesterday when they'd apprehended Orin Rhodes.
"You know I've just brought Jilly home. I'm trying to get her settled into her new life. New school…new everything."
"How is she doing?" Bill asked.
"She's erratic, but she's really trying. She's so happy to be part of a family. I think she's going to need a lot of help."
"And April?"
"She's absolutely great. I'm still blown away by how fighting with Rhodes made her feel stronger. And she's already very fond of Jilly."
After a pause, she asked, "What kind of case have you got, Bill?"
Bill was silent for a moment.
"I'm on my way to meet with the chief about it," he said. "I really do need your help, Riley."
Riley looked directly at her friend and partner. His expression was one of deep distress. When he'd said he needed her help, he'd really meant it. Riley wondered why.
"Let me take a shower and get into some dry clothes," she said. "I'll meet you at headquarters right away."