Hot As Blazes. Dani Jace

The sixty-five foot tunnel reduced in size midway. She worked through the mild claustrophobia imagining Vic chasing her.

      En route to the next event, she found her second wind and dragged a dummy weighing one hundred and sixty pounds for thirty-five feet. After rounding a barrel, she returned to the start line. Her back screamed nearly as loud as the tester did for her to advance to the final station―the breach and pull.

      Nearly at a run when she grabbed a six-foot pike poll. She rammed it upward with all her might. Three times, she popped a sixty pound, hinged door. Then with the hook of the pole, she tugged on the eighty-pound device five times.

      The tester yelled, motioning her out of the testing box while clicking his stopwatch. “Nine minutes, forty-five seconds.”

      Her oxygen-deprived brain failed to compute.

      Tami’s frantic hopping finally registered.

      “Whoo! Hoo!” Jo jumped with glee. She’d only been more proud when she won the East Coast Surfing Championships. All the adversity she had faced in the past year faded to black.

      She set the chronometer on her cell phone as Tami bolted from the starting line. Her new friend appeared faster in completing the events until she entered the maze. A pale Tami emerged and made up time on the dummy drag. By the time she stepped into the box and rammed the pike poll, she had less than thirty seconds.

      Tami exited the evolution sucking air like a mullet.

      “Time! Nine minutes, fifty seconds.”

      Jo grinned and handed her a bottle of water from her backpack. “Now if we’ve passed the written exam, we’re good to go.”

      Hesitantly, they approached the wall beside the exam room door and scanned the list for their identification number.

      Tami found hers first. “Holy Gawd!” She let out a long whistle.

      Jo sank to her knees, running her finger along the numbers with her heart pounding and tears forming in her eyes.

      “Oh hell, tell me those are happy tears?” Tami knelt beside her.

      Jo nodded, and pointed.

      “Shit, don’t scare me like that―I need a drink.” She ran a hand through her short hair.

      “Me, too.” Jo felt like a frayed wire.

      Back in her truck, she texted Ray and Bobby as reality sank in. Seven months of rigorous training and studying lay before her. She turned up the radio and smiled.

      Should be a picnic compared to a dirty jail cell in California.