Wicked Ambition

Leon landed at LAX to a feverish reception. Paparazzi were jostling over the barriers for a clean shot, lights flashing and cracking and his name repeated so many times it lost its beginning and end. ‘Leon! Leon! Leon!’ He had hoped to fly back quietly and avoid the uproar, but no such luck. Something told him he had better get used to it.

‘How is it being back in LA?’ reporters demanded. ‘What have you got to say to Jax Jackson? Can you defeat him at the 2013 Champs?’ Microphones lunged and he had to shield his eyes from the glare. A woman got past the rope and clung to his shoulders, and before he could do anything to stop it she planted a kiss on his mouth.

‘Step away, ma’am.’ Airport security dragged her off.

Leon had been thrust into the realms of the super-famous and now it seemed like everyone wanted a piece. Being on home ground meant the hype was ready to hit new heights, beginning with this hare-brained idea of Jax’s to record a single. Frankly Leon found it embarrassing. How could he say no when it was for charity? He couldn’t be the only one who turned his back, especially when it was supposedly making a stand against gun crime.

Jax wanted stardom, that was the distinction between them, and The Bullet didn’t care how he got it. For Leon, it was different. He trained, he ran and he focused. Yet his first steps back on American soil and he was being treated like a movie star. He’d never got into it for celebrity; he didn’t care about that. He ran to win.

‘Do you think you’ll ever beat him?’

Leon stopped. ‘Sure, I’ll beat him. This isn’t the final score.’

‘Is The Bullet impossible to outrun?’

‘Nothing’s impossible.’ An image of Jax’s trademark gold vest clouded Leon’s vision. Emblazoned on its back was the tip of a bullet in flight. ‘When you’re at the top, the only way is down. Jax is on borrowed time. I’m the one to watch.’

The Compton house where Leon grew up was like any other on the street, a grey one-storey villa protected behind a barred steel gate. Out front was a yard—his mom kept it nice as she could but the grass was tired and yellowing and a football lay part deflated by the trash. There was nothing remarkable about the place, nothing to suggest it had once been the scene of a brutal crime, but scratch the surface and the scars were there. They said that the years would heal, but each time Leon returned it ached as deeply as it had twelve years ago.

Paint was flaking off the gate, the catch stiff. If only they would let him buy them someplace else, his mom and sister, but they refused. Memories were all they had left.

A couple of kids rode past on their bikes. Leon turned, dipping his cap so he didn’t get recognised, but even so they circled a few times at the end of the street.

‘You’re Leon Sway, right?’ one of them asked. ‘No way, this is dope! My mom said you used to live round here!’

‘Tell your mom I said hi.’

‘No shit, I will. You hanging for a while?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You’re the coolest, man. How’d you get to be so fast?’

‘Practice. Discipline.’

‘Doesn’t it get boring?’

‘Never.’

‘If you raced a bike who’d win?’

‘Me.’

‘If you raced a car who’d win?’

‘Me.’

‘If you raced a lion who’d win?’

‘Me.’

The kid laughed uncertainly. ‘You’re funny.’

‘See you around.’

The boys rode off. The one who’d spoken did a wheelie and thumped the arm of the other kid, calling him a wuss for staying quiet.

Leon put his key in the lock, stopping to ready himself against the ghosts of the past. In another life Marlon would be on the other side, his arms wide open.

Hey, little bro. Want to shoot some hoops?

But it was this life that counted. And his brother wasn’t here any more.

Marlon Sway had been nineteen when he’d died. As one of the most promising athletes on the circuit, he had been destined for greatness, the Sydney Games locked in his sights. He’d been returning from the club one night when a street fight had broken out. Somehow he had got mixed up…a gang conflict spun out of control…a stray bullet…a wrong place, wrong time…Perhaps he had tried to intervene, ever the peacemaker, but wasn’t that worse? He had been caught in the crossfire. Marlon had staggered home with a punctured lung. Yards from his front door, he had collapsed on the road and his heart had stopped beating.

It had been twelve years and still Leon couldn’t pick at the scab, afraid it would bleed as easily as it had when the wound was first made.

He remembered it as if it were yesterday. A deafening sound that split the world in two; the unmistakeable crack of ammo tearing the sky. Instinct had compelled him to run from their home, out on to the street, a feeling in his gut that this was bad. He hadn’t known what it was to run until that moment. Time had fallen away quicker than water as his brother’s body, slumped and lifeless, had lurched closer. Be faster…be faster…

Each and every race he ran, in Tucson, in London, in Athens, in whatever competition and wherever it was, he was there, on that rainy night in Compton when his brother was lost. The splinter of the starting pistol was all he needed. Instead of the line, he’d see Marlon. He’d hear his mom screaming, a violent, feral sound. His brother’s eyes, empty. Marlon hadn’t looked asleep, he hadn’t looked peaceful; none of the things people said were true.

If I’d been quicker, I could have beaten this. I could have stopped it.

It was the need to always be faster, to make it in time that powered Leon’s sprint from that day and in all the days to come. For as long as he came in second, he wasn’t fast enough. He was too late. He was tormented by the idea that had he reached Marlon sooner there could have been a chance at life, a flickering ember he could have roused…

Or at least to have been there when his brother died, so that he hadn’t been alone.

Before he turned the key to his family home, Leon rested his forehead against the door. Twelve years, and it might as well be twelve days. Closing his eyes, he let the memory settle, waiting for it to scatter like light on water. He missed his brother so much.

Marlon was the reason he ran. For him he would run and run until he couldn’t run any more, he would run till his heart gave up and his strength gave in. That was his destiny.

If anyone stood in his way, they would be taken down. Jax Jackson included.

‘Leon, honey, is that you?’

The door clicked open and his mother emerged from the kitchen.

‘Hello, Ma,’ he said, squeezing her tight. ‘I’m home.’

12

‘Gorgeous.’ The photographer clicked away as a stylist rushed to adjust the hem of Kristin’s gown. ‘And lift your arms one more time? That’s it! Beautiful.’

She was shooting cover art for her new album, Heaven, which involved being suspended from the rafters of a studio warehouse with stirrups digging in under her arms. A shimmering halo was bolted to the back of her head and the robes had to be twenty feet long at least, pooling to the floor in swathes of frosted ivory that were meant to look celestially sylphlike but were in fact dragging her down like a lead anchor.

So this was what it felt like being an angel for the afternoon…uncomfortable.

‘Smile, then, Kristin!’ her mother barked from the floor.