Michael Palmer - Side Effects

Still, he had given her the one thing she needed most next to answers, time. Time to work through the events that were steamrolling her life.

"We're going to find out, Rose, " she said grimly. "We're going to find out who, and we're going to find out why."

A sharp bark sounded from the living room, and Kate realized that she had been talking to herself. Through the doorway, she could see Roscoe prancing uncomfortably by the door to the rear deck. "Oh, poor baby," she laughed. "I'm sorry." Focused on letting the dog out, she missed the slight movement outside the kitchen window and failed to sense the eyes watching her. She pulled open the slider, and Roscoe dashed out into a most incredible morning. The temperature, according to the thermometer by the door, was exactly freezing. Pat, lazy flakes, falling from a glaring, silver-white sky vanished into a ground fog that was as dense as any Kate could remember. Roscoe dashed across the deck, and completely disappeared into the shroud halfway down the steps to the yard. Kate estimated the height of the fog at three or four feet. Much of It, she guessed, was arising off the surface of nearby Green Pond, a small lake that because of warm underground feeders, was always late to freeze and early to thaw. Winter fog was not uncommon on the North Shore, especially around Essex, but this was spectacular. It was a morning just begging to be run through. She dressed and then stretched, sorting out the route they would run, mixing low spots and high hills and straight-aways along five miles of back roads. Wearing a gold watch cap and a high-visibility red sweatsuit, she trotted out the front door and whistled for Rosco. He was almost at her side before she could see him. "A fiver this morning, dog, " she said, as they moved up the sloping driveway and out of the fog. "Think you're mutt enough to handle it?"

At the end of the drive, she turned right. Had she mapped their route to the left, she might have wondered about the BMW, parked not particularly near anyone's house, and perhaps even noticed the blue Metropolitan Hospital parking sticker on the rear window. It was near perfect air for running, cold and still. To either side of the narrow roadway, the fog covered the forest floor like cotton batting. "Race pace, today, Rose," she said. "Eight-minute miles or less. And I'm not waiting for you, so keep up." In reality, she knew Roscoe could maintain her pace all day, and still stop from time to time to sniff out a shrub or two. After a quarter of a mile, they left the pavement and turned onto a plowed dirt road meandering along an active stream named on the maps as Martha's Brook. Kate loved crossing the picturesque, low-walled field stone bridges that spanned the water, in part, she had chosen this route because of them. By the end of the first mile, her thoughts had begun to separate themselves from the run. For the next two or three miles, she knew, her ideas would flow more freely, her imagination more clearly, than in any other situation. Following a kaleidoscope of notions, a kind of sorting out process, her mind settled on the breast biopsy. Perhaps under the stress of exhaustion, Ellen's deteriorating condition, and the rest of the chaos in her life, she actually had made a mistake. For a time, the grisly thought held sway, bringing with it a most unpleasant tightness in her gut. Gradually, though, the truth reappeared, emerging like a phoenix from the ashes of her self-doubt. The cells she had read had been, she was certain, cancerous. But if they had been, then somewhere a switch had been made and later reversed. But how? who? The broken cryostat was, she decided, part of the puzzle. Sheila? Possible.

But why?

The images led into those of other tissues, other cells-the ovaries of Beverly Vitale and Ginger Rittenhouse. Ever since the discovery of anthranilic acid in her own vitamins, Kate had, several times a day, been checking herself for bruises and wondering if pockets of scar tissue in her ovaries had already made a mockery of their discussions about having children. She had to find out. The answer, almost certainly, lay in the Omnicenter, and more specifically, in the data banks of Carl Horner's Monkeys. Kate was heading down a steep grade toward the first of the field stone overpasses when the blue BMW crested the hill behind her and accelerated. Immersed in the run and her thoughts, she lost several precious seconds after hearing the engine before she turned to it. The speeding automobile made a sharp, unmistakably deliberate swing to the right and headed straight for her.

There was no time to think.

There was only time to react. The waist-high wall of the bridge was only a few feet away. A single step, and she dove for the top of it. She was in midair when the BMW hit her just below her right knee. The impact spun her in a horizontal pinwheel. She struck the edge of the wall midthigh and then tumbled over it. As she fell, she heard the crunch of metal against stone and the agonizing cry of her dog. The fall, twelve feet from the top of the wall, was over before she could make any physical adjustment whatsoever. She landed on her back in a drift of half-frozen snow, air exploded from her lungs, and a branch from a rotting log tore through her sweatshirt and her right side, just below her ribs. Desperately, she tried to draw in a breath. For five seconds, ten, nothing would move. Finally, she felt a whisper of air, first in the back of her throat and then in her chest. She tried to deepen her effort, but a searing pain from her side cut her short. She touched the pain and then checked the fingertips of her tan woolen gloves. They were soaked with blood. Frantically, she tried to sort out what had happened.

She had been hit. Roscoe had been hit, too. Possibly killed. It had not been an accident. Whoever was driving had tried to run them down.

Gingerly she tested her hands and then her legs. Her right leg throbbed, and her right foot, which was dangling in the icy water of the brook, seemed twisted at an odd angle. Please, God, don't let it be broken.

There was pain, but, gratefully, there was full movement as well. At that moment, overhead, a car door opened and closed. She turned toward the noise, but could see nothing. It took several seconds to realize why. She was quite literally buried in the fog. From somewhere above and to her left, a branch snapped, then another. The driver of the car was making his way down the steep embanktrlentx more than likely to check the completeness of his work. Could he see where she was? Possibly not.

The fog might well be concealing her, at least from farther away than ten feet or so. Carefully, she slipped off her gold cap and stuffed it into the snow. The burning rent in her side was making it hard to concentrate. Should she try crawling away beneath the fog? Would her battered legs even hold weight? Her back was hurting. Should she test it, roll to one side? Could she?

From farther to her left, she heard still another snap and then a soft splash and a groan. Her pursuer had stepped or slipped into the brook.

It was definitely a man, or perhaps there were two. She thought about Roscoe. Was he still alive? Was he helpless? in pain? The images sickened her. For a time, there was silence. Kate peered into the mist, but could see nothing. The pain in her legs, back, and side sent chilly tears down her cheeks. Then she heard it, a soft crunch, still downstream from where she was lying, but almost certainly moving in her direction.

She swept her hand over the snow, searching for a rock or a stick of some sort. Her fingers touched and then curled about a dead branch, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter. She drew it toward her. Was it too long, too unwieldy, to use? She would get one swing, if that, and no more. Again, she jiggled the branch. It seemed unentangled, but she would not know for sure until she made her move. Suddenly, she saw movement to her left, the legs and gloved hand of a man, not ten feet away. Dangling from his hand, swinging loosely back and forth, was a tire wrench. Kate drew in a breath, held it, and tensed. At any moment she would be seen. The legs were just turning toward her when she lunged, rising painfully to her knees and swinging the branch in the same motion. Her weapon, three feet long with several protruding wooden spikes, came free of the snow and connected with the side of the man's knee. He dropped instantly to the water, as much from the surprise and location of the blow as from its force. Ignoring the pain in her legs and side, Kate stood up, readying the branch for another swing. It was then she saw her attacker's face.