Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

She was on the jet bridge being jostled by the crowd when he picked up.

“You’ve got to shut her down,” Boone said without preamble.

“Pardon?”

“Protect that girl. Limit access to her and get the mother to pull that shit off the web.”

“Isn’t this your role?”

“Yes, it is. But I just touched down in Tampa, where I’m not even going to leave the airport, I’ll just get the first flight back north. In the meantime, I need your help.” She felt a rush of humid Florida air as she crossed the jet bridge and entered the terminal, and then the blast of air-conditioning washed it away and brought harsh reality along with the temperature drop. Boone was in the wrong city and she could not fix what had already happened. She said, “It’s too late to pull the news down, isn’t it? People will have gotten notifications as soon as she posted. They’ll be sharing it. So we don’t need to worry about the mother. We just have to limit the people who have access to the girl.”

“This simply isn’t my role,” Dr. Pine said. “You need to get the police to talk with this family if they are—”

“I understand your role, and I understand mine much better than you do. Bringing police off the street and into that hospital will only make things worse. I just need to interview her. That’s all. You say she’s able to communicate.”

“In a limited fashion, yes.”

Boone fought through the crowd to a row of flight monitors and looked for the next departure to Boston. It was a three-hour wait. Not great, but not terrible either. She wouldn’t be able to charter a plane much faster, and until she knew if Tara Beckley had any memory of the event, nobody was going to approve that budget item.

“Does she remember what happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know. That wasn’t today’s priority. Again, this is simply not within the—”

“A lot of the risk depends on whether she has any memory at all of the moments around Oltamu’s death,” Boone said. “You need to find out if she remembers the night.”

“That’s your job!”

“And I’m going to do it. But Doctor? You’re there. She’s there. Her protection and her threat are both still outside the hospital walls. Want to make sure the right one gets there first? Find out if she remembers the night. I don’t need you to interrogate her, I need you to assess whether she has any memory of it. It’s that simple, and it’s that crucial.”

Silence. She thought about waiting him out but decided to press instead. “When you do that, make sure the mother is out of the room. Then call me immediately.”

She hung up on his protest.

Did it matter that Tara Beckley was back? It was surprising — stunning, actually, based on the initial diagnosis — but it wouldn’t mean a damn thing if she couldn’t remember her ride with Amandi Oltamu. If she had any memory of that night, she would be of use. Boone was confident of that because of Oltamu’s last message.

Ask the girl.

Boone walked toward the nearest Delta gate. If she could get on the next flight to Boston, she would ask the girl. And if the girl remembered?

If she woke and remembered, they’d need the best in the game. If she woke and remembered, they’d need Boone.

Abby did fine until they reached Portland.

Driving out of Tenants Harbor and back to Rockland, she stayed on winding two-lane country roads that were no problem, and in Rockland she picked up Route 1 heading south, although it would have been faster to take 17 west all the way to Gardiner, where she could jump on the interstate.

She was in no hurry to get on the interstate, though. She was in no hurry, period. She wanted time to think and plan, and if the kid was bothered by her choice, he didn’t voice concern. Didn’t voice anything at all, surprisingly. His focus was undeniable, his eyes and the muzzle of the gun returning to Abby any time she so much as shifted position, but at last, finally, he was silent.

He seemed to want this time to think too, although they were contemplating different goals. Abby wondered if he was any closer to understanding how to reach his.

Traffic was minimal on Route 1, the occasional chain of stoplights in one coastal village or another breaking things up, and the road always had a shoulder if she needed it, a place to pull over and catch her breath and focus her eyes.

They curled through Wiscasset and up the hill where, in the summer, tourists would gather in long lines outside Red’s Eats waiting for lobster rolls, and then they crossed the Kennebec River into Bath, where naval destroyers rested in their berths at the last major shipbuilder in Maine, Bath Iron Works. Once they’d made five-masted schooners here; now they made Zumwalt-class destroyers at four billion dollars a ship.

The hills were lit with fire-bright colors, but clouds kept pushing in, and the rain fell in thin, windswept sheets, flapping off the windshield like laundry on a line. The pavement was wet, but the Tahoe’s tires were good and the car never slipped. Abby was trying to think about the things that mattered — Tara and Shannon Beckley in Boston, the kid with the gun in the backseat, those vivid, real things — and yet her mind drifted time and again to the feel of the tires on the wet road, to the weight of the car pressing on the curves, and to the fear that she would push too far, too fast. The power of a phobia was extraordinary. Yes, I know there’s a gunman right beside me, but I think I just saw a spider in that corner...

It was as if the brain couldn’t help but yield the battlefield when a phobia appeared, no matter how irrational the fear.

Just drive, she told herself, breathing as steadily as she could. Just drive, and keep an eye on that shoulder, and know that at these speeds, nothing that bad can happen. You’re in a big car, cruising slow.

She was through Brunswick and her mind was on the upcoming I-295 spur and its increase in speed and traffic when the kid broke the silence for the first time in nearly an hour.

“We’ll need to lose the Tahoe before we hit civilization.”

For a moment, Abby was ridiculously pleased, as if they were going to take the bus or the train from here while the kid held the gun on her and smiled at the other passengers in his polite but detached fashion. He added, “We should be in my car already, but I had different visions of the way this day was going to play out. An oversight on my part. Oh, well. We’ve got options. Stealing a car is one, but that has its own risks. The other option is at your office, I believe. The sports car. What kind is it?”

A shudder in her chest, cold and sudden, like a bird shaking water from its wings.

“You know the car I’m talking about,” the kid said. “What is it?”

“Hellcat,” Abby managed. Then, clearing her throat: “A Dodge Challenger. Hellcat motor.”

“Nice ride. The title is in Bauer’s name, but the police already searched his office, and I doubt they thought to add that plate to the mix, since the car was still there. It was pretty clear what car of his you stole after you killed him.”

To Abby, the idea of shifting to the Hellcat somehow seemed worse than the lies he was telling.

“I also doubt they’re waiting for you there,” he continued. “Small county with limited resources, and common sense says you’re not going to show up at the office. So we will.”

“Back roads,” Abby blurted.

“Excuse me?” The kid leaned forward, the gun’s chrome cylinders bright in Abby’s peripheral vision.

“I’ll need to take the back roads to get there. Otherwise, we’ll go through the toll. The tollbooth cameras will pick up this plate. They’re wired in with state police.”