Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Department of Energy? This shouldn’t make sense, and yet it touches off a faint chord of familiarity, something that Tara has either forgotten or never really paid attention to, something that once seemed trivial and was quickly shuffled off into the mists of memory.

Tara flicks her eyes up once: Yes, let’s meet the investigator.

Dr. Pine says, “Okay.” Then, turning to Shannon, he repeats, this time as a question, “Okay?”

Shannon looks from Tara to the doctor and nods, then stops and grabs his arm as he starts to rise.

“Hang on. What does he look like?”

“What?”

“The investigator. How old is he?”

Dr. Pine stares at her, bewildered. “The investigator is a woman. And she is probably around forty.”

Shannon releases his arm, but he looks at her with narrowed eyes. “Would you like to be more candid about who’s spoken to you?”

Shannon considers. “Is your response going to be any different if we talk about that now? Or are you going to make the same call?”

He acknowledges the point with a slight nod. “I’ll make the call,” he says. “So I might as well do it sooner than later.”

When Shannon doesn’t object, he leaves the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He forgets to take his alphabet board. Shannon looks at it, then looks at Tara, an unspoken question in her eyes.

Tara flicks her eyes up once.

Yes. Let’s chat.

The clouds that had begun massing along the coast during the day swept in off the North Atlantic and collided with a warm front as darkness fell, and then the night was illuminated with flickering tongues of lightning as the pressure systems fought for dominance.

Abby drove southbound on I-95, trapped between and beneath the battling weather fronts. Thunder cracked and boomed and rolled to the west, and from the east, the winds continued to buffet the car.

She didn’t notice the impact of the wind as much as she had before, though, when she was sitting up high in the Tahoe. She was low now, riding close to the pavement, only a few inches of steel separating her from the asphalt that was buzzing by at seventy-five miles per hour. She had the Challenger in cruise control so she could ignore the speed and focus on keeping her breathing and heart rate steady. She was grateful for the darkness, for the shrinking of the horizon, the tightening of the world.

The lightning, though, was a problem.

With each flash, the highway lit up bold and bright. With each flash, cars that were nothing but taillights in the darkness were suddenly given shape. With each flash, her breathing became harder to control.

The lightning was worse than a high sun and a clear sky. When the road came at her in flashes, unpredictable and unexpected, suddenly she couldn’t work saliva into her mouth; her heart was thundering, and the breathing exercises weren’t doing a damn thing. Her head felt high and light and dizzy. Just concentrate on the tires and feel the road, she told herself, but then a brilliant flash of lightning would paint the road white, the world would shudder with thunder, and dizziness drove through her brain and into her spine.

She was sweating, cool beads on a hot forehead, her shirt clinging damply to her back. Dax watched with curiosity but in silence. As Abby’s sweating grew more noticeable and her breathing more ragged, Abby was sure he would speak, but then two things happened nearly at once: The rain began to fall in torrents, clattering off the windshield as loud as coins on a winning slot-machine pull, and the kid’s phone gave a shrill chirp. Not a ring, an alert tone.

Abby had no interest in the phone. She was tunnel-vision-focused on the road, hands tight on the wheel — too tight; like an amateur, not a pro — her head forward, her hand shaking as she set the wipers to high. Even at that rate, they didn’t seem to achieve much, merely adding a slashing motion across her field of vision, which was already graying out at the edges. The Pirellis held the road, but she was certain that they couldn’t continue to, not in this weather. There was too much torque to the Hellcat. If she made a mistake, she’d start to skid.

But that was fine, she told herself, because she could steer out of a skid, she’d done it successfully thousands of times before.

Not always.

You just turned into it, that was all, the only requirement — turn back into it. Counterintuitive, but it worked. You regained equilibrium if you could only teach yourself to go against instinct and trust the physics. The world rewarded you for trusting physics. In time, that trust became instinct.

You’ll get that instinct back. You’ll get it back, and tonight’s a good run, a good trial, because there’s nothing to worry about out here, it’s just a little rain, that’s all.

As if to contradict her, the sheet lightning flashed, revealing what waited ahead — two semis, one in the left lane on its way around the slower-moving one in the right lane, passing even in this weather. There was a truck coming up behind Abby, too, one that looked to be loaded with logs from the north woods. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Why so much traffic? Why couldn’t everyone get off the road and home to bed and let Abby drive to Boston with a murderer in peace?

Dax’s face was lit by the display of his phone, his attention pulled away from Abby, responding to whatever that chirp had signified. Suddenly, voices filled the car.

It took Abby a moment to recognize Shannon Beckley’s voice. There were several in the mix, male and female, but hers rang a clarion note that the others lacked. Shannon was asking about methods for her sister to communicate easier and faster.

Abby chanced a look in the kid’s direction. He lifted his eyes immediately. He seemed preternaturally aware of Abby’s movements. The gun was in his left hand, on his lap, pointed at Abby. It was always pointed at Abby.

“Checking on our girl’s progress,” he said cheerfully. “Sounds like it was a big day, and you and I have had our share of distractions, haven’t we? I’ll need to get caught up.”

Shannon Beckley’s voice faded, others overtaking it, but they were all discussing the same thing — Tara was awake. Tara could talk.

He bugged the hospital, Abby thought. The realization was almost enough to pull her attention away from the dizzying, sweat-inducing fear of the drive.

Almost.

It didn’t last, though, because she had a car on her left now, neither trying to pass nor, evidently, aware that passing was the point in the left lane. Instead, the car just rode alongside, penning her in. She looked over and swore under her breath.

“Everything all right, Abby?”

Abby didn’t answer. She accelerated, thinking that she’d pass on the right and get out in front and then maybe this moron would get the idea and shift back into the right lane. As long as she kept some clear space, some avenue of escape, she would be fine. All the way to Boston, she’d be fine.

But these idiots, calm behind their steering wheels, were sealing her in.

As she accelerated, the semi in front slowed and flashed its headlights, signaling that the truck trying to pass was clear to shift back into the right lane. The truck driver in the left lane, like the driver of the car next to Abby, didn’t take the opportunity or the hint. Maybe it was the weather, this pounding rain, scaring them both off from making the simple lane shift. Maybe they were distracted. Maybe they were morons who never should have been issued driver’s licenses.

None of that mattered. She was trapped.

She took a harsh breath and sat up straight, then leaned forward quickly, hunching over as if caught by a stomach cramp, because she was suddenly sure that she couldn’t get air into her lungs. Or her brain. Her blood was oxygen-free, thickening and slowing, her heart thundering to try to make up for it but pushing nothing but sludge through her veins. Her vision dimmed and then came back and then went again.