Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Make it to the thumb. Make it there, and once you know the way, you will make it again. Once you know you can go that far whenever you like, then try another river in another direction. We’ll explore them all, run them to the end. We have nothing but time.

She could swear she feels a tightening in her thumb, a faint pulse of muscle tension.

Yes, it can be done. It’s long and hard but it can be done. Keep riding the current, keep steering, keep—

“She’s on her way,” Dr. Pine says, and at first Tara is convinced that he’s speaking about her, that he’s somehow aware of her journey downriver. Then she sees that his eyes are on his phone.

“Fifteen minutes,” he reports. Then he looks at Tara. “Do you want your parents here?”

The two eye flicks are necessary, but they also take her away from the river, and she feels a loosening of tension in her hand. She was so close. Why did he have to interrupt?

No matter. She’s found the way once, and she will find it again. Over and over, however long it takes. The water was not so bad. Eventually the current had shifted to help her, and whatever produced that green-gold hue beneath the surface was good. She’s not sure why she’s so sure of that, but she knows beyond any doubt that it is a good sign.

I’ll be back, Tara promises herself, and then she gives Pine her attention again. He smiles in what is supposed to be a reassuring fashion, but she can tell that he’s nervous. Who can blame him? It’s not enough to be tasked with bringing a patient back from the dead; now he’s supposed to see that the patient provides witness testimony to some sort of government agent? Even for a neurologist, this can’t feel like another day at the office.

She’d like to smile back at him and let him know that she’s grateful for all he’s done and that she felt better the moment he walked into the room, looked at her with those curious but hopeful eyes, and introduced himself. And used her name. Sometime soon, when she has the computer software that makes all of this less of a chore, she will let him know how much that mattered. Small things, quiet things, but he gave her dignity when others did not.

Shannon isn’t offering any smiles. She’s not even offering her attention. She’s glued to her own phone and seems distressed. Tara watches Shannon tap out a text message and send it, but she can’t read the message because Shannon is shielding the phone with her free hand. It’s an unsubtle way of making it clear that she doesn’t want Pine to see it. Once the message is sent, she stands up, her chair making a harsh squeak on the tile.

“I’ll be right back.”

Pine turns and stares at her. “Where are you going?”

Shannon gives him an icy look. “Is that your business?”

“Right now, I feel that it is, yes. We’re fifteen minutes away from—”

“I know! Trust me, I am aware. I just need to... breathe for a few seconds. Okay?”

Pine doesn’t like it, but he decides not to fight it. He seems to think Shannon is on the verge of a panic attack, which would be a logical assumption if he were dealing with anyone other than Shannon. Tara knows better. Shannon has no fight-or-flight response; it’s only fight with her. If she were flooded with adrenaline, she’d refuse to leave the room. So what in the hell is going on, and why won’t she meet Tara’s eyes?

Then she’s gone. Without a look back.

Inside the Challenger, Dax and Abby listened to the exchange in the hospital room. Dax nodded, pleased, and said, “Attagirl. Way to stand your ground.”

Abby, still bound to the passenger seat of her dead friend’s car, said nothing. They were parked on the fourth floor of a five-floor garage attached to the hospital, and most of the spaces around them were empty, as were many on the third level, which connected to the hospital through a walkway. There should be little if any traffic up here.

When Dax had parked, he’d sent a text message to Shannon Beckley, making sure that Abby saw each word. He identified himself as Abby, and from there the text was simple: he told her the car he was in and where it was parked in the hospital garage, then said he would give Shannon Oltamu’s phone provided she came alone.

It was, Abby had to admit, a smart choice. Shannon wanted the phone, and she knew Abby had it. Any other tactic — threatening her, for example — might not have rung true. But the promise of the phone was tempting, particularly with the DOE agent on the way, and the situation made sense. As far as Shannon knew, Abby was doing what she’d said she would: reaching out to her from another phone number and offering what help she could from her own perilous position in the world.

Shannon should have no reason to doubt her.

“You’re going to have the opportunity to make some noise, I suppose,” Dax said, pocketing the phone and turning to Abby. “You could scream, kick the horn. I don’t know what all has run through your head, but I’m sure you’ve had ideas, and I can promise you that all of them are bad. Right now, she’s got the chance to walk in and out of this garage alive and unhurt. Don’t ruin that for her, Abby.”

He studied Abby’s eyes for a moment, then nodded once, opened the driver’s door, and slipped out. They were parked beside a large panel van with a cleaning company’s logo, and he vanished on the other side of that. Abby watched him go and then turned to her right, where the stairwell was.

Shannon Beckley should come from that direction. Maybe alone, maybe not. If she walked through the door with a cop in tow, Abby didn’t think it would take long for the shooting to start.

Shannon came alone. She’d moved fast too, because the wait hadn’t been long. The stairwell door opened and there she was, tall and defiant, or at least trying to look defiant, though you could see her nerves in the way she scanned the garage even after she’d observed the Challenger parked where she’d been told it would be. She hesitated, and Abby saw her glance back at the stairwell door as it clanged shut behind her, but then she steeled herself and started toward the Challenger with long, purposeful strides.

She made it halfway there before the kid got her.

Abby hadn’t seen him move. She’d thought he was still waiting on the other side of that van, but he must have crawled under it or around it, because he emerged from behind a pickup truck that was parked four empty spaces from the Challenger, now on Abby’s right instead of her left. Shannon Beckley was walking fast, her eyes on the Challenger, and she might have glimpsed Abby’s face through the darkly tinted glass because she seemed to squint just before Dax rose up beside her.

She had time to scream, but she didn’t. Instead, she tried to fight and run at the same time, stumbling backward while throwing a wild right hook. If she’d stepped into the punch, she might’ve landed it; she had a fast hand. But because she was trying to both attack and flee, she missed the punch, and then Dax had her. He caught her right wrist, spun her, twisted her arm up behind her back, and clapped his gloved left hand over her mouth.

Abby jerked forward instinctively as if to help. The cord bit into her throat and forced her back. She reached for the headrest release, but before she could even find it, they were walking her way, Dax whispering into Shannon’s ear with each step. When they arrived beside the car, he released her and drew the gun. He did this so quickly that it was pressed against the back of Shannon’s skull before she had time to react to being free. She stood still, staring through the window at Abby, close enough now to see the cord around her throat.

“Open the driver’s door,” Dax said to Shannon. His voice was soft but menacing, like early snowflakes with a blizzard behind them.