Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Tara and Shannon are so focused on each other that neither one notices she’s no longer alone in the room.

Then Andrea Carter says, “I’ll need to see that.”

How long she’s been standing there, Tara has no idea, but it can’t have been long. Shannon has her back to the door, but Tara thinks she would have glanced right eventually. Carter’s face is a hostile mask. Apparently she feels Shannon has held her at bay long enough. Dr. Pine isn’t with her.

Shannon rises from the stool, lowering Oltamu’s phone and pressing it against her leg.

“Do you mind?” Shannon says. “I’d asked for just a little bit of privacy. If you could just give me a few more...”

Tara is watching Shannon, so she doesn’t understand why her voice trails off, why her eyes go wide. Then Tara looks back at Andrea Carter and sees the knife.

It’s a small knife but it seems to be all blade, a curved piece of metal with a razor edge, a crescent-moon-shaped killing tool. She’s holding it in her right hand, down against her leg, in a posture that mirrors Shannon’s with the phone.

“You need to be very quiet,” Carter says, “and you need to give me that.”

She advances with her eyes on Shannon, her movements sleek as a panther. Tara wants to scream but can’t; Shannon could and won’t. In fact, Shannon’s face seems oddly unsurprised, as if she’s been anticipating something like this. “What’s your real name?” she says.

Carter is only a stride from her now, and she moves the knife out and to the side, the curved blade glistening, and extends her left hand, palm up. “The phone.”

Shannon doesn’t hesitate, and Tara is relieved. There’s something in this woman’s eyes that promises violence. Her eyes remind Tara of the eyes of the boy in the black hat. The hat that is now on Shannon’s head. They must belong together, this woman and the boy. But why, oh, why is Shannon wearing the hat?

Dax was very still, his thumb on the revolver’s cylinder, his eyes unblinkingly focused on the video display, even his breathing so restrained that it was scarcely noticeable.

That’s Lisa Boone. She worked with my father. She’s a professional killer.

In those short sentences, he told Abby more about himself than he had in all the terrible hours they’d spent together. It explained the bizarre pairing of youth and skill, emptiness and professionalism, brutality and calculation. Abby knew his world now, and his world explained him. An assassin’s son was just right. Nature and nurture.

She found a strange comfort in this idea, as if there might be a rationality to him where before she’d seen only a sociopath.

Then again, she was still bound to the passenger seat, and less than an hour had passed since Dax had committed a murder. You took your reassurances where you could find them, but this one was a hell of a stretch.

When Lisa Boone stepped back into the frame, alone this time, no doctor at her side, Dax tensed and reached for the door handle, then stopped himself, lowered his hand, and relaxed back into the seat.

He knows it will be easier to take it from her once she’s outside, Abby thought. Entering the hospital was a risk that Dax clearly intended to avoid — he’d gotten Shannon to make the actual room call, and that was, Abby realized with dismay, a smart move. Right now, however capable a killer Lisa Boone was, she was a full step behind him, and he was patient enough to realize that as long as he had the upper hand, forcing the action was unnecessary. He saw more of the board than she did.

None of that was reassuring.

Abby watched the camera shift and weave as Boone approached and took Oltamu’s phone from Shannon Beckley’s hand. Then she walked backward, sure-footed and graceful, to the door. Only when she was there, with plenty of distance between herself and Shannon, did she glance at the phone.

For all of Abby’s horror, some small part of her just wanted to know — what was on it?

Whatever it was, it didn’t please Boone. Her face twisted in anger, and she said, “What is this?”

Offscreen, speaking from behind — and below — the camera, Shannon Beckley said, “How do I know?”

“Because you just said it worked . The facial recognition and then you put in her nickname and said that it worked. I heard you and watched you.”

“It did work. I thought it did. It changed screens, at least. The old screen was her. Once I held it up to her eyes and put in that nickname, it reloaded and the screen changed.”

She was speaking too loud, as if trying to draw people’s attention. Lisa Boone said, “Keep your voice down.”

Shannon went silent. Boone looked at the phone once more, studied it, then said, “It changed from her face to this ?”

“Yes.”

Beside Abby, Dax sighed and said, “I’d like to know what this is.”

An instant later, Boone said, “Then what in the fuck is this?”

Dax spread his hands and gave a theatrical nod, like Thank you!

“I don’t know,” Shannon said, voice softer now.

“Does she?” Boone asked.

Shannon didn’t respond. Boone advanced, phone in one hand, knife in the other.

Tara hasn’t seen the image yet, but she has an idea of what the woman with the knife is looking at. In fact, she’s pretty sure she knows exactly what it is.

Andrea Carter is moving toward her, and Shannon steps protectively between them, and then the knife is nearly at her throat, the movement so swift and sudden that Tara scarcely registers the fact that her hand twitches again.

Carter speaks with the blade pressed against Shannon’s neck.

“There’s a way to do this without your sister dying,” Carter says. “But you need to cooperate.”

Shannon gives a strange, high laugh that surprises Tara as much as it apparently surprises Carter.

“Step back,” Carter says, “and shut up.”

Please listen, Tara urges silently. Do what she says, because I can answer her next question, I already did, I told you what he took pictures of, and then he was dead, so I know he didn’t take any more. I can answer her questions, and she will leave.

But will she leave? As Shannon moves away, taking two steps toward the foot of the bed, Tara watches Carter and is not so sure. If Tara doesn’t answer her questions, then they both have to die. But if she does... what changes? Is there really any way this woman is leaving them alive?

“Show Tara the phone,” Shannon says, and she looks at Tara for the first time, and there’s a knowingness to the gaze. Tara thinks, I am right about what’s there, and Shannon remembers what I said.

The woman turns the phone display to her then, and, sure enough, there he is: Hobo.

“What is the dog’s name?” the woman asks.

Tara looks at Shannon. Flicks her eyes up once. Yes, tell her. What is the point in protecting this? Saving our lives, that’s the point. But Tara’s instinct says that talking is better. It’s a strange instinct for a woman who can’t speak, and yet there it is.

“What does that mean?” Carter asks. “The way she looked at you. Her eyes moved up. That’s a yes. What is she saying yes to?”

Her voice tightens with anger, and Tara is terrified of what will happen if Shannon lies or resists, but for once, she doesn’t.

“She’s saying yes to me because she wants me to tell you who the dog is,” Shannon says.

“You know?”

Shannon nods.

“Say it.”

“Hobo,” Shannon says, once again in a loud voice, but this time the woman doesn’t tell her to lower it. She just stares at her as if she’s making a very dangerous joke.