Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Dax started the car.

He backed out of the parking space and started down toward the garage exit, driving slowly, unhurried as always and seemingly sure of his choice. His treasured phone, the item worthy of all this bloodshed, was in the hands of an apparent rival, but he seemed unbothered.

They passed an elderly couple walking to a Buick, and if the pair had looked into the Challenger, they might have noticed the cord around Abby’s neck, but they did not look.

“Are you following them?” Abby asked. Once she’d hated listening to the kid’s incessant talk, but now she wanted to know. It felt, surreally, as if a part of her were rooting for Dax now. Shannon Beckley seemed more likely to die at Lisa Boone’s hands than his at this moment, and he was the only person who knew enough to intercede. Other than Tara, of course, mute and trapped.

“That wouldn’t be smart,” Dax said.

“You’re giving up? Just letting her take it?” Abby had a horrible thought: What if this Lisa Boone worked with Dax? What if his surprise at her presence was simply because she’d been unannounced, not because he viewed her as a rival?

Then he said, “Oh, we’re certainly not going to do that. Come on, Abby! We’ve come too far to give up now.”

“Then what are you doing?”

If the questions bothered him, he didn’t show it. He put his window down, fed a ticket and a credit card into the automated garage booth, and the gate rose. He took the credit card back, put the window up, and pulled away, out of the lights of the garage and back into darkness.

“It would be a mistake to follow her,” he said. “Boone is too good. At least, that’s my understanding. It’s a long drive, and she’d see us, and she would have the advantage then. Right now we have the advantage, Abby, don’t you see? We know where they’re going. And we can watch them.”

On the cell phone’s display, the camera was bobbing along, Shannon Beckley still on foot, walking across the street and toward a parking lot on the other side of the hospital. Lisa Boone was not in the frame.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Dax said, “but haven’t you been to the accident site?”

Abby didn’t answer right away. She was seeing the idea coalesce. It was a very simple trap, but a trap set for an assassin. She couldn’t imagine how anyone was going to make it out of this night alive. Dax might. Or Boone might. One or the other had to win. But as for Abby and Shannon Beckley?

He’ll get out of the car, she thought. He’ll have to, down there. And when he does, he’s going to leave you here. You’ll need to be a lot faster with that headrest than you were last time.

“Haven’t you?” Dax repeated, an edge to his voice now.

“Yes,” Abby said. “I’ve been there.”

“Then you’ll guide me and tell me what to expect when I get there. It’s important that you remember it accurately. If I lose my advantage, well, that could become an ugly situation for everyone.” He caught a green light and turned left, heading for the interstate. “We’ll need to drive a bit faster too. Boone won’t want to take risks, but I don’t think she’s inclined to waste much time.”

Once they were all on the highway, the camera’s livestream began to fade in and out, but they weren’t missing much. Just the open road in front of Shannon Beckley, the same open road that was in front of Abby. Dax paid the video feed no mind, but Abby watched, trying to identify mile markers and signs that would show her how far behind Boone and Shannon were. She guessed they were maybe ten minutes behind when Dax exited the interstate and began following the winding county roads that led to Hammel.

They were in the hills now, and a low fog crept through bare-limbed trees and settled beneath those that still had their leaves. A few houses had Halloween decorations up, and jack-o’-lanterns with rictus smiles sat on porches or beside mailboxes. The wind shivered dead leaves off skeletal branches. Autumn charm was dying; winter was on its way.

Dax drove with his right hand only, the gun in the door panel, close to his left hand, which rested on his thigh. Abby watched him bring that left hand up time and again on curves. Usually he didn’t bring it all the way to the wheel, but Abby knew that the Hellcat was still foreign to him, and even though he wasn’t driving recklessly, he was uneasy about that power and handling. Didn’t trust himself with the car yet.

Watching his weakness gave Abby a feeling of strength that would have seemed absurd to any spectator — one person had the gun and the wheel, and the other was tied to the passenger seat. And yet, as a passenger, able to watch the way Dax handled the car and the uncertainty he brought to it, she felt her confidence grow. That uncertainty was a small thing, but it was a weakness. If Abby could get the wheel back, he’d be gone. The gap she’d found in her panic on the rain-swept highway when she’d sliced through the semis and cars and glided through the break in the guardrail seemed to have carried some of her old brain back into her body. A door had opened in that moment. If she got behind the wheel, she could find it again. She could kick that door down if it didn’t open willingly.

All she needed was the chance.

She looked back down at the phone’s display. They’d lost the signal, and Shannon Beckley’s camera was gone. No surprise, not in these hills. Dax wasn’t pushing the speed too much, and Abby expected that the women behind them wouldn’t be either. They were clones — one killer, one hostage, nobody looking to attract police attention. That would give Dax his five- or maybe ten-minute lead at Hammel. What would he do with it? Abby thought he would leave the car. He would expect the car to attract attention that a man on foot in the darkness would not.

If I get five minutes alone, I’ll get that headrest off. I know how it’s done now. Feet on the dash, back arched, start with the left side...

She just needed those minutes.

“Turn left here,” Abby said.

Dax seemed surprised by the instruction, but he slowed.

“The signs say the college is to the right.”

“We’ll save a few minutes this way. Minutes matter now, don’t they?”

Dax turned to her, looking even younger and less hostile without the hat. Just a boy out for a ride in a muscle car.

“Yes,” he said. “Minutes matter.”

He turned left.

They wound through a residential stretch with Abby calling out directions, and then they turned on Ames Road and started a steep descent. The darkness was lifting in that barely perceptible way of predawn, not so much a brightening as a fading of the blackness.

“The railroad bridge is at the bottom of the hill,” Abby said. “Parking is on the left. There won’t be any cars down there now, probably.”

She thought about saying more, adding something about how they’d stand out to Lisa Boone if they parked down there, but she caught herself. Let him reach that conclusion on his own. He’d be suspicious if Abby offered too much help.

The transmission downshifted on the steep grade, an automatic adjustment that took the driver out of the equation and that Abby had always hated but that Dax seemed to prefer. You could switch the Challenger to a bastardized version of a manual transmission, no clutch pedal but paddle shifters. He hadn’t done that once, though.

Scared of the power, Abby thought, and again the ludicrous confidence rose. I can beat him if he just gets out of the car.

The headlights pinned the railroad bridge below them, the angled steel beams throwing shadows onto the dark river. Abby looked at the place and tried to remember what it had felt like when she’d paced this pavement with a camera in hand and confusion rising. That’s all it had been then — confusion. Carlos Ramirez’s story, so clean and simple, wasn’t accurate. Carlos, the second person to die. Hank, who’d wanted nothing but easy money and a chance for Abby to face down her demons, was the third. Gerry, the man who’d died on his kitchen floor, the fourth.