Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Will I be the fifth? Shannon Beckley the sixth? How many more die before it’s done?

“Do you know what’s on Oltamu’s phone?” Abby asked.

Again, Dax seemed startled by the sound of her voice. He hesitated, then said, “I don’t. Should be interesting, don’t you think? A lot of people seem willing to go to extreme lengths just to have it in their hands.”

“What if it’s nothing?”

Dax laughed. “I hardly think that’s an option.”

“It may be. He could have wiped the data. You don’t know.”

“No. All those locks on an empty phone? There’s something there.”

“It will involve batteries,” Abby said. “And I think it might involve cars. He came from the Black Lake. He watched testing.”

Dax seemed more intrigued now, but he was also in the place where he had to set the trap, and he wasn’t going to divide his focus.

“When I find out,” he said, pulling into one of the angled spaces in the spot where Amandi Oltamu had died and Tara Beckley had nearly been erased from existence, “you’ll be the first to know. You’ve earned that much, Abby. I’ll tell you before I kill you. That’s a promise.”

He was surveying the area, taking rapid inventory, his mind no longer on Abby but on the possibilities waiting here in the darkness above the river. The possibilities, and the pitfalls.

“Did you see the dog when you were here?” he asked.

“I did not.”

“But our girl Tara believes he will appear. Hobo. There’s a lot riding on a stray dog named Hobo.” He went silent, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and staring into the dark woods where birches swayed and creaked.

“Boone needs the phone to be opened,” he said at length. “Interesting. Gerry’s German friend seemed to think it was worth trying to open it, but it wasn’t a priority. So our buyer wants to kill the phone, and hers wants to see it.”

He looked at Abby again. “You’re right — I’m awfully curious about what’s on it.”

He dropped his right hand onto the gearshift, put the car in reverse, backed out, whipped the car around, and drove up the hill again. Abby tried to stay expressionless, tried not to let her relief show.

Dax was going to park the Challenger where it wouldn’t stand out, and that meant he would need to leave the car. The options, then, were to keep Abby in the car or bring her along. The latter carried more risk.

There’s a third option. He kills you here. He doesn’t need you anymore.

At the crest of the hill on Ames Road, where more houses began to appear, Dax turned the car and parallel-parked in a spot between streetlights where the Challenger would be obscured by shadows. He cut the engine and the lights. Paused and assessed. Nodded, satisfied. He took the cell phone, its screen filled with the image of the weaving night road that Shannon Beckley was driving just behind them, and slipped it into his pocket.

“Now, Abby, I’m afraid we’re going to have to separate for a time. I’ll miss you, but it’s for the best. You’ll have nefarious ideas in my absence, I’m sure. Things you could do to hurt me and, in your noble if dim-witted mind, help Shannon.” He plucked the gun from inside the door panel, and for an instant Abby could see the barrel being shoved through the lips of the man named Gerry just before the kill shot was fired and thought the same was coming for her.

Then Dax switched the gun to his right hand and reached for the door handle with his left.

“Before you make any choices,” he said, “I want you to consider this — I’ve kept you alive, and Lisa Boone is unlikely to do the same. You want me dead, and that’s fine. If I’m dead, though? She’s the last one left. I’m not sure I’d choose that if I were you.”

With that, he opened the door and stepped out into the chill night. He’d disabled the interior lights, and when he closed the door, he did it softly. Then he started down the hill at a jog, moving swiftly and silently.

Abby watched until he vanished into the woods. Then she braced her feet on the dashboard, took a deep breath, and arched her aching back to extend the reach of her bound hands as far as possible. She found the headrest releases quicker this time, and she set to work.

Boone hadn’t been planning on a hostage, but that didn’t mean she was unprepared for one. She was always prepared for such a contingency.

She used plastic zip-tie cuffs on Shannon Beckley’s wrists and a single piece of duct tape over her mouth, things that could be removed quickly in the event of trouble, but she used real cuffs to bind Shannon’s left ankle to a bar beneath the passenger seat. There would be no runaways on Boone’s watch.

Satisfied, she drove away in the girl’s rented Jeep. In the backseat, Beckley seemed composed enough; she was avoiding hysteria, at least, which was a help. Boone would have no trouble silencing her if it came to that, but she also needed to keep her alive until all sequences of locks had been defeated. Tara Beckley had managed to claim an infuriating amount of control. For a quadriplegic who couldn’t speak, an astounding amount of control, actually. Even if they found the fucking dog and the lock actually opened, Boone would still have to make her way back to Tara once more and deal with the challenges of the hospital without her helpful aide Dr. Pine. Shannon Beckley could be key to gaining access during the daylight hours, when the hospital was more active and the parents would be in the room, and Boone feared that the waking vegetable that was Tara Beckley could cause more trouble if she didn’t see proof of life of her sister. She could hold out. In fact, Boone suspected that she would, and she understood why — Tara didn’t have much left to lose.

Then again, there were the parents to consider.

Maybe Shannon wasn’t so vital after all.

All this would be decided after they left Hammel. For now the task was dictated by the image on the phone. Her current pursuit was ludicrous — this was a multimillion-dollar job in service of billions, and Boone was chasing a stray dog named Hobo. In her varied and diverse career, leaving corpses in more than a dozen countries, she’d never felt more absurd, and yet a part of her admired Oltamu. Somehow he’d felt the hellhounds closing in, and his response had been as resourceful as anyone’s could be in that moment. Nobody was going to get the intelligence he’d collected simply by picking up his phone. He’d played a risky game and lost it, but he’d made a fine effort all the way to the end.

Ask the girl, he’d instructed Boone, presumably having no idea just how difficult that would be. The doctor had come through, the girl had come through, and now the locks were turning, albeit slowly.

The drive ate away at hours Boone couldn’t afford to lose, and with the night edging toward dawn, she had to will herself to keep her speed down and use the time to consider what lay ahead. Pine was going to be a problem. People would find him soon enough, and while it would take a first-rate medical examiner to determine that he hadn’t died of natural causes, it would also inevitably cause chaos in the hospital. The place wouldn’t be nearly so quiet when Boone returned.

Chaos, though, could be used as a shield. It was all a matter of timing. The dog had to be dealt with, then Tara Beckley. Step by step. Unless, of course, Tara Beckley was lying, and there was no third lock. In that case, Boone could leave her sister’s body behind and be out of the country before Tara blinked her way through the alphabet board with any message that police might believe.

They reached the outskirts of Hammel, passed signs for the college, and then the winding New England road crested and dropped abruptly, a steep hill descending toward the river.