Julie Clark - The Last Flight

“Eva’s hit a rough patch,” Liz said. “But she’s going to be fine. She’s a survivor.”

Eva let out a quiet sigh of relief.

“Look,” Danielle was saying. “I need to pack since we’re leaving at the crack of dawn. Do you know where my black wool coat is?”

“Upstairs in the spare bedroom closet, I think. Let me see if I can find it.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Such a simple sentence, probably uttered hundreds of thousands of times. And yet, the power of it nearly brought Eva to tears. What it must be like to have someone always in your corner. She thought she’d had that with Liz, but seeing her together with her daughter, the way they trusted and confided in each other, Eva knew what she and Liz shared was nothing more than a close friendship. And she felt stupid for ever thinking it was more. What would Liz advise her daughter to do if she found herself in Eva’s position? Would she also encourage Danielle to turn herself in to the authorities? Or would she help her daughter escape?

On the screen in front of her, she imagined what Claire Cook would think tomorrow when she woke to discover her husband had changed her itinerary. That she’d be flying out of JFK to a tropical paradise instead of into the freezing Detroit temperatures. Perhaps she wouldn’t care. Perhaps Danielle’s instincts about the importance of this trip were wrong. But if they were right, if Claire was planning to run, she’d find herself desperate for a solution. Another way out.

And Eva might have just the solution in mind.

“What are you doing?”

Eva whipped around to find Danielle in the doorway, holding the bag she’d dropped there earlier. Eva closed the lid of the computer, hoping Danielle hadn’t seen too much, and gave her a blank smile. “Nothing.”

She held Danielle’s gaze until Danielle finally turned away, up the stairs to pack for her trip.

Eva opened the laptop again and toggled away from the photograph of Claire Cook, and over to the airline website. She clicked on Change my reservation , and in the drop-down menu, she switched out Newark for JFK , Liz’s words echoing in her mind. She’s a survivor.

Eva was determined to make that true.

Claire

Monday, February 28

I press my back into the seat, my gaze leaping from Danielle’s text to the driver’s right hand, resting casually on the steering wheel. A tattoo sleeve on his right arm.

My mind flies back to the motel lot, and I realize he hadn’t said anything about CNN. He’d said Claire Cook, and like an idiot, I got in the car.

Vehicles press in on us, all the way to the edge of the bridge. Steel cables rise into the sky above a small strip of sidewalk, and then a two-hundred-foot drop to the cold water below.

Castro’s advice, to get to the studio as soon as possible, taunts me now. This man will take me somewhere else—a deserted beach perhaps, or north to somewhere even more remote, and finish this.

A green Jetta slides up next to us, with a woman behind the wheel, her lips moving in silent conversation with someone I can’t see. I’m no more than three feet away from her, so close I can see her pink nail polish and the delicate silver hoops in her ears. I fight back tears, trying to think. If I screamed, would she hear me?

Our car moves several feet forward before stopping again, and now I’m looking at a white panel van with no windows. My eyes trace the tiny openings between the cars, an ever-shifting maze as vehicles inch forward. I’m going to have to jump out and run.

The lane next to us begins to move, and again I’m looking at the woman in the green Jetta. She throws her head back and laughs, unaware that I’m watching her from behind tinted glass.

About thirty yards ahead, a dark tunnel looms with signs for Treasure Island. The driver’s eyes find mine again in the rearview mirror. “Traffic will clear up once we get through the tunnel,” he says.

If I’m going to get out, a dark tunnel might be a good place to do it.

I rest my arm on the windowsill, my palms sweaty and slick against the door, and carefully lift the lock, watching him in the mirror, making sure his eyes remain on the road.

I’m only going to get one chance.

Jazz music swirls around the back seat, the rhythm fast and erratic, matching my pulse, and I hug my purse close, making sure it’s secure over my shoulder. I have one hand resting on the latch of my seat belt and my other hand lowering to the door handle, ready to yank it open and leap out. If I scream for help, surely someone will step up.

I regulate my breathing, counting down the feet until the car is plunged into the darkness of the tunnel.

Twenty feet.

Ten.

Five.

The driver looks at me again in the mirror. “You okay?” he asks. “You look a little pale. I have some water up here if you need it. The CNN studio is just a few blocks once we get off the bridge. Not much farther now.”

I feel the air rush out of me and collapse against the seat, clasping my shaking hands in my lap. CNN. Not Rory. Dizzy relief floods through me, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to fall apart.

This is the price of abuse. It has twisted my thinking into such a tangle I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. Logically, I can see how impossible it would have been for them to find me so easily. And yet, years of being under Rory’s influence has made it so that I’ve given him nearly superhuman power. To see where I’m hiding, to know my every thought and fear, and to then exploit them.

Finally, the car picks up speed, and we enter the tunnel. The darkness is a brief blink, and then we’re out the other side. As if by magic, the entire city rises up before us, bright white buildings shining in the early afternoon sun.

“Mrs. Cook?” he asks again, holding up a small bottle of water.

“I’m okay,” I tell him, as much for myself as for him.

* * *

Breaking news: We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you Kate Lane, live from Washington, DC, with a story that is just emerging from California. Kate?

The voices talk in my ear, though I sit alone on a stool placed in front of a green screen. Several producers and assistants are clustered around the single camera, zoomed in on me, but the red light indicating that I’m on-air remains dark. Next to it, a television screen shows Kate Lane in her DC studio, the feed piped directly into my earpiece. My head is still fuzzy from the adrenaline, but the freezing temperature of the studio clears it a little. On the far wall of the studio is a large digital clock with a bright-blue background that reads 1:22, and I watch the seconds tick down, trying to align my heart rate with them.

Shortly after I’d arrived at the CNN studio, weak and shaking, a producer had handed me an iPad with Kate Lane calling via video chat. They’d been able to talk with Danielle, who had agreed to send the recording to the New York State Attorney General. Kate’s sources inside the department told her they should have some news about next steps very soon. Charlotte Price had also been located and was willing to go on the record as soon as her attorney could file to void the NDA she’d signed so long ago.

“So now it’s up to you to tell your story,” Kate had said. “Paint a picture of your marriage for us. Tell us what your husband was like, and what you were running from.” Her expression softened. “I have to prepare you for what will likely happen once you come forward. People are going to dig into your life. Your past. Say hateful things about you and to you, in a very public way. It won’t matter whose side people are on—yours or your husband’s—your life will be put under a microscope regardless. Every choice you ever made. Every person you ever talked to. Your family. Your friends. I have an obligation to make sure you’re clear, before we proceed.”