If She Wakes

4

The case was so simple that Abby Kaplan decided to stop for a beer on her way to the scene.

This wasn’t encouraged protocol — drinking on the job could get her fired, of course — but there wasn’t much pressure today. The cops had already gotten one of the drivers to admit guilt. They had a signed statement and a recorded statement. Not much for Abby to do but review their report, take her own photos, and agree with their assessment. Cut and dried.

Besides, Hammel was a forty-minute drive from the Biddeford office of Coastal Claims and Investigations, and Abby, well... Abby got a little nervous driving these days. A beer could help that. Contrary to what most people — and, certainly, the police — believed, a beer before driving could make her safer for society. It settled twitching hands and a jumpy mind, kept her both relaxed and focused. Abby had no doubt that she drove better with a six-pack in her bloodstream than most people did stone-cold sober. She was damn sure safer than most drivers, with their eyes on their cell phones and their heads up their asses.

This wasn’t an argument you’d win in court, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.

She stopped at a brewpub not far from the Portland jetport, a place busy enough that she wouldn’t stand out, and she paid cash so there would be no credit card transaction to haunt her if something went wrong. Not that anything would go wrong, but she’d seen the ways it could. She also made a point of tearing the receipt into bits, because cash could help you only so much; there were different kinds of paper trails. She’d worked one case where the driver had been dumb enough to leave a receipt on the console recording the five margaritas he’d knocked back just before getting behind the wheel and blowing through a stop sign. It wasn’t that abnormal, really. You stopped by the body shop to take pictures of a cracked-up car and found damning evidence just sitting there in the cup holder, a tiny slip of paper with a time-and-date stamp that blew up any possible defense. Amazing. Abby had been on the fringes of the PI game for only a few months, but already she understood what sustained the profession: people lied, and people were stupid.

Oh, and one more: People sued. People loved to sue.

That was precisely what worried the good folks in the risk-mitigation office of Hammel College, her current client. When a world-renowned engineer was killed on your campus while in the care of a student escort, you didn’t have to be paranoid to imagine the lawsuit.

Abby sat at the bar, sipped her beer, and reviewed the case file. She didn’t see much for the college to worry about. The girl who’d been escorting the engineer around town had had clean bloodwork — a relief to the college, since it meant no DUI claim, but not much help to the girl, because she was still lights-out, five days in a coma now. And even though she had a negative drug screen, she could still have been negligent or at fault, which could turn into an expensive wrongful-death suit, but — good news for the Hammel Hurricanes — the second driver involved had taken responsibility on the scene!

He’d given a full statement to the police that was the accident-report equivalent of tying a hangman’s noose and sticking his own head through it: He’d been using his cell phone, trying to get his bearings through the phone’s map application, and when he looked up, he realized that what he’d thought was a road bridge was in fact a pedestrian bridge. He swerved to avoid it — and ended up in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Mr. Carlos Ramirez of Brighton, Massachusetts, was now into the realm of criminal courts, because one person was dead and another was a vegetable and Ramirez had eliminated any compelling argument for even a shared-fault case, what was known in Maine as modified comparative negligence. A good investigator paired with a good attorney could almost always find a weasel’s way into a modified-comparative-negligence ruling, but Carlos Ramirez was going to make it tough on his team.

It was Abby’s job to imagine what that team was considering, though, and in this case, it would be Tara Beckley’s location at the time of the accident. She was supposed to deliver her charge to an auditorium that was nowhere near where she’d parked. Some enterprising attorney might wonder whether her failure to follow the plan for the evening’s keynote speaker might qualify as negligence and, if so, whether the college might be responsible for that.

After Tara had parked her CRV beside a bridge that led to the Hammel College campus, Carlos Ramirez smashed into the car, killing Amandi Oltamu and knocking Tara Beckley into the cold waters of the Willow River. A bystander on the opposite side of the river had heard the crash but hadn’t seen it, and he managed to pull her out in a heroic but ultimately futile effort, because Tara Beckley was in a coma from which she was unlikely to emerge.

That left one dead man, one silent woman, and no witnesses.

I need to get my hands on her cell phone, Abby thought. Cell phones could either save you or hang you in almost any accident investigation. The beautiful simplicity of the case against Ramirez could be destroyed by something like a text message from Tara Beckley saying that her car had run out of gas or that she had a migraine and couldn’t see well enough to drive. You just never knew. Dozens of apps kept tracking information that most users were blissfully unaware of; it was entirely possible that the precise timing of the accident could be established from a cell phone. And if Tara Beckley had been using the phone while she was behind the wheel, Oltamu’s family might take a renewed interest in suing the college and their selected escort. Any whiff of negligence had to be considered.

Only problem: her phone seemed to be missing.

So it went into the river with her, Abby thought. She came up, and the phone didn’t.

She drained her beer and frowned, flipping back and forth through the pages of the report. Explaining Tara Beckley’s missing phone didn’t seem to be difficult, but Amandi Oltamu’s phone could also contain evidence, and Abby didn’t see where that was either. The police report included the items removed from the car, and the coroner’s report had a list of personal effects removed from the body, ranging from a wallet to a Rolex.

No phone, though.

The lead investigator was a guy with the state police named David Meredith. Abby wasn’t eager to speak to police these days, considering that there were two cops in California still urging a prosecutor to press charges against her for an accident that had made her more of a celebrity than she’d ever desired to be.

The concern conjured the memory, as it always did. Luke’s empty eyes, his limp hand, the soft whistle and hiss of the machines that kept him breathing. Synthetic life. And the photographers waiting outside the hospital for a shot of the woman responsible for it all: Abby Kaplan, the woman who’d killed Luke London, cut down a rising star in his prime. James Dean and Luke London, joined in immortality, young stars killed in car crashes. The only difference was that Luke hadn’t been driving the car.

That was a fun little secret about his movies. He never drove the car.

Never felt any shame over that either. Luke was completely comfortable in his own skin, happy to hand the keys over to a woman who barely came up to his shoulder, to smile that magazine-cover smile and say, “One day you’ll teach me how to do it myself.”

And I was going to. That was the idea, you see. It was his idea, not mine, I just happened to have the wheel, and my hands were steady, my hands were...

She shook her head, the gesture violent enough to draw a curious glance from the bartender, and Abby tried to recover by pointing at her now-empty glass, as if she’d been intending to attract attention.

One more, sure. One more couldn’t hurt.

She took out her phone to call David Meredith. He was safe. Most people here were. This was why she’d come back to Maine. David Meredith knew Abby only as Hank Bauer’s employee, nothing more. Hank was the closest thing Abby had to family, and he wasn’t telling any tales about her return to Maine. She owed him good work in exchange, even if that meant speaking with police.

She found Meredith’s number, called, and explained what she was working on.

“You guys caught that one?” Meredith said. “Good for Hank. It’s easy money.”

“Sure looks that way,” Abby agreed. “But I’m heading out to take some pictures at the scene and see if there was anything that might be trouble for the college.”

“There isn’t. Tell the lawyers they can sleep easy.”

“I’m curious about the phones, actually. Where are they?”

“We’ve got his.”

“Ramirez’s, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“What about hers? Or Oltamu’s?”

David Meredith paused. “I’m assuming hers is in the water.”

“Sure. But his?”

“The coroner’s office, probably.”

“The report doesn’t account for it. His wallet and watch and keys and even a comb were mentioned. But there was no phone.”

“So he didn’t have one. Some people don’t. His doesn’t matter, anyhow. Now hers, I could see what you’re worried about there. Was she texting or whatever. But... she was parked and out of the car. Hard to imagine a scenario where she gets blamed.”

“She wasn’t where she was supposed to be. That’s my only worry.”

“I can’t help you on that one. But like you said, the wreck is simple, and Ramirez is going to be formally charged tomorrow. That’ll help you. I’ve got to talk to the girl’s family today. I’ll ask about the phone, see if I can figure out who the last person to hear from her was.”

“Great.” Abby thanked Meredith and hung up, glad that her client was the university, faceless and emotionless, and not the family of that girl in the coma. Five days she’d been in there, alive but unresponsive. Abby didn’t like to imagine that, let alone see it. That was precisely the kind of shit that could get in her head and take her back...

“I’ll have one more,” she told the bartender.

One more wouldn’t kill her. It just might save her, in fact. Thinking about the girl in the hospital and wondering if her eyes were open or closed was not the sort of image Abby needed in her head before she got behind the wheel. Another beer would help. People didn’t understand that, but another beer would help.

Abby was five foot three and a hundred and fifteen pounds, and two pints of Sebago Runabout Red would bring her blood alcohol content up to, oh, 0.4. Maybe 0.5, tops. Still legal. And steadier.

A whiskey for the spine and a beer for the shooting hand, her dad used to say. Abby had no idea where he’d picked up that phrase, but it had always made her laugh. He also liked to say One more and then we’ll all go, which was even funnier because he was usually drinking alone. Jake Kaplan had been one funny guy. Maybe not in the mornings, but, hell, who was funny in the morning?

Abby sipped the pint and held her slim right hand out level above the bar.

Steady as a rock.

She turned back to the case file and flipped through it to see where the cars were impounded. Tara Beckley’s CRV and the cargo van rented by Carlos Ramirez had both been hauled off by an outfit with the exquisite name of Savage Sam’s Salvage.

Abby called. The phone was answered almost immediately with one curt word: “Sam.”

Savage Sam? Abby almost asked, but she managed to hold that one back and explained who she was and why she was calling.

“Ayuh, I got ’em both, the van and the Honda,” Sam acknowledged without much interest. “Both of ’em beat to shit, but the Honda took it worse. Those are little SUVs, but they’re stout, so it must’ve taken a pretty good pop.”

Abby thought of the photos of the bloodstained pavement and of Tara Beckley in her hospital bed, body running on tubes and machines, eyes wide open and staring at Abby.

“Yes,” she said. “It did take a good pop. I’ll need to see the vehicles, but I’m also interested in what you might have found in the car.”

“I don’t steal shit out of cars, honey.”

That was an interesting reaction.

“My name is Abby, not honey, and I didn’t mean to imply that you stole anything,” she said. “It’s just that I’m looking for a phone that seems to have gone missing and that might still be in the car.”

There was a long pause before he said, “I can check it again, maybe.”

First the adamant claim that he didn’t steal things out of cars, now the willingness to check it again. Perhaps Savage Sam was uptight for a reason. Abby had a hunch that he was going to discover the phone — and maybe a few other valuables. She suspected this wasn’t the first time he’d swept through a wrecked car in his impound lot.

“I’d appreciate that,” Abby said. “Because that phone is going to be pretty important to the case, and we’ve got one dead and one in a coma. You know what that’ll lead to — trial, lawyers, cops, all that happy crap.”

She said it casually but made sure to emphasize the police and lawyers. It did not seem to be lost on Savage Sam, who said in a more agreeable tone of voice, “It’s possible I overlooked somethin’.”

Abby smiled. “Can happen to anyone. If you don’t mind checking, that would be great. And I can keep the cops out of your hair. If they come by, they’ll waste more of your time than I will, you know?”

“I’ll check it, sure,” Savage Sam said, now seeming positively enthusiastic about the prospect.

“Just give me a call back if you find anything.”

Five minutes, she thought when she hung up. That was how long it would take Savage Sam to call back with news of the discovery of a cell phone. He probably already had it in his desk drawer, waiting on a buyer from Craigslist or eBay.

She was wrong — it took nine minutes.

“It turns out there was one in there,” Savage Sam informed her with a level of shock more appropriate for the discovery of a live iguana in one’s toilet. “Jammed down by the gas pedal and wedged just between it and the floor mat. Crazy — I never would’ve seen it unless I’d been looking for it.”

Abby grinned. “I bet. Well, I’m sure glad you checked again for me.”

“Yeah, happy to help.”

“You’re positive there was just one?” Abby said.

“Positive. What do you want me to do with it?”

“I can pick it up today, or I can have the police do it?”

“Why don’t you grab it,” Sam said. “I don’t need to get in the middle of things.”

Abby wondered just how much swag this guy sold. “I can be there just before five, if that works for you?”

“That works.”

Abby paid the tab. Three beers — when had the third one snuck in there? Oh, well, she was still legal. One for the spine, one for the shooting hand, and one for the memories she’d rather not let into her head while she was behind the wheel. Clarity could be a bitch sometimes.

5

She won’t quit,” Shannon Beckley insists.

Her face is hovering just inches from Tara’s, but she’s squinting like someone peering through a microscope, searching for something. Her voice carries conviction, but her eyes lack it. Her eyes think the search might be hopeless.

“Trust me,” Shannon says.

I always trust you, Tara answers, but no sound comes out. Why isn’t there a sound? Strange. She starts to speak again but Shannon interrupts. Not unusual with Shannon.

“Trust me,” Shannon repeats, “this girl... will... not... quit.” Shannon’s green eyes are searing; her auburn hair is falling across her face, and her expression is as severe as any boot-camp drill sergeant’s. Tara can smell Shannon’s Aveda moisturizer, with its hint of juniper, and feel her breath warm on her cheek. She’s that close, and yet Shannon’s eyes suggest that she feels far away, unable to see whatever she’s looking at. That’s confusing, because she’s looking at Tara.

Good for her if she will not quit, Tara tells her sister, and again there is no sound, but that concern is replaced by confusion. Hang on — who will not quit? And what is it that she’s not going to quit?

Shannon is always forceful, but her face and words carry heightened intensity as she makes these stark but meaningless assertions about the girl who will not quit.

Not her eyes, though, Tara thinks. Her eyes are not nearly so sure about things.

Shannon leans away then, and the light that floods into Tara’s face is harsh and white. At first she can’t see anything because of that brightness, but then it dulls, as if someone has dialed back a dimmer switch, and she sees her mother. Her mother is crying. Rick is rubbing her shoulders. Good old Rick. Always the man with a hand for the shoulder and a comforting word. Usually the words don’t mean much, silly platitudes, bits of recycled wisdom. But Tara’s mother needs a steady diet of encouragement. The supportive touches and comforting words do the job she used to let the pills do.

But what is today’s crisis? Tara watches her mother cry and watches Rick rub her back with a slow, circular motion that feels nearly hypnotic, and she tries to determine what the problem is, why everyone is so scared, so sad.

Oh, yeah — someone won’t quit, that’s the problem.

Tara’s mouth is dry and her head aches and she is very tired. Too tired to deal with her mother’s anxiety yet again. Let Rick deal with it. And Shannon. Shannon is here, ready to take charge, as always. Why is Shannon here? She’s in her last year of law school at Stanford, and Shannon doesn’t miss classes. Ever. But here she is...

Where is here? Where am I?

She knows this should matter, and yet it doesn’t seem to. Between Rick’s soothing and Shannon’s shouting, it will all work out. Tara isn’t needed for this one. She’s too tired for this one.

What is this one?

The girl who won’t quit. That girl is the problem. Who exactly she is and what exactly she is up to, Tara doesn’t know, but the girl who won’t quit is clearly causing the trouble here. Tara is too tired to join them all in their concern, though. The whole scene exhausts her and makes her strangely angry. Whoever the girl is, she needs to back the hell off and leave everyone alone. Look at them. Just look at their faces. See those tears, that fatigue, that sorrow? Back off, bitch. Back off and leave them alone.

Just go away.

Tara decides she will sleep again. Maybe while she sleeps, this relentless problem girl will finally abandon her confusing quest.

All Tara understands with certainty is that it will be better for everyone when that girl finally quits.

6

Savage Sam might’ve been sixty or a hundred. Either one seemed reasonable. He stood well over six feet, even with his stooped stance, and that natural forward lean paired with his unusually long arms gave the impression that he could have untied his boots without changing posture.

“I might not have been completely clear about the phone when we talked,” he said when he greeted Abby at the front gate. He was carrying a shoe box.

“You don’t have it?”

“Oh, no, I think I’ve got it.”

Abby frowned. “I don’t follow. Either you have it or you don’t.”

“Not necessarily,” the old man said, and then he took the lid off the shoe box. Inside were at least a dozen cell phones as well as a heap of chargers and three GPS navigators.

“Now, before you get to thinkin’ somethin’ that isn’t true,” Sam cautioned, “I want you to know that I always hang on to them for thirty days before I sell them. A firm policy. Otherwise it’d be stealing.”

“The state law is thirty days?”

Savage Sam blinked and squinted. He had bifocals tucked into the pocket of his flannel shirt but chose to squint instead, as if the glasses were a prop or he’d forgotten he had them. Or perhaps he’d swiped them out of a car and was intending to sell them later.

“It’s awful close to thirty days, even if it isn’t exactly that,” he said. “They might’ve changed it.”

Abby didn’t think they’d changed the law regarding the presumption that whatever was in a wrecked car belonged to the car’s owner, but she wasn’t interested in debating the point. “That many people leave their phones?” she asked, peering into the bulging box. “Most people these days would rather cut off their hands than walk away from their phones.”

“A lot of times it’s probably an old phone or a backup or something. People give phones to their parents or grandparents, and the old-timers have no use for them, so they just pitch them into the glove compartment and forget about them. And you’d be surprised how many I find that are still in the boxes they came in.”

It made some sense. She stared at the contents of the shoe box.

“You don’t know which one came from the Honda, then?”

“Well... no. I mean, I just picked it up and threw it in there. Didn’t think about it. Now, I recall it was one of the nicer ones. Probably an iPhone.” His wizened thumb jammed into the box and shifted an iPhone forward, then another, and then a third. “But I don’t know exactly which one. And with you saying there’s police involved, and a man’s been killed and all... it would probably be easier if you sorted it out.”

He offered the box. Abby took it, contents shifting, and put the lid back on. If she just got them charged up and called numbers for Oltamu and Tara Beckley, the winner would ring.

“I’ve been here forty years and my brother’s had a pawnshop for thirty-nine,” Savage Sam said. “It works pretty well, you know?”

“I’d imagine so,” Abby said, thinking that keeping crime in the family often did.

“I guess we were always the pack-rat kind. Hell, even the sign required a bit of scavenging.”

He gestured above them, and the sign was indeed a sight to behold — a massive, old-fashioned neon marquee that would have been appropriate for a drive-in movie theater. Savage Sam’s Salvage was lit up like the Fourth of July, even though the property didn’t seem to consist of much more than an old man and a tow truck.

“It is an impressive sign,” Abby acknowledged. “Mind if I ask about the name? Savage Sam?”

Sam leaned back, which brought him nearly to an upright posture, and grinned. For an instant Abby had a glimpse of what he must’ve looked like as a kid, one of those hell-raisers who charmed teachers and parents and then set the town on fire when the adults turned their backs.

“They misspelled it,” he said, and laughed. “Was supposed to read Sam’s Salvage. Simple. But then the sign came, two pieces, one said Sam’s, the other said Savage. They forgot the L! I was pissed at first. Because the sign wasn’t cheap. So I called the guy who sold it to me and gave him hell, asking what kind of idiot could screw up a sign with only two damned words. Dumb as he was, I guess I should’ve been grateful he got Sam’s right. Anyhow, he sent me a replacement sign that had the mysterious missing L, but he didn’t ask for the other one back. Shit, why should he? So I had the three of ’em, and I got to looking them over and I thought, Why waste it?”

Now Abby was laughing too. “So you just hung them all up?”

“Sure. I thought it was kind of catchy. By then, I was starting to like it. You know how there are always those kids with nicknames and you never had one? Or did you have one?”

Abby had earned plenty of nicknames on the speedway, some more kind than others. Even the kinder ones, like Danica, had usually been offered with a sneer.

“I’m just Abby,” she told Sam, though she was remembering the Wiscasset Speedway; she’d become the first woman to win there. Someone had spray-painted White Trash Rocket on the driver’s door before the race.

“Well, I’d always been just plain old Sam Jones, no nickname coming out of that, but then that idiot screwed up the sign and I’ve been Savage Sam about ever since.” He laughed again. “But, hell, no reason to waste it. Like I said, my family’s always been pack rats.”

He seemed so happy staring at the old misspelled sign that Abby almost hated to interrupt his reverie. But she did. “The phone was in the Honda, right? Not the van?”

Sam blinked, jogged out of the past and into the present. “Yup, the Honda. I’m telling you, I never could’ve seen it down there if you hadn’t asked me to look. You don’t know which phone it is?”

“I don’t. I’ll have to charge them and call them, I guess. That’ll take a while.”

“Keep ’em all overnight, then. Just bring the rest back.”

We wouldn’t want those falling into the wrong hands before they hit the pawnshop, would we? Abby thought. “You’re good with that?” she said. “You want to take an inventory of them or anything? A photo?”

It seemed like there should be some record of the transfer of evidence between two people who were not police, but the question apparently struck Savage Sam as an odd one. He thought it over and said, “You got a card or something?”

“Um... yeah.” Abby fumbled through her purse and withdrew a business card. It had Hank Bauer’s name on it; Abby had declined cards of her own on at least a half a dozen occasions because any formality suggested that this job might last for more than a few weeks. Never mind that she’d already been at it a few months. The gig was temporary, and she’d be West Coast — bound again soon, or back to Europe, maybe, or possibly Tokyo. Sure. Any day now. And until then, she had Hank Bauer’s cards to hand over.

“You don’t want to write down what all I’m taking?” she asked.

“This’ll do.” Sam pocketed the card. “Either you’re gonna steal ’em or you’re not.” He shrugged.

With that official police business having been concluded with no police, no signatures, and the exchange of a shoe box, Abby decided to push ahead.

“You still have the cars?” she asked.

Savage Sam nodded. “Right out back. You want a look?”

“Please.”

Despite his odd posture and nearsighted squint, Sam moved quickly, stepping nimbly around the piles of junk — hubcaps, a massive bag of bottles, a stack of what appeared to be truck fenders covered by a tarp — and out to the cars.

Tara Beckley’s green Honda CRV was all too familiar to Abby from the photos; there was scarcely any part of the car left undamaged except for the driver’s seat. Tara would have been better off if she’d stayed behind the wheel. Abby leaned down and looked at the floor mat there — it was khaki-colored, clean, and dry. The phone would’ve surely stood out against it. There was no trace of blood on the fabric.

The same couldn’t be said for the backseat. She got only a glance at the crimson stains across the ripped upholstery before she felt dizzy, and she straightened up fast.

“He must’ve been driving to beat hell when he hit her,” Sam said conversationally, running his long, knobby-knuckled fingers over the crumpled metal. “See the frame damage you got here? That doesn’t happen at low speed. He must’ve been—”

“Where’s the van?” Abby cut in. She hadn’t intended to be rude; she simply wanted an excuse to look away from the bloodstained Honda.

“Right over here,” Sam said without reproach. His interest in the Honda’s former occupants and their blood was minimal.

The van was a cargo hauler with a heavy bumper that was crushed back into the hood. Damaged, yes, but nothing significant compared to the Honda.

“Those vans are big, heavy bastards,” Sam said with admiration. “Wasn’t even carrying a load, but it probably goes four thousand pounds empty. And as tall as it is, shit, that little car didn’t have much of a chance. I heard he was using his phone or something. Ain’t surprising. You drive down the road any day of the week and pay attention, you’ll see how many of these jackasses are driving with their heads down, not giving a damn about anybody on the road but... what are you looking at?”

Abby was on her knees in the gravel, one hand braced on the van. “The tires.”

“They’re still worth selling,” Sam acknowledged. They’d probably be on their way to his brother’s pawnshop before long.

And he wasn’t wrong about the tires. They were certainly worth selling; the tread didn’t look worn. The daylight was dying, and in the shadows, Abby couldn’t find a wear-indicator bar on the tires, so she set the shoe box down and searched her purse for a coin. Sam’s gnarled fingers appeared in her face, a penny held between them.

“Thanks.” Abby rotated the penny so Abe Lincoln’s head was pointed down and inserted the coin between the tire’s tread grooves. Lincoln’s head sank below the black rubber and vanished up to the shoulders. Sam was right; the tires were nearly new.

Abby sat back on her heels and stared first at the van, then at the Honda.

“I might need to come back and take some pictures,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, when I return the phones?”

“I guess,” Sam said. He sounded resigned to trouble. “Hell, I ought to stop taking cop tows. They ain’t worth the hassle.”

“I’ll try to keep it from becoming a hassle for you,” Abby said, no longer caring much if the old man had intended to sell the stolen phone. He’d turned it over, at least. Savage Sam of the misspelled neon signs wasn’t such a bad guy. “I’ll get in and out, quick and painless, I promise.”

“That’s what they told me the last time I had a colonoscopy,” Sam said.

7

Ghosts are real.

Tara knows this because she is one.

When clarity first returns, she sees her mother, her stepfather, and her sister. She sees them and she hears Shannon’s voice and thinks: The dream is done.

She thinks, slower and more carefully, because it is so important: I am alive.

There is relief with that realization, but it is a temporary relief, because she soon determines that she is invisible.

Shannon is arguing with Rick and Mom, but she is arguing on Tara’s behalf, and Rick and Mom are facing Tara, staring right at her but not seeing her.

“She wouldn’t quit on us, and so I am not going to listen to anyone say one word about what we must consider,” Shannon snaps. “Because what you’re considering is quitting on your own daughter!”

Tara looks into her mother’s eyes and waits for recognition, awareness, something. Notice me, speak to me, touch me. But her mother just stares blankly, her eyes bloodshot and ringed by dark circles. She doesn’t seem to see Tara. Rick looks at Tara as well, his bearded face doing a poor job of hiding his annoyance with Shannon. He doesn’t see Tara either. She’s used to being ignored by Rick — and to ignoring him — but this is different. He’s looking right at her and yet for all the world he seems to be staring at a wall.

I’m invisible. Maybe I’m not alive. Maybe I’m dead, and this is what it’s like?

She is a ghost. The realization is sudden and certain. It is the only explanation for her condition.

How did I die?

“It’s too early to talk like this,” Shannon says, and Rick closes his eyes with fatigue. Mom just keeps staring. Shannon starts to speak again, then thinks better of it, shakes her head furiously, and stalks to the window. Everyone is quiet then. Tara wants to speak but her tongue is heavy and rigid and uncooperative in her mouth, and so she lies there and tries to gather her voice.

It is then that understanding begins to come, agonizingly slowly, like filling a glass one drop of water at a time.

Mom. Rick. Shannon. A television turned to CNN, but muted. A bed with a pair of feet resting on it. Wait — those are her feet. She is in the bed. The bed is not her own. The room is not her own. Her confusingly thick tongue is not a tongue at all — it is a tube. There are more tubes in other places, and she’s aware of them now, first with pain and then some shame. There are wires too, a seemingly endless amount of wires.

Hospital.

Yes, that is it. She is in a hospital, and she is not a ghost. Not just yet. What is she, though?

“Every coma is different,” Shannon says without turning, her voice trembling with barely subdued anger, and in that sentence, in that single word — coma — Tara has her answer.

She has been in a coma. This makes sense; it’s a better explanation than anything she’s come up with on her own. But she is out of the coma now, because she is awake and alert and she can see and hear. Why don’t they notice this? Why don’t they see that she is awake?

Because you haven’t said anything, dummy. Tell them!

Hello, Tara says.

No one reacts. Shannon doesn’t turn; Mom’s stare doesn’t break; Rick’s slumped shoulders don’t tense.

Panic rises then, a terrible, claustrophobic panic, and this time Tara screams, determined to be heard.

I’m right here!

Nothing. Shannon stares out the window, Mom bows her head, Rick stands slumped and weary.

This time, Tara understands, though. She didn’t make a sound. Her scream had produced... nothing.

Had she even parted her lips? Surely she had. She’d screamed at the top of her lungs, screamed in terror and confusion, and no one had reacted. How is this possible? Maybe there is a wall between them, some sort of glass partition, the kind with a mirror on their side like in the cop shows so she can see them but they can’t see her.

This thought brings logic back to an insane world, and the terror subsides. She tells herself to sit up and figure out the two-way mirror, find that glass panel and rap on it and get their attention, let them know that she is here, she is back, awake again.

Sit up.

She thinks the words, visualizes the motion, and waits. Nothing happens. She’s still lying down, and she should be upright. Just... sit up.

But she can’t.

The terror is back now.

She tries again but makes no progress, and, worse, she realizes there’s no sense of resistance, nothing holding her down, no weight or strap or anything that would block this simple command to her body. Even if she is injured — and she’s in a hospital with tubes and IVs in her, so of course she has been injured — she should be able to fight upward.

She can issue the command, but her body can’t obey it.

Paralyzed. Oh no, not that...

She starts to cry then. To cry and shake.

No tears come. No sounds.

Shannon turns and looks down at her, right into her eyes, and Tara stares back into her older sister’s loving face and pleads for help.

Shannon looks away.

“I don’t want to hear any of the spiritual shit, Rick,” she says. “I do not want to hear it yet.”

“I’m sorry that shit bothers you, Shannon, but I think it’s worth talking about!” Rick answers, taking a step toward her. “You need to begin to ask yourself who this is for, your sister or her body. You need to begin to consider that there is a difference.”

“I am not considering a damn thing until we’ve seen a neurologist,” Shannon says.

“Everyone says if we just keep our faith...” Mom tries timidly, but Shannon isn’t having it.

“Everyone on your Facebook page says that. While you’re making Team Tara posts and people are offering advice from their phones between bites of their bagels, I’m suggesting we consult an actual expert.”

Mom winces, Rick sighs, and Shannon lifts her hands in regret. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be a bitch, Mom, I’m really not. The Facebook page is important. I get that. But I don’t want us to begin premature conversations.”

“Our job will be to imagine her quality of life,” Rick says softly, “and you can’t even reach that point until you know whether there is a life.”

“She’s breathing!” Shannon shouts. “Her heart is beating! Her eyes are open, she’s watching us!”

Rick points at Tara, a beaded bracelet jangling on his right wrist. He is looking directly at her but seems to see only an empty bed.

“Her body is doing those things, yes. But where is Tara?” he asks in that pastoral whisper he uses so often to calm their mother. “Look into her eyes, Shannon, and then tell me. Where is Tara right now?”

I am right fucking here! Tara shouts.

They all turn toward her then, and for a moment she thinks she’s made contact. Then she realizes they are just following Rick’s outstretched hand and considering his question.

“Tell me, Shannon,” he whispers, moving his hand to rub his graying beard. “Where... is... she?”

When Shannon says, “I don’t know,” the tears overwhelm Tara again.

No one in the room knows that she’s right there, and no one in the room knows that she’s crying.

8

The place where Amandi Oltamu had died was beautiful and peaceful. Crisp orange leaves glowed in the fading sunlight as they swirled across the pavement, and beneath them were glittering bits of pebbled glass that the cleanup effort had missed. The blood had been hosed off the pavement.

Abby stepped out of her car, looked at that bright, too-clean patch of asphalt, and tried to ignore the steady accelerating of her heartbeat.

Exposure therapy, that’s what this job of studying car wrecks was supposed to be. You kept things from taking up damaging residence in your brain by meeting them on your own terms in small, planned doses, building up a tolerance. The mind was no different than the body — it could become immune to a bad memory just like it could to a virus.

This was what a therapist in California had told her. Granted, the therapist hadn’t recommended changing careers, let alone moving back to Maine. She’d encouraged Abby to look at some pictures, that was all. And Abby had tried. But...

But the therapist hadn’t killed her boyfriend in a car wreck, and once you’ve done that, well, those pictures can become harder to look at than most people would believe.

The job Abby had now was an almost ludicrous outgrowth of a technique she’d been asked to embrace in California, but she was the only person who understood the bridge between the two. Nobody on the West Coast knew what she was doing now, and she hadn’t volunteered any of her stories to Hank or anyone else in Maine. She’d had absolutely no desire to.

Until today, at least. When Hank had given her the overview of the wreck in Hammel, Abby had almost broken and told him the details of her horror story, told him about the way Luke’s hand had closed on her arm just before they left the road, told him that maybe his last words hadn’t been Faster, Abby, but rather Slow down, told him how his eyes had seemed to track hers in the hospital even after the doctors said there was absolutely no indication of awareness. For an instant, she’d been ready to tell Hank that under no circumstances could she investigate an accident that had put someone in a coma.

She hadn’t said a word, though. In the end, she’d just taken the file and headed out to do her job — with that quick stop for a beer on the way. Because the past was the past, Luke was nothing but a memory, and Abby couldn’t afford to spend any more of her life with her eyes on the rearview mirror.

But now, standing here in the cold fall air with the sun setting behind the wooded hills and the smell of the sea riding the wind, she couldn’t bring herself to look at the wreck photos. They would make her think of the miles of roads that lurked between here and home. Intersections and stoplights, sharp curves and banked slopes, all of those challenges so simply handled by basic instinct, and challenges that could be turned into creative triumphs if your mind was fast and your hands were steady. It was a bitch if that basic instinct ever wavered on you, but if you’d once had a fast mind and steady hands and a hundred and twenty miles per hour felt like fifty? In that case, it was worse. Deeper and darker. In that case, you began to feel like you didn’t really know yourself anymore.

Focus, damn it. Focus on the job and then get out of here.

She stood at the base of the hill and looked out at the two-lane bridge that crossed the river and led to the college campus. There was a concrete pillar on the sidewalk identifying the bridge’s place in the state’s history. This was what Tara Beckley’s CRV had struck after Carlos Ramirez, his head down and cell phone glowing, drove his van into the car.

Lives ended from mere moments of distraction. Happened all too often.

Doesn’t require distraction, though. There are variations on the lost-lives theme. Stunt drivers taking famous actors out for a spin, for example. Those trips can end badly too.

Again, Abby could see Luke’s hand reaching for hers.

She shook her head, then walked up the hill to put herself in the position the van’s driver had been in. She took out her camera and pivoted slowly, shooting a 360-degree view. The sun was sinking fast and lights were visible on both sides of the bridge. The campus was on the western side of the river, and atop the steep hill on the east, everything was residential. If Ramirez hadn’t already fallen on his sword, there might have been some mitigation from the lighting. The streetlights were toned-down replicas of old gas lamps, designed more for aesthetics than illumination.

Abby was about 280 degrees through her 360-degree turn when she lowered the camera and frowned, thinking of the massive amount of destruction done to Tara Beckley’s Honda CRV. Carlos Ramirez had to have been hauling ass when he hit them to inflict that sort of damage. Down a steep hill and into those angled parking spaces...

She paced up the hill a few steps and turned to look back at the parking spots.

The wind that gusted and stirred the brittle leaves was getting colder. Abby zipped up her fleece and paced back down to the edge of the bridge and looked up at the hill, and now her old instincts were alive. This insurance investigator — could there be a less glamorous occupation? — had once been the fabled Professional Driver on a Closed Course, and while that was an adrenaline-jockey business, it was also a science-based business.

Abby Kaplan didn’t need to run a calculation to know what was troubling her — the police photos didn’t do justice to the hill.

That hill was much steeper than Abby had imagined. The road crested and then seemed to dive toward the river. The police had probably viewed that as a contributing factor to the wreck. Carlos Ramirez had been driving an unfamiliar cargo van, he’d been going fast, he’d been distracted, and he’d been on a dangerous slope. Check, check, check, check. All of that played well on paper. But...

How come he didn’t roll it?

Abby chewed her lip and stared at that steep hill rising from the river and thought about the nearly new tires she’d seen on the van.

There were two types of rollovers, tripped and untripped. Most rollover accidents were tripped, which meant that some external object — a curb, a ditch, a guardrail — upset the vehicle’s balance. The rarer untripped rollovers were the result of the battle among three cornering forces: centripetal (tire friction), inertial (vehicle mass), and good old gravity.

Untripped rollovers were caused or avoided by the driver’s ability (or lack thereof) to understand and control the car. The driver was alone in that critical moment, tethered to the world by nothing but four points of rubber and her own skill.

Abby could remember standing on a course in Germany waiting to drive a Mercedes prototype while an engineer droned on about this; she kept wishing she could just get behind the wheel and go because her hands and eyes already understood everything the guy was babbling about.

Back then they had, at least.

He’d been talking about the CSV, or critical sliding velocity. She had started to pay more attention at that point, because he’d uttered the word that owned Abby’s heart: velocity. The CSV formula determined the minimum lateral speed at which the vehicle would roll.

When he’d killed Amandi Oltamu and knocked Tara Beckley into a coma, Carlos Ramirez had been executing a fishhook maneuver. On test runs, that meant you followed a fishhook-shaped curve: You went straight, then turned sharply in one direction — as you’d do to avoid something in the road — then overcorrected in the other. On each run, you widened your path, steering at sharper and sharper angles, testing it until the tires howled and threatened to lift off the pavement — or until they did lift off.

Abby had executed maybe two thousand fishhook runs. She didn’t need an engineering degree to see the problem with the scenario on the bridge across from Hammel College. The slope was too steep and the fishhook turn was too narrow.

He’d have rolled first. He might have hit Beckley’s car, but he’d have had his van on its side by the time he did. The cargo van was too tall, its center of mass too high, to handle such abrupt cornering and remain upright.

Unless he’d never tried to turn. Unless he’d been coming straight at them, targeting them.

Abby didn’t hesitate to look at the photos this time. Her curiosity had overridden her apprehension, and she was able to see past the blood on the pavement and focus on the vehicle positions.

The cargo van was upright, the CRV was upright, the damage was catastrophic, and all of that made sense until you stood down here and looked up the hill and thought about the angles.

Her phone rang, a shrill shattering of the quiet, and she closed the accident report and looked at the phone. Hank Bauer, her boss and friend and onetime sponsor, a man who’d paid the fees to get a teenage Abby Kaplan into stock-car races in Wiscasset, Scarborough, and Oxford.

“Hey, Hank.”

“How’s it going, Abs?”

“Fine. Actually... well, it’s a little messed up.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Something’s wrong in that report. What Ramirez said happened is impossible. It might be what he thinks happened, but it isn’t right.”

Hank’s voice dropped an octave. “He smashed directly into a parked car. How wrong can he be about that?”

“He would have tipped that van,” Abby said. “Hank, I’m telling you, there’s no way he could have hit the passenger side of her car that hard if he’d swerved the way he said he did. He’d have rolled it into the river first.”

“Let the police worry about Ramirez,” Hank said. “I just want our girl Tara to be clean as a whistle. Okay?”

“Right,” Abby said, but she didn’t like it because she wanted someone who could talk on her level about this problem. She changed tack instead. “I might have good news there. I think I’ve got her phone.”

“How’d you do that?”

Abby told him about the trip to the salvage yard, and Hank began to laugh before she was done.

“Only thing surprising about that is Sam hadn’t sold it yet.”

“Well, I’ve got a box of phones now and I don’t know which is hers. I’ll charge them up tonight and test them.”

“Save yourself the trouble — you can ask her sister tomorrow.”

“What?”

“She wants to know what you’re doing, I guess. Wants to meet you. Wants to meet anyone and everyone who’s involved.”

“She’s coming up here?”

“No, you’re going down there, to the hospital in Massachusetts. Bring your treasure chest from Savage Sam along.”

“The hospital? Why?” Abby felt a cold fist tighten in her gut. She did not want to go to the hospital. She most sincerely did not want to see that girl in the coma. “I’ll call the sister. I don’t need to go to Boston to see her in the hospital.”

“You think I don’t know that? I already called her. The sister is a law-school student but apparently believes she’s already passed the bar and been appointed district attorney. I’m glad it’s you and not me who gets the treat of meeting her in person.”

“I’m not wasting a day in Boston just to explain what I’m doing.”

“Like hell you’re not. Billable hours! Abby, do you have any idea how much I can soak that college for? If the family wants to see you at the hospital, you go to the friggin’ hospital. You can show her the phones. That won’t be a waste of time. And you can take the Challenger!”

His enthusiasm made Abby close her eyes. “I’m good with the Chrysler, thanks.”

“Aw, c’mon, Abs.” Sorrowful now. “I bought the damned thing.”

“Nobody told you to.”

“Just drive it, would you? Get a taste again. See what it does for you.”

“I’ll think about it,” Abby said, and then she hung up.

What Hank wanted her driving was a Dodge Challenger Hellcat with 707 horsepower growling under a black-on-red hood. He’d bought it for well under value after it was repossessed by a friend of his who sold cars in New Hampshire. Because Hank still believed Abby craved speed, he’d purchased the Challenger and offered it to her as a temporary “company car.”

It could do zero to sixty in under four seconds, was outfitted with Pirelli racing tires, and was generally everything one could want in a modern American muscle car.

Abby hadn’t had it over sixty miles an hour yet.

On a couple of occasions, Abby pretended that she’d put the car through its paces on the back roads and been duly impressed. One part of that wasn’t a lie — she did keep it on the back roads. That was because she could avoid the anxiety of driving in traffic and at higher speeds, though, not so she could test those beautiful Pirellis on a double-S curve.

Hank wasn’t wrong. Abby should have been driving it. Exposure therapy. Stare the fear down, in small doses.

Soon, she told herself.

Any day now.

She pocketed the phone and walked toward her Chrysler 300, a pleasant if somewhat staid sedan. Nothing threatening about it. Not like the Challenger Hellcat.

As she crossed the road, her right ankle throbbed, a souvenir from an early crack-up at the Oxford Plains Speedway in western Maine. She looked down and watched the way her hiking shoes flexed across the top as she walked sideways across the steep slope. The leather uppers pulled right, toward the river, while the rubber soles fought them and tugged left, biting into the pavement.

It would have rolled, she thought. That van would have rolled.

9

When she was a child, Tara was terrified of a house at the end of the road: 1804 London Street. It was a once-grand Victorian built by a family who’d made a small fortune in the days when Cleveland had been a manufacturing boomtown, money later tied up in a bitter feud among the siblings who’d inherited it upon their mother’s death. When Tara first saw the house, it had been vacant for at least ten years, the beautiful wood trim rotting beneath peeling paint, the stonework around the gardens and the patio lost to weeds and untamed hedges. For the older kids in the neighborhood, it inspired ghost stories and fevered claims of a woman in white who appeared in the attic window. They would run onto the porch and knock on the door, just like the children in Tara’s favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird, and it was probably this association that gave her the bravery to finally join in the fun.

Boo Radley’s home had held no terrors. Boo was simply misunderstood, and because all Tara wanted to do in life was be Scout Finch and because she liked to imagine her late father had been like Atticus Finch, she carried out a summer of replication, leaving notes and small treasures tucked in trees and under eaves on the property. However, because this was not a fictional southern town in the 1930s but a Cleveland suburb in the early 2000s, her notes were not replaced with intricate handmade delights. Instead, someone who saw her leaving the notes responded by filling her favorite hidey-hole with condom wrappers.

She stopped trying to re-create her Scout-and-Boo fantasy after that.

But still, she didn’t fear the house as she once had. That was the power of imagination, the power of the mind — she’d taken ownership of the place, trading scary stories for warm ones, and with her fantasy vision, she erased the fear. The kids who mocked her might be able to replace her charm bracelets with condom wrappers, but they couldn’t replace her new vision of the once-frightening abandoned house.

In her thirteenth summer, she used that power of imagination to win twenty dollars. That summer, when Mom was doing better and Shannon was distracted by the acquisition of her driver’s license, a neighborhood boy named Jaylen dared Tara to go into the house alone and appear in a window on each floor, including the turret window of the supposed woman in white. If she did, he said, he’d give her twenty dollars and something she pretended she wanted nothing to do with: a kiss.

“Just the money, creep,” she’d told him, but he was tall and handsome and had impossibly beautiful brown eyes and played on the basketball team, and, highly appealing to Tara, he told the most creative of the dumb scary stories about 1804 London Street. He was also black, and to Tara this seemed both exotic and undeniably Scout Finch — approved. If there was anything not to like about Jaylen, Tara hadn’t yet discovered it.

He’d forced the front door open with a screwdriver, and then they’d both run away, sure there was an alarm, and hid behind a tree up the street. A few minutes went by and nothing happened, but he told her to wait awhile longer.

“It’s probably a silent alarm, like they have in banks,” Jaylen said, and Tara found that very wise.

No police came, though, and eventually Jaylen decided that the silent alarm must have been deactivated, probably because they weren’t paying the bill, just like nobody paid to keep the lawn mowed. The house was fair game, and the dare was still on.

“You don’t have to,” he said when they reached the porch. His voice was soft and serious, and Tara realized that now that it had progressed from talk to possibility, he thought it was a bad idea and wanted out, the classic game of chicken that had gone too far. Facing the cracked porch steps and the tall weeds and the filthy windows with crude phrases written in the dust, Tara felt a surge of fear rise up, but she fought it down. She was Scout Finch, after all, and she could not only play with the boys but beat them at their own games. And take their money.

And, maybe, get a kiss.

“I’ll wave to you from the windows,” she said, and she pushed through the door and into the musty foyer. Stairs rose to the left, ascending into shadows, and in front of her a wide hallway led to what had to be the living room. To the right was a formal parlor or sitting room, old-fashioned chairs positioned around a china hutch that was filled with blue-and-white dishes and crystal glasses. In the center of the room was a puddle, and above it the ceiling sagged around a massive water stain.

The floorboards creaked like trees in a windstorm, but they held, and she reached the first window, looked outside, and saw Jaylen staring apprehensively up at the house. He appeared gravely concerned, more scared than Tara, and this gave her confidence. She grinned at him and waved. Relieved, he waved back, and then hollered that she could come out.

“You don’t need to do ’em all! You win! Come back out!”

He wants that kiss, she thought.

Her confidence grew, and she shouted back that she was going to do them all, and then she walked confidently to the stairs.

The problem was the lack of light. A lot of the windows were shuttered and those that weren’t were covered with years of filth, so only the dimmest light filtered in, and since she didn’t know the house, each step into the darkness was a journey into unfamiliar territory. That built confusion, and confusion fed fear.

She was no longer smiling when she reached the second-floor window, and if Jaylen had yelled at her to come down again, she might have listened. But by now he seemed resigned to her determination not to quit, so he just waved back, silent and seeming very far away.

It took her some time to find the turret window. She was moving too fast, and she took wrong turns, and with each wrong turn, she felt her panic escalate. She was breathing raggedly and she was sweating even though it was cool in the house, and there was a terrible smell coming from behind one of the closed doors, and it took all of her imagination and willpower to fend off the images of a rotting corpse. She stopped, took a deep breath, and said, “Pass the damn ham, please,” a Scout Finch quote that delighted her endlessly, particularly when she used it in situations where it made no sense to anyone else.

The line was a reminder of the power of imagination. There was no ghost in 1804 London Street, nothing worse in here than the lingering smell of old cigar smoke, which Tara hated because it reminded her of Mom’s cigarette days. The house was as harmless as Boo Radley’s home in Maycomb, Alabama, and she was as brave as Scout Finch.

She walked on down the hall through the darkness. When she finally found the turret window, she saw Jaylen pacing the yard nervously, and she had to rap on the glass with her knuckles to get his attention.

This time, instead of waving at her, he beckoned urgently, the message clear: Get out of there!

She was ready to go. More than ready; she’d held the panic off for as long as she could, but now the dark and the smells and all those images of what might lurk behind each closed door were piling up, gleefully crowding the space in her mind, a race to see which one would break her.

She was concentrating on staying calm and watching where she put her feet, sure that there would be rusty nails or a piece of broken glass or an ax matted with hair and blood — Stop that, Tara, stop that! — and in the intensity of her focus, she completely overshot the main staircase and found herself on an unfamiliar one, tighter and steeper.

For a second, she hesitated, considering going back. Then her hand brushed a cobweb and that made her give a little cry and a jerk, and the steps creaked ominously underfoot, and now she was running, but she ran down, following instinct — the front door was below her, so down was the right direction.

She’d never been in a house with two staircases, and so the idea that it might not lead to the same place as the main stairs never occurred to her. Even when she reached a landing and the staircase bent in an unexpected direction, she trusted it. She had to go down to get out, and down she went, rushing and gasping for breath and feeling her way along the wall with her hand because it was nearly full dark here, and she couldn’t see anything beyond the next step.

When she arrived in the cold room that smelled of damp stone, she realized her mistake. She’d bypassed everything and gone straight from the third floor to the cellar. Something rustled in the darkness to her right, and she scampered away and smacked into the wall, then ran right into a cobweb. She screamed, tearing at the sticky threads with both hands. She was no longer Scout Finch; she was Tara Beckley, known as Twitch to her sister, and she was earning the nickname now.

She backed up; her foot skidded on something wet and slick, and then the rustling sound came again, and she whirled and shouted.

That was when she saw daylight.

There was only a faint line of it — it looked as if someone had drawn it with yellow chalk on the dark stone wall — but it was there. She stared at it, gasping and crying, and thought about her options. She could run back the way she’d come and hope to find her way out, or she could cross the darkness and trust that light, however faint.

She trusted the light.

She fell twice crossing the cellar, banging her shin painfully into something hard and metal and then scraping her forearm on a rusted pipe that seemed to be a floor support, but she made it to the other side, and there she saw that the daylight was no illusion. There was a door here. Two of them, actually, heavy steel doors that might once have met squarely in the center but no longer did, offering just enough of a gap to let the light filter through.

She found the handles and pushed, then pulled. Rust flaked off and bit into her palms, and the doors grated over the rough concrete floor, a menacing, grinding sound like the time Shannon had broken the garbage disposal by filling it with Mom’s pill bottles. Her hands ached and her shoulders throbbed, but the space between the doors widened slightly, more daylight flooded in, and she felt warm air on her face, and though there was no way she could slip through and escape, she thought the gap was wide enough that she might at least be heard.

She put her face close to the door and shouted for Jaylen over and over.

No one came. She could hear birds and the faint sound of a passing car, but no one answered her.

I’m trapped, she thought. I will be here forever, somehow I found a staircase that no one else will find, they can search the whole house but they will never find me because the staircase won’t be there, it was a trap, and I—

“Damn it, Tara, what the hell were you thinking?”

Her sister’s voice came through the doors. Then Shannon’s face was in the two-inch gap Tara had opened between the monstrous old doors, and she was staring at Tara with anger and concern.

“Are you okay?” Shannon said. “Are you hurt?”

Tara sniffled out that no, she wasn’t hurt, and yes, she was probably okay, she was just scared and she wanted out.

“I’ll get you out,” Shannon said. “Let me get your dumb boyfriend. I think he’s scared of me.”

With the help of an aluminum baseball bat, Jaylen and Shannon were able to pry the doors far enough apart for Tara to wedge herself through and back to freedom. She was covered in cobwebs and dirt and her shin and arm were bleeding, but she was safe again.

Shannon hauled her home, lecturing her the whole way; Jaylen said good-bye and started to offer Tara a whispered apology but Shannon shot him a look, which accelerated his exit. Once the sisters got back, Shannon told their mother that the car was making a weird noise, which drew her out of the house and into the driveway and let Tara sneak in the back and get herself cleaned up before Mom saw any evidence of her bloody adventure. When she got off the pills, Mom always wanted to play the good-mother role, but by then Shannon had claimed it. Discipline was handled by big sister, period. The same with protection.

Apparently, Shannon thought the scare had been enough for Tara, because she let it drop after extracting a promise from her: never again would she enter that house.

Two days later, Jaylen approached Tara cautiously in the yard, glanced left and right, then said, “Your sister isn’t here, is she?” When Shannon’s absence was confirmed, Tara finally got the twenty dollars and the kiss. A few of the latter, in fact. It turned into a good summer, one of the better ones of Tara’s childhood, and she kept her promise to Shannon. She’d never entered 1804 London Street again.

Until now.

She was locked in again, and she didn’t know the way out, and all around her was fear and shadow. She was on the dark staircase that she hadn’t anticipated, hadn’t even known existed, and this time she didn’t have the option of turning around and going back the way she’d come.

Propped up in her hospital bed, tubes running up her nose and down her throat, machines humming at her side, and her family sitting around her with no idea where she was, Tara realized that her worst fear from the cellar of 1804 had come true. She was trapped, and they would never find her.

This time, there was no thin line of light for her to chase through the blackness.

10

The neurologist’s name was Dr. Pine. His house in Marblehead was everything a prestigious New England doctor’s home should be — three stories painted an appropriately coastal gray-blue with gleaming white trim and plenty of windows, exquisite brickwork on the driveway and sidewalks, massive brass light fixtures styled to look like old gas lamps. Lisa Boone waited an hour before he finally arrived, pulling up to the house in an equally appropriate Range Rover. He parked in the garage and put the overhead door down behind him, so Boone walked up the brick path that ran to the door on the side of the garage and waited for him to emerge. When he saw her, he stopped short, startled, and took a step back before determining that she posed no threat — an attractive white woman, thank goodness, no danger here.

“May I help you?” he said. His voice was deeper than his stature would suggest.

“Probably not,” Boone said, “but I have to try.”

“Pardon?”

“You have a patient named Tara Beckley. I need to speak with you about her.”

He frowned and studied her, wary now.

“I can’t talk about my patients,” he said, “and I’m curious why you’re at my home.”

“Because the United States government needs you to understand that your patient might have been a casualty of — and, if she lives, potentially a witness to — an execution killing.”

His jaw didn’t quite drop. His mouth parted and then closed. He took a breath, then gave a little shake of his head and a half laugh. “I expect to encounter new things every day,” he said, “but this one is really something. What branch of the U.S. government needs me to understand this?”

“May we go inside, Doctor?”

“What branch?”

“Department of Energy.” She smiled. “Surprised you twice, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” he said. “Come on in.”

She followed him up the back steps and into a kitchen with thick wooden counters and a massive center island. He pulled a stool up to the island, offered one to her, then unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his shirtsleeves slowly and precisely. He seemed to be moving methodically to gather his thoughts, and Boone was pleased by his demeanor. She’d expected a flood of questions, but what she needed was someone who could listen.

When he looked up again, he said, “I don’t want to seem foolish or paranoid, but it would probably be prudent to ask you for some identification.”

Wise man. She showed him her ID card, and he studied it with care, even tilting it so that the hologram caught the light.

“‘Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,’” he read. “I’ll admit I didn’t know the DOE had their own investigations division. I’d have guessed they’d farm that out.”

“Sometimes. Not always.”

“So what brings the DOE intelligence division into the game?”

Boone knew he was testing her, asking a question that achieved multiple things at once. He wanted to learn how legitimate she was and how much information she’d share, and he wanted to buy himself time to consider the situation while he listened.

“The office protects vital national security information and technologies that represent intellectual property of incalculable value,” Boone said in her best public-speaker-introducing-a-bullshit-politician-at-a-ribbon-cutting voice. “Our distinctive contribution to national security is the ability to leverage the Energy Department’s unmatched scientific and technological expertise in support of policy makers as well as national security missions in defense, homeland security, cybersecurity, intelligence, and energy security.”

“Are you required to memorize that or is it your unique sense of humor?”

“It’s on the website.” She shrugged.

“Nicely done. Not exactly what I was hoping for, though. Would you give me an example of your work?”

Killing a man in a hotel room in Tokyo with a garrote, Boone thought, but the first example to come to mind wasn’t usually the one you should share. She said, “Serving on a joint task force with the FBI and CIA using legal vulnerabilities to motivate employees of a chemical corporation to reveal the covert sharing of patent secrets with the Chinese military.” She paused. “Hypothetically. Of course.”

“Of course,” he said, never looking away from her.

“Do you need another?”

“I’m not sure that I do.” He gave a wan smile. “‘Using legal vulnerabilities to motivate,’ you said? That’s quite a phrase. Distill it and one might say it means blackmailing employees.”

“One might,” Boone acknowledged. “But one would be wrong.”

“Sure.” He nodded, studying her, and then said, “Tara Beckley was a student escort. A creative-writing major. Neither she nor her family seems to have any expertise that would interest the Department of Energy. I know far less about her charge, simply that he was a guest speaker and that he was killed. Your belief, then, is that this man was assassinated — is that the idea?”

“I wouldn’t use that term, but that’s the gist.”

“A killing with political intent isn’t an assassination?”

“You’ll note that I’ve said nothing about politics, sir. Pardon me, Doctor.”

He waved that off. “No assassination, then. Fine. My understanding was that it was a car accident, and a driver admitted guilt. Rather unusual way to commit a professional execution. He even called the police himself, I believe.”

“Do you know that he’s dead?” Boone asked.

That stopped him.

“Police in Brighton just found his body in a car,” Boone told him. “Shot twice in the head. This unfortunate development paired with his uniquely cooperative admission at the scene means there will be no investigation into the death of Amandi Oltamu now, no trial. Do you see?”

After a lengthy pause, the doctor said, “And who is Amandi Oltamu to you? What value did he have that you were hoping to use legal vulnerabilities to motivate?”

Boone smiled. “This is where we get to the unpleasant part. You have questions, I have answers, but I can’t share them. And the less you know, the better for you.”

His eyes narrowed. “For my safety?”

“Yes.”

“So you want me to violate patient confidentiality — which means breaking the law, you know, not to mention the Hippocratic oath — and in exchange I get... nothing? Because of your deep concern for my safety, of course.”

“That’s the idea.”

He gave that little disbelieving half laugh again, then stood up. “Mind if I pour myself a glass of wine?”

“By all means.”

“Join me?”

“No, thank you.”

He poured from an opened bottle of pinot noir on the counter, took a drink, then looked at the clock on the microwave. “My wife will be home in about fifteen minutes,” he said. “If there is any chance that what you intend to tell me will put me in danger, well, such is life. The same philosophy does not apply to my family, though.”

“I understand.”

He turned back to her but didn’t return to the island, just leaned against the counter.

“You don’t have a witness,” he said. “I can tell you that much, because you’ll be able to find it out from other sources, and I can spare you that trouble, and we can spare ourselves the back-and-forth bullshit about the greater good in service of my country. That’s what I’d get if I tried to hold out, right?”

Now it was Boone’s turn to laugh. “Pretty much.”

“Thought so.”

“So there’s no chance she’ll regain consciousness?” Boone asked. “No chance of recovery?”

“Oh, I certainly intend to see that she has every chance at recovery. But at the moment, she is not going to offer you any help. If she has memories that could be of use to you, they’re sealed up tight.”

Boone nodded. “That was my understanding, but I had to try. What I need you to know is that if she wakes, she’ll be not only a potential asset to me, but also likely in harm’s way. I don’t intend to ask you to break any laws or oaths, Doctor. What I want from you is your assurance that if anything changes with Tara Beckley, I’ll be notified immediately.”

“Why not ask that of her family? Why me?”

“Because I don’t want to terrify them,” Boone said. “And because the stakes on this require the poise of professionals. What I’ve heard about you suggests that you’d be good under pressure.”

He tried not to look flattered, but he was. Everyone liked an ego stroke. Doctors too.

“It’s beyond unorthodox,” he said. “This shouldn’t be my role.”

Boone removed a business card from her purse and slid it across the gleaming hardwood surface of the island. “Just a phone call,” she said. “If there’s a change in Tara Beckley’s condition, I need to know. Tara will need me to know. At that point, I’ll deal with the family. Not until then. I wasn’t fully honest with you a moment ago, Dr. Pine. I said I was holding off on contact with them because I didn’t want to scare them. That’s true, but it’s not everything. I also can’t afford too much conversation about this. You are, as you’ve already made clear, a man who understands the need for confidentiality, for professional silence. You know what breaking that silence can cost people.”

He picked up the card and slid it into his shirt pocket. “What if there’s no change in her condition?”

“Then you don’t need to worry about me.”

“That’s not my point. If there’s no change, when do you deal with the family? When do you let them know the truth about what happened to Tara?”

Boone didn’t answer. She just gazed back at him, and he nodded.

“Right,” he said. “That’s where we’ll reach the bullshit about the greater good, isn’t it?”

Boone got to her feet. “You’re asking questions above my pay grade, and I think you know that. What you decide to do here is up to you. But be aware that you’ve got something more than a patient in Tara Beckley. You might have the key to some vital intelligence.”

“I have a human life. She’s no different than any patient.”

“Wrong. Tara is very different.”

“I can’t look at it that way.”

“You’ll need to.” Boone bit her lower lip, looked at the floor for a moment, then back at him. “I’ll give you this much perspective: Billions of dollars at stake, and dozens of lives. Maybe hundreds of lives. Still think she’s no different than the rest?”

“What she saw is worth that?”

“Potentially,” Boone said.

He didn’t have a response.

Boone thanked him for his time and consideration and let herself out the back door. If she drove fast, she could make it to the airport and catch the last flight back to DC. Her asset was dead, the witness was unresponsive, and the Brighton cops were clueless about Carlos Ramirez. That meant that unless something changed, Lisa Boone was on to her next assignment. She’d spent nearly a year on Amandi Oltamu, but sometimes this was how it went. There was always more work, and you couldn’t brood over lost causes.

But she wanted to know what he had. All this time, all this careful recruiting and secrecy, and she still didn’t know what he’d been able to produce. She’d heard only his guarantees.

Still a chance, though, she thought as she pulled away from Dr. Pine’s home. If that man is one hell of a neurologist, I suppose there’s still a chance.

11

Shannon has been in the room with Tara most of the afternoon, but she leaves when Mom and Rick return, saying she needs to answer some e-mails and study. This is no doubt true — Shannon is missing crucial days of law school — but Tara knows there are also other reasons why Shannon prefers to check her e-mail elsewhere. Shannon doesn’t want to be with them because they have different opinions on what should happen to Tara.

The truth of it is obvious: Tara’s mother and stepfather want to kill her.

They don’t think about it this way, of course. They’re wandering around the outside of 1804 London Street, calling her name and shining lights in through the filthy windows, but even if they could get through the locked doors and inside the house, they wouldn’t find the staircase that leads into darkness.

No one can follow her down there.

They don’t know that she’s still in the house, and so they hate the house for what it represents: The house killed their daughter. It needs to be condemned, torn down, and the foundation scraped clean.

The problem with that is that Tara’s body is the awful house.

She’s listened to their halting, tearful exchanges already. The word dignity is Rick’s mantra. They must think of her dignity. They’ll be preserving her dignity by ending the feeding tubes and diapers. They have no idea that she’s still here, watching them, listening to them. They have no idea what their hopelessness takes from her.

What am I taking from them, though? she thinks as she watches them. They seem so tired all the time. So beaten. All because of her.

Tell me if there’s any hope, she wants to say. She begs them through her silence and her stillness to just look her in the eye and state the cold hard truth. Is Shannon delusional, or has a doctor told them that Tara might come out of this? Is there any hope that she can convey her awareness to anyone outside of her own skull? Because if not...

If not, then do it.

Their focus isn’t even on her, though. No one wants to look her in the eye. Mom is usually on her iPad. She posts constantly on Facebook, updating friends, responding to well-wishers, and begging for help. She’s corresponding with three doctors, two ministers, and at least one psychic — maybe more, but she shut down disclosures on that pretty quickly after Shannon’s response to it. She sometimes stops and stares at Tara, but the rest of the time, she’s tapping away on the iPad. She doesn’t put on any makeup or do much more with her hair than run a brush through it. It hurts Tara to watch her. To feel responsible for it all.

Rick just gazes at Tara with a horrible detachment. He doesn’t accept the possibility that she can see him, and he’s unhappy about the time he is required to sit here and talk to her.

He will make the call, she thinks. In the end, he will convince Mom that it’s best, and then Shannon will be overruled. She doesn’t get a vote, anyhow. All she can do is argue. From a legal standpoint, isn’t my mother in charge of deciding to end my life?

These are issues that the three of them surely discuss, but they never do it in front of her. And yet, as terrible as it might be to hear, she wants them to explain the situation to her. She needs to understand.

There’s a soft knock. Rick stands and says, “Yes?” and the door opens.

Please be a doctor, Tara thinks. She hasn’t seen the doctor since she returned to awareness, only heard her family talk about doctors.

It’s not a doctor, though, or even a nurse.

It is a boy with a bouquet of flowers in hand. He’s younger than her, maybe not even out of high school yet. Average height and build, but he seems carved out of something very hard, not earned muscle so much as a natural quality; his angular face is all rigid edges and crisp lines. He’s dressed in old jeans and a black hoodie and a black baseball cap with a line of silver stitching down the front.

“Can I help you?” Rick says.

“Is this...” The stranger glances Tara’s way. “Yeah, it’s Tara’s room.” He says her name softly, almost reverently, and she is very confused. She has no idea who he is.

“Yes,” Rick says. “And you are?”

“A friend,” he says, and Tara thinks, What? A friend? I’ve never seen you before.

“Oh. Well, we’ve asked for some privacy from visitors, because it’s very—”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I just... I had to see her. I wanted to drop these off and... I’ll get out of your hair. I’m so sorry. I just had to see her.”

Who are you?

“It’s fine,” Mom says. “That’s very sweet. What’s your name?”

“Justin Loveless.”

Tara stares at him. No, he is not Justin Loveless. She hasn’t seen Justin in months, but he doesn’t look even remotely like this kid.

Is this a symptom of something? Is that really Justin? Why can’t I tell that?

While she fights a rising hysteria over this disconnect, he steps farther into the room and sets the flowers down on a table already crowded with them. He turns to her then and stares into her face and she feels a deep, cold fear and thinks, He is lying, with a sudden certainty. He is pretending to be Justin, and he is lying. Why is he here? Who is he?

Unlike most visitors, he isn’t avoiding her eyes but looking directly into them the way Shannon does, seeking some sign of connection, of awareness. It doesn’t feel affectionate, though. They are a hunter’s eyes.

“Hi, Tara,” he whispers.

She holds her breath. It’s the first time she’s realized that she can do this — the first clear connection between brain command and body response — but any joy over the discovery is drowned by the fear she feels as he studies her.

Without taking his eyes off hers, he says, “She’s not responding at all? No blinks or hand squeezes or anything?”

“Not yet,” Rick says. “But we’re hopeful.”

“Yes,” the stranger answers. “Everyone is. She’s so strong. She’ll make it back. Are the tests encouraging, at least? I know the scans can sometimes show—”

“We’re dealing with all of that as a family and with the doctors,” Rick says, cutting him off. The stranger nods, accepting that, and Mom seems embarrassed.

“How do you know her, Justin?” she asks. “Do you go to Hammel?”

He straightens and looks at Mom. “I do. We were in the same a cappella group.”

It is true that Justin Loveless goes to Hammel College and that Tara sang with him during her brief flirtation with the music department as a freshman, when she had visions of Broadway that were quickly crushed. But... this is not Justin Loveless.

“It’s very nice of you to come,” Rick says, “but we really do need to ask you to respect the family’s request.”

If this were a real friend, Tara would be furious at Rick’s coldness, but instead she thinks, Yes, get him, Rick, get him out of here!

“Of course. I shouldn’t have come. I just wanted to see her and tell her that I know she can make it back to us. I’m sorry to intrude, though. I really am.”

“It’s okay, hon,” Mom says.

He gives a little nod, then says, “I’ll leave now. I really appreciate you letting me say hello, though. A lot of people are thinking of her. I hope you know that.”

“We do. Thank you. Hey!” Mom’s face brightens. “Have you joined the Team Tara page?”

“Team Tara,” he echoes. “What’s that?”

“We’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I’m trying to keep everyone updated because we can’t, obviously, let everyone in to visit. But we know how many kind people like you are out there, and we don’t want to take that for granted.”

“Team Tara. I like that. I’ll sign up. I am definitely on Team Tara.”

Rick clears his throat, and the stranger nods with understanding, then turns back to Tara. He leans down and puts his hand on hers. The overwhelming, irrational fear returns, amplified now by his touch. His eyes search hers.

“When you come back, Tara,” he says, “I’ll be here.”

12

It was a two-hour drive from Biddeford, Maine, to Boston, and Abby could have driven down, talked to the sister, and been back by early afternoon, but she took the train.

Not because she couldn’t handle I-95, with that press of traffic, cars squeezing you from all sides, like being caught in a tightening fist — of course she could handle that. A simple drive in traffic was no problem, but... well, maybe it was better not to rush things.

She tried not to consider how many months she’d been using that excuse. Tried not to consider that she’d come back to Maine promising herself she would be there just two weeks, that she would clear her head, get away from the tabloid photographers who wanted to run her picture beside images of gorgeous Luke London in his hospital bed, and then go back to LA.

No, she certainly wasn’t rushing things.

The Downeaster left Portland at 8:15 and arrived in Boston’s North Station shortly before noon, and the train gave her a way to relax after a largely sleepless night. Train travel was underrated, she thought. Sure, going by Amtrak took longer than driving, the stations weren’t pristine, and you ran the risk of sitting beside a talkative stranger, but wasn’t that all part of the romance of the rails? Simpler times, as Abby’s dad always said during reruns of black-and-white TV shows.

It was raining when she got to Boston, and she was soaked by the time she caught a taxi driven by a man who smelled like he would have benefited from a few minutes in the downpour, perhaps with a little shampoo mixed in. But, hey, simpler times. She reached the hospital a little after one — five hours to get here for a ten-minute conversation that she could have had over the phone. The shoe box was wet now, the cardboard starting to soften and peel, but the phones inside were dry. She wished she’d thought to put them in a briefcase or something more formal.

Tara Beckley could be seen by visitors if the family and doctor approved it, but Abby made it clear to the receptionist that she did not want to see Tara.

“I’m here for her sister,” she said. “Shannon Beckley. I’ll wait here for her.”

She sat in a vinyl-covered chair and jittered her right palm off a closed left fist as if drumming along to a song and she tried not to think of the hospital in Los Angeles where Luke had died. Abby had done a good job of making visits there. At first. Maybe not so good of a job later. But what was the point? Luke’s eyes were empty, and his family’s eyes were not. His mother stared at Abby with hate, his father stared at her with a naked question of Why couldn’t it have been you? and Hollywood magazines featuring the story piled up on the bedside table. The reporters called endlessly, and everyone advised Abby to say nothing.

She was the only one who could say something, though. Luke couldn’t say a damn thing, couldn’t defend Abby.

Would he have defended you? Sure, he would have. He’d have understood. He wanted to see how far you could push it. That was for him, not you. He loved risk, and he cast no blame.

And, yet... had he yelled at her to slow down just before the last curve? He’d said it so many times, but he’d been laughing, and it wasn’t a command or even a request, just the delight of a kid on a roller coaster saying, Slow down, slow down, but not really meaning it. That was how it had gone. His tone hadn’t shifted when Abby pegged the needle at 145. No way. That was her revisionist memory seeking to take blame, but it wasn’t reality.

Slow down! His hand on her arm, tightening, his nails biting into her skin.

In a hospital three thousand miles away from that scene, the receptionist cleared her throat loudly, and Abby realized how she’d picked up the speed and volume of the drumming of her open right palm off her closed left fist. She looked like a drug addict in need of a fix. Looked like a...

Speed freak.

She flattened her hands and pressed them together as if in prayer, giving a weak smile of apology to the receptionist.

I’m not a speed freak, ma’am. If you’d watched me driving around lately, you’d know I was anything but that.

The doors between the waiting room and the long hallway opened and a tall young woman with red-brown hair and very green eyes, bright enough to stand out above the puffy purple crescents of fatigue, strode through the doorway like a marshal summoned to a fight in a saloon.

“You’re the investigator?” the woman said.

“Yes. Abby Kaplan.” She rose and offered her hand. The woman seemed to consider rejecting it but then shook it grudgingly. Her fingers were long and slender and strong, like a piano player’s. Or like the Boston Strangler’s, judging from her grip.

“What’s this crap about her phone?” she said. “What does her phone have to do with anything?”

Abby saw the receptionist give a tired little shake of her head, as if she were all too familiar with this woman.

“Uh, I was just hoping to meet with the family and introduce myself and then we can get into any questions you all might have,” Abby began, because she knew there was more to the family than this woman, and she figured she might find more friendliness in that group. Or in a rattlesnake den.

“You don’t need to bother meeting the family,” Shannon Beckley said. “I’m the family’s legal representative.”

“You’re a lawyer?”

“I’m the closest thing they have right now,” Shannon said. Contrasted against the dark red hair, her green eyes seemed aflame. “And in point of fact, I will be a lawyer.” She paused, and her voice was softer when she said, “Maybe a little later than I’d expected now. Stanford doesn’t stop. Not even for tragedy.”

She gave a cold smile that made Abby pity whoever would have to face this woman in the courtroom in the years to come.

“So I’ll lose a semester maybe.” She shrugged, but it was forced indifference. “Whatever it takes, fine. Because that girl in there?” Shannon pointed to the closed double doors. “She and I have been through...” She caught herself, and Abby had the distinct feeling she was walling off a rise of emotion, brick by brick. She wouldn’t allow herself to fall apart. Not in front of Abby, at least.

“So,” she said when she’d composed herself, “tell me what you’re doing, please, and why her phone matters.”

Yes, the emotion was gone now, and cold steel was back in its place.

“Her mother — your mother — is here, correct?” Abby asked, not because she had any desire to speak to the mother but because she wanted to counter this woman somehow, however politely, and show that she had at least a little power in this situation.

“My mother is glued to Facebook, where she posts updates every ten minutes on a Team Tara page that my stepfather created so she’d have something to do, something that calmed her down that did not involve a tranquilizer. Do you really need to interrupt that?”

Abby remembered Luke’s Facebook fan page, the blog, the Twitter account, all the endless updates fading from hopeful to resigned. She shook her head. “No. I don’t need to interrupt that. I’m just trying to answer your questions, and I was told you needed to see me in person to address them.”

“That’s right. But your boss said you wanted to show me her phone. What’s on the phone?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure if I have it.” Abby lifted the wet shoe box, feeling like a fool, and pulled back the lid. “The guy at the salvage yard gave me this. He’s pulled them all out of cars. I was wondering if one of them belonged to your sister.”

Shannon Beckley’s eyes narrowed and she reached in the box and sorted through the phones quickly with those long, elegant fingers.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. Hers was a rose-gold iPhone in a case.”

“Okay. Well, maybe one of them belonged to her passenger, then. The guy who towed the car was positive that he found one of these inside.”

“What does it matter when you’ve got a driver whose guilt is already established?”

“I’m just trying to find out whether the phones survived the wreck,” she said, and then she regretted that phrasing — survived was not the right word for a phone. “If one did, it might contain something useful.”

“Useful to whom?”

“To... I mean, to everyone. It could provide clarification on a few points of—”

“Are you trying to get out of a claim? Is that the idea? Because I promise you, if you guys pull any bullshit to make this more expensive to my family than it already is, I will get that story on the front page of the New York Times.” She looked Abby up and down and then added, “Or on Fox News. Whatever hits your company harder.”

“That would actually be the Portland Press Herald, then.”

“This is funny to you?”

She was leaning in, and Abby almost stepped back but then decided not to give her the satisfaction. “No. But before you start shouting threats, you might want to remember that I’m working on her behalf.”

“Oh, that is such crap. The college hired you to find out if they had any risk. That’s the truth.”

She wasn’t wrong, of course. Abby started to offer a pat reply about how the college intended to work hand in hand with the family, but something about Shannon Beckley’s heated eyes made her dispense with the bullshit. “They’re going to have someone do it,” Abby said. “It’ll be me or it’ll be somebody else, but they will have someone ask questions.”

Shannon studied Abby for a moment and then said, “Come see her.”

“What?”

“If you’re working on her behalf, I’d like you to come see her with me. We can talk with her, right?”

Abby blinked at her. “I thought... I was told that...” Shannon waited, eyebrows raised, and Abby felt she was talking her way into a trap. “That she’s nonresponsive,” she finished finally. “Was I misinformed?”

“We’re not sure.” Shannon Beckley softened her tone. “Maybe she’s hearing it all, maybe she’s not. We just don’t know. At first it was a medically induced coma to try to limit the swelling in the brain, but now they’re bringing her back out of it, and...” She cleared her throat. “And we’re waiting on more tests.”

“I understand,” Abby said. “And I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

Bullshit, Abby. Why lie?

For an instant, she almost corrected herself. Almost told the truth to this sleep-deprived stranger with the searing stare, almost told her that she knew the situation all too well.

All she got out, though, was a question: “Has she had an fMRI yet?”

“No, but it’s scheduled.”

Abby nodded. “They usually start there. Then other scans. There are lots of ways to try to determine if she’s... aware of things. Different doctors have different ideas.”

“Too many ideas. I’ve been reading about all of them, and it’s exhausting. There’s a university hospital nearby where they have the patient watch a movie while undergoing an MRI, and they scan the brain for an emotional response. They’ve had good results with that.”

“Like that Hitchcock film,” Abby said. Shannon Beckley looked offended, and Abby realized she thought that Abby was comparing Tara’s situation to a movie and headed her off. “Some researchers use an episode called ‘Bang, You’re Dead’ from Alfred Hitchcock’s old black-and-white TV series. A kid picks up a loaded gun, and the audience knows it’s loaded, but the kid doesn’t know. So the audience reacts emotionally as he goes from place to place carrying what he thinks is harmless and what the audience knows is deadly. That activates different areas in the brain of someone watching it. It shows awareness.”

“Tara hates anything in black-and-white. If she’s not in a vegetative state now, the sight of a black-and-white TV show might put her into one.” She forced a laugh that choked at the end, like an engine running out of gas, and then she looked away and tried to gather herself. Abby didn’t want to offer any canned condolences or well wishes, knowing exactly how exhausting and hollow those grew, and so she tried to follow the attempt at humor.

“Tell the doctors she’s got to see a favorite movie of hers, then, because you want to know if her memory is activated. That sounds legitimate.”

She was kidding, but Shannon Beckley said, “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

“Actually, it probably is a bad idea. The doctors have their protocols for a reason. They tend not to like input from an insurance investigator.”

“I’ll find a more credible source, don’t worry.” Shannon regarded Abby curiously. “So you’ve dealt with a case like hers before?”

“Not a case.” Now Abby regretted telling her anything. This woman, who was just a few years younger than Abby’s thirty-one, was clearly not in the Luke London fan club, because she hadn’t reacted to Abby’s name. But she would Google it at some point, and then she’d have new questions.

“You spend that much time reading about coma patients? It’s a hobby?”

“I get a lot of newsletters, trade magazines, crap like that.”

“Your trade magazines deal with advanced coma protocols?”

“They’ve got to fill space,” Abby said. “Listen, let me just introduce myself and explain what we are—”

“Let’s go into her room for all this talk.”

The way she said it made Abby feel as if Shannon were baiting her, as if she sensed fear. “It’s not my job, I mean, it’s not my place to be in there.”

“Actually, it’s anyone’s place. The doctors have encouraged us to talk to her. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing right now. So join me. Who knows — maybe she’ll respond to you.”

Luke? Luke, baby, if you’re in there... do something. Speak, blink, squeeze my hand, slap me, just do something so I know!

“Okay,” Abby said, her mouth dry. “Sure.”

She followed Shannon Beckley through the double doors that parted automatically as if hurrying out of her way.

13

The nurses think Tara is brain-dead.

They treat her as an empty shell. They adjust her in the bed to prevent sores from forming, turn her and spread her legs and clean her, unaware of the horrifying humiliation, handling her roughly and without interest, talking around her and above her. They don’t bother to speak to her, to introduce themselves. She can’t even be certain they’re nurses. Therapists of some sort, maybe? How do you know what they are doing when they don’t bother to explain it? If they have any hope for her future, they don’t indicate it. All she picks up from them is apathy; all she feels is pain and shame.

A young blond woman wipes Tara’s ass and complains to a gray-haired black woman about the amount of time her fiancé spends with his friends smoking cigars in the garage right below their bedroom, which fills her clothes with the awful smell.

“He just doesn’t get it,” she says, and then she rolls Tara back over without so much as a glance at her face, holding a soiled diaper with her free hand.

“A phase, maybe?” the black woman suggests. “Something he’ll get out of his system now, and after the wedding it will be different?”

“I’d love to believe that. But I’m not sure that I do.”

The blonde discards the diaper, peels off her gloves, and looks down at Tara without any interest, then she consults a clipboard and makes a note. Is there a box you check when you wipe someone’s ass? If so, can they add that you’re required to do it discreetly and with apology or compassion? Or tell the patient your damn name, at least?

The nurses finish with her, add a few more checks to the clipboard beside her bed, and then the black woman hesitates and looks down into Tara’s eyes for the first time.

“This one is supposed to be on the move tomorrow.”

“Yes,” the blonde agrees without looking over, and then they are out of sight, crossing the room and vanishing out the door and into the hallway.

This one.

A body, nothing more. That’s what Tara is to them.

Also a body that is supposed to be on the move tomorrow. Where are they taking her? And why?

Of all the agonies of her condition, none is worse than the lack of explanations. She reentered a world that has moved on without her, and because no one is aware that she’s back in it, no one slows down to clarify anything. Even her most basic questions — How long have I been here? What happened to put me in here? Is there a diagnosis? Is there a plan? Is there hope? — are unanswered, because everyone around her has already had these conversations, probably countless times. Why go backward, then? Instead, they move forward, following a course that was charted while Tara was lost to the blackness. She doesn’t know where it began, let alone where it will end.

An accident? An attack? An illness?

She has no idea. The coma she understands, but its cause remains a mystery. Was she felled by a club or a clot? Her lack of memory in this regard is terrifying. She knows who she is, where she lives, what she does, likes, hates, loves; everything related to her identity is clear. What brought her here, though... she can’t even begin to retrace the steps. She remembers getting out of the shower and checking the clock, which was important because she couldn’t be late for...

For what?

She has no idea. Something important and time-sensitive. Time was her primary concern.

Did they find me there in the bathroom, naked on the floor, steam still on the mirror?

Every now and then, flickers of images will rise and then sink, like leaves carried in a swift stream, but she believes those images aren’t memories, just pieces of the awful nightmare she’d endured prior to waking. A stranger, a cold wind, and a wolf.

The door opens again. She feels Shannon’s presence before she actually sees her. This is how it has always been with Shannon. She buzzes with a different energy than most people, moving through the world with a swirling, nearly chaotic force. It is a force that Tara clings to now, because she can feel the hope draining away from her mother and Rick. They aren’t as bad as the nurses yet, and she expects they never could regard her with such indifference, but... they are drifting that way.

Shannon is with an unfamiliar young woman with short, dark blond hair and blue eyes. She is lean and slim-hipped, an almost boyish figure, though her eyes and athlete’s grace would stand out if she weren’t shuffling in so unhappily, like a child dragged into the principal’s office. She glances at Tara only briefly, and while Tara is growing used to cursory glances, this one feels different. It isn’t that the new woman sees no point in making eye contact with her; it’s that she’s afraid.

“Tara, I’ve found a new friend,” Shannon says with false cheer. Shannon keeps up a steady stream of conversation most of the time she is here, and when she does finally fall silent, she usually leaves soon after. It reminds Tara of the years when they shared a bedroom — when Shannon stopped talking, it meant she’d fallen asleep.

Now Shannon rests her hand on Tara’s arm. The touch is warm and kind. Tara wonders what her skin feels like to Shannon — the same healthy human warmth or the clamminess of sickness? Or something worse?

“Abby’s an investigator,” Shannon says. “She tells me she’s working on your behalf.”

Abby is holding an old, wet shoe box. She clears her throat and says, “Hello, Tara. It’s good to meet you.”

Tell me why you’re here, Tara screams silently. Abby doesn’t, but why would you tell a piece of furniture what your purpose in the room is?

Abby’s attention is back on Shannon when she says, “Have the police asked you any questions about the accident?”

The accident. This is interesting. This is the first time anyone has spoken of what led her to this terrible, trapped place.

“Sure,” Shannon says. “But nobody talked about her phone until your boss called me. The police said it was clear who was at fault. The driver admitted that at the scene. And then he repeated it, on the record.”

The driver. So it was a car accident. This resonates in a way that is both exciting and troubling; it sets off a tingle of memory, but no images come forth, just a feeling of dread.

“I know that. And now he’s going to hire an attorney who will find any way possible to mitigate the driver’s responsibility. It’s not right, but it’s what happens. My job is to get out in front of that.” Abby pauses, then says, “His story has some issues too.”

“Do not tell me you’re questioning his version of things.” There’s a warning in Shannon’s voice.

“I’m not questioning that he was at fault.”

“Good.”

“But—”

“Oh, boy. Here we go.”

“But I do not like his facts. It’s clear that he hit her car, that her car was stationary, and that she was out of the vehicle. Of course he’s at fault. But he’s also mistaken about the details, and I don’t understand why.”

I was out of the vehicle. Tara feels that tingle again, stronger now, and she wants to grab Abby’s hand and squeeze, wants to tell her to say more, paint a better picture, because she is close to remembering, she is very close, this woman can help Tara bridge the void.

“He’s probably confused because he was staring at his damn phone,” Shannon says.

Abby Kaplan shakes her head, and a muscle in her jaw flexes, as if she’s grinding her teeth.

“The angles are wrong,” she says softly. “The angles and the speed. He was driving terribly, yes, and he was negligent, but if he swerved like he says he did, then he should have flipped that van before he hit her.”

“The police can probably explain that to you,” Shannon says curtly.

Abby shakes her head, eyes distant, as if she is envisioning the scene.

Say what you’re thinking! Tara screams, but of course Abby doesn’t hear her.

“No, they actually can’t,” she tells Shannon. “They haven’t driven the right kind of cars at the right kind of speeds to know what is possible and what isn’t.”

“And I suppose you have.”

The short, slender girl looks at Shannon then, and there’s a spark to her when she says, “Yes. I have.” She takes a breath and the spark fades and she seems sad. “Anyhow, you don’t need to worry about me messing up any claims. It wasn’t your sister’s fault. But... it also didn’t happen the way Carlos Ramirez said it did.”

“So Ramirez was confused.”

“Maybe.” Abby Kaplan turns to face Tara, and this time she lets her stare linger. Her eyes are on Tara’s when she says, “I’m confident she would have a different memory of the way it happened.”

Tara stares back at her from within her corporeal shell, trying somehow to convey how desperately she needs the facts. If someone can just walk her through it, then maybe she can remember.

“Have you talked to the other victim’s family?” Shannon asks. “Oltamu’s?”

“Not yet.” Abby turns away from Tara.

Oltamu. Shannon says the name so casually, but it’s a cataclysmic moment for Tara.

Dr. Oltamu. A visiting speaker. She was driving him from dinner to the auditorium. She was driving him and then...

A block in her memory rises again, and she has a distinct vision of a wolf with its ears pinned back and its hackles raised.

Hobo. The wolf’s name is Hobo.

Why would a wolf have a name? But Oltamu is a name that registers; he is the black man with the nice smile and the expensive watch. Memories are returning now, scattered snapshots.

His name was Amandi Oltamu, and I was driving him. But who is he? Why was I driving him, and where? And what did he do to me?

Tara’s mind is whirling now, trying to capture each crucial detail, knowing that she must catch them all before they escape into the blackness like fireflies and disappear for good.

“Think his family will sue the college?” Shannon asks.

“Maybe. But I don’t see their case yet. The only thing that’s odd is why she parked where she did.”

Because he told me to, damn it, Tara thinks without hesitation. He wanted the Tara tour. This element is strangely vivid amid the fog of all the memories she’s lost — Oltamu asked her to get out of the car. She sees the two of them walking toward a bridge and she knows that this is true. We were both out of the car. We were both out because he wanted to walk, and I was worried about that because of the time, time was tight. But he told me that he wanted to walk, so we started to walk down to the bridge and then the wolf got us. The wolf came out of the darkness and got us.

She knows this is madness, and it scares her that it seems so logical, so clear.

I am not just paralyzed, I am insane.

“Nobody can answer that but her,” Abby Kaplan says, studying Tara’s face, and again Tara feels that strange electric sense of connection just beyond her grasp, like a castaway watching a plane pass overhead. “Do you know anyone who was with her at that dinner?” Abby asks Shannon.

“A few people have reached out.”

“I wonder if anyone would remember whether Oltamu had a phone on him.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s dead, and she can’t talk,” Abby says, running a hand through her hair as if to tamp down frustration. “People are on their phones all the time. He could have been using it right up until the end. And one of these” — she lifts the shoe box — “belongs to him. Unless the salvage guy kept it or sold it already. Neither would surprise me.”

He took pictures with his phone, Tara tells them silently. A selfie with me, because he needed to increase his social media presence. That was what worried him right before he died and I was erased from my own life. The last time I ever smiled, it was for a selfie with a stranger so he could improve his social media profile. If not for that, I’d have been across the bridge.

The lucidity of this is exciting, but she knows it’s still not complete. She is circling the memory like someone fumbling through a dark house searching for a light switch.

“I’ve wondered about her phone,” Shannon says hesitantly, as if she isn’t sure she should make this admission.

“Why?”

“Because when she drove, she put it on one of those magnet things on the dash. It wasn’t there, and it wasn’t in her purse. She was wearing a dress and a thin sweater with no pockets. So if it went into the river, that means she got out with the phone in her hand, as if she was using it.”

Shannon pauses then, which is wonderful, because Tara is frantically snatching at all these fireflies — phone, dress, sweater, river — trying to capture them before they escape into the darkness.

Abby Kaplan clears her throat and says, “I hope she comes back to you soon. For her sake and yours, of course, but also because I’d like to hear what she remembers.” She gives Shannon a business card, tells her to be in touch with any questions, and wishes her well, as if Shannon is alone in this struggle.

She does not look at Tara again before she leaves.

14

The untimely death of Carlos Ramirez was supposed to bring an end to a problem that should have been resolved easily, but this situation seemed determined to keep turning up like the proverbial bad penny.

Gerry Connors had dealt with such problems before, though, and he wasn’t worried by this one. Not just yet, at least. The potential for concern was floating out there, simply because of the price tag on this job. The price tag, and the German’s reputation. He had never met the German, but he’d heard of him, and when he did meet him, he certainly didn’t want to be delivering bad news.

For this, Gerry had Dax Blackwell, and he needed him to be as good as his bloodline promised he’d be.

Gerry Connors had first made his way into organized crime in the 1990s in his hometown of Belfast, working with the IRA at a time when work was easy to come by for a man who didn’t mind killings and bombings. Gerry felt no fierce loyalty to either church or state, and he hadn’t met many like him in that struggle until the Blackwell brothers arrived. Two freelancers from Australia who looked like sweet lads, blond-haired and blue-eyed and innocent-faced as altar boys, they’d entered a room filled with hardened IRA men, outlined their plan, and didn’t blink in the face of all the hostility and all the bloody history. Men had shouted at them, men had threatened them, and the brothers had calmly named their price and said take it or leave it.

Eventually, the boys in Belfast took it. A week after that, three members of the constabulary had been buried, the nation was in an uproar, and the Blackwells were wealthy — and long gone from the country.

They’d come back, of course. When the money was right, they returned, and during the 1990s, Jack and Patrick found plenty of work in Ireland. So did Gerry. He’d moved to America and gone into contract work, providing papers and identification for those who needed them. Soon he was providing more than papers — cars, guns, and, inevitably, it seemed, killers.

Jack and Patrick had come back around often then.

It was just after 9/11, and the business was experiencing fresh risks when Jack Blackwell requested multiple sets of identification for his newborn son. Gerry was reluctant to take on the task in those days, but he was even more reluctant to disappoint Jack Blackwell. He produced the requested birth certificates, which came from fifteen different states in America, as well as four sets of international papers, Australian, British, Dutch, and Swiss. Each was in a different name, and Jack provided all of the names, which led Gerry to wonder if they meant something to him, if they indicated something from his past life — or perhaps indicated lives he’d ended.

Gerry had no idea what the boy’s real name was, but the first time he’d met him, Jack had called him Dax, and so that was what Gerry went with, even though there was no paperwork for that name. Or at least, none that Gerry had created. Knowing Jack, Gerry figured he’d likely sourced identification from more than one person.

More than a dozen years later, when Gerry had need of Jack and Patrick’s services again, Jack told him they themselves were unavailable, but his son could handle the task. Gerry’s first response was to laugh — a very dangerous response when one was around the Blackwells, but Gerry knew the boy wasn’t even old enough to drive yet.

Jack Blackwell hadn’t laughed. He’d waited until Gerry said, “You’re not serious,” and then the faintest of smiles had crossed his face, and he nodded exactly once.

That was enough.

Nine days later, Dax Blackwell completed his first professional killing. Or at least, his first professional killing for Gerry Connors.

Over the years that followed, Gerry had been in touch with the boy fairly often. He had no idea where he lived or where he’d gone to school — or if he had gone to school, although he was certainly well educated, almost preternaturally bright. He also had no idea how much time the boy actually spent with his father and uncle, but based on his mannerisms and his skills, Gerry suspected that he was with them more often than not. After hearing word of Jack’s and Patrick’s deaths in Montana, Gerry considered offering his condolences to the boy, but he hadn’t. Instead, he offered him work, and the boy accepted the job and completed it. Small-time stuff, mostly, no high-dollar work, no international work. Gerry viewed it as an internship.

The pupil flourished.

They never spoke of Dax’s father and uncle formally, but they each mentioned them in passing and never referred to their deaths. Gerry followed the boy’s lead in keeping discussions of them in the present tense, as if they were still there, ghosts in the room, just waiting for the call to summon them back.

And in fact, when Gerry sent for Dax, that was exactly how it felt. As the boy grew, Gerry saw more and more of those two Aussie lads who’d walked so calmly into the room of hardened IRA killers.

Yes, he felt very much like he was calling on a ghost when he sent for Dax Blackwell.

Today the ghost arrived. He entered Gerry’s office in Boston’s North End expecting a paycheck for a completed job, having no clue yet as to the trouble that had occurred. Carlos Ramirez had needed to kill one man and steal one phone. Somehow, Carlos Ramirez had managed to steal the wrong fucking phone. Gerry understood this because the German had told him not to worry about a trace on the phone because it wasn’t active and had no signal. The phones in Gerry’s desk drawer had signals. Both of them had been ringing, and that was a problem. That was, maybe, an enormous problem, as the German was due to arrive by the weekend to pick up something for which he had already paid handsomely but that was not in Gerry’s possession. The German did not travel internationally to pick up things in person that could be mailed unless the items were of the utmost importance. Based on Gerry’s understanding of the German, he felt that this in-person disappointment was not the sort of thing one would want to experience firsthand.

Enter Dax Blackwell.

“The job’s not done,” Gerry told him as soon as the door was closed behind him.

“Not done? Did Carlos walk out of the morgue?” the kid asked as he sat down. Make no mistake, Dax carried his family’s blood. Which was to say that he was empty and cold in all the right ways, but he also carried his father’s smirk and his uncle’s deadpan delivery. Gerry had never been a fan of those qualities.

The only thing Gerry hated more than Dax’s attitude was his wardrobe. Jeans and hoodies, tennis shoes and a baseball cap. Always the fucking baseball cap. Whatever happened to gangsters with class? When did people decide they could come see him without shining their damn shoes, maybe putting on some cuff links?

But Dax wasn’t a gangster, of course. You had to be patient with the young ones. When young shooters became old killers, then you could demand more from them. If they made it that far, they’d probably figured it out on their own. Right now he was an Australian version of what the cartels called a wolf boy — a teenage killer, an apprentice assassin. Wolf boys were valuable in the border towns. Why couldn’t they be useful on a larger scale too?

Dax Blackwell, the Aussie lobo, descendant of ghosts.

“We are missing a phone,” Gerry said, leaning back and propping his feet up on the glass-topped coffee table so the kid could get a good look at his hand-stitched, calfskin Moreschi wingtips. Put style in front of his face, maybe it’d seep through his skull.

“He gave me two. You have them.”

“Neither is right. One is hers, and one is his, but neither one is right.”

“Carlos’s house was clean. So was his bag.”

“What about his pockets?”

The kid looked nonplussed. Dax Blackwell didn’t like to be asked questions for which he didn’t have ready answers.

“Didn’t check,” he said eventually. “I hadn’t been asked to. You told me get two phones; I got two phones. But I also don’t think he’d have kept one unless he knew its value. Did he?”

This was both more attitude and more inquiry than Gerry wanted from the kid, but he wasn’t wrong to ask the question. Carlos had no idea what the phone was worth. Gerry didn’t know anything about the phone other than that he was supposed to hand it to the German.

One thing Gerry had learned over the years was not to ask too many questions about what went on above your pay grade — hell, not to think too many questions about it — and he surely did not want to begin thinking about what the German needed from this cell phone. What he was willing to extend his personal curiosity to, however, was what would happen if he disappointed people above his pay grade, and he didn’t have to work too hard to imagine the outcome.

He needed that phone.

“Police found Carlos’s body,” Gerry said. “If he had the phone, it’ll be in evidence lockup, and I’ll get it. But I don’t think he had it.”

“I don’t either. If he was going to make a mistake like that, he’d have done it a long time ago.”

Again, more confidence than Gerry wanted to hear, more swagger, but also, again, not wrong.

“Probably. Which means it’s missing somewhere between here and there.”

Dax Blackwell thought about this, nodded, and then said, “He needed two phones, so he grabbed Oltamu’s and grabbed the girl’s. Dumb mistake, but that’s probably what he did, and he didn’t pause to check properly, so he missed the third. By the time they’d cleaned the scene and I picked them up by the river, the phone you needed was gone with the cars.”

Now he sounded just like his old man. Jack Blackwell always got right to it, but he never showed impatience, and he never rushed.

“That phone is imperative,” Gerry said. “I need it fast, and Carlos is no longer able to assist.”

“I heard he was... deported, yes.”

Now this was his uncle’s personality, everything about it pure Patrick — no twitch of a smile, and yet you knew he’d amused himself with the comment.

“Unless you want an expedited trip to the same place, spare me the wit,” Gerry said. The kid didn’t so much as blink. Gerry wasn’t sure whether he liked the kid’s response or if it infuriated him. Composure was appropriate. But fearlessness in front of Gerry? Less appropriate.

“I’ll get the phone, then,” Dax said. “You should have just let me take the whole job from the start.”

Gerry looked at him over the gleaming toe of the Moreschis, considered his response, and let silence ride. If it bothered the kid, he didn’t show it.

“It was supposed to look like an accident, and it was time-sensitive,” Dax said. “There were many better ways to do that than what he chose. He brought a brawler’s touch to a finesse job.”

“Just go find that fucking phone, and maybe I’ll have more patience for your input in the future,” Gerry said, frustration getting the better of him now, partly because the kid wasn’t wrong and partly because he didn’t understand one crucial element of the deal — Gerry had spared Dax’s life. The German had been very clear that anyone involved with hitting Oltamu needed to be expendable. Carlos, already a risk to Gerry on other matters, had thus been ideal for the job. But Dax could’ve gone too. Should have, in fact, by the terms of the deal.

But he was too promising.

If I can own one of them, Gerry thought, visions of the Blackwell brothers coming back to him, it will be worth it. If he grows into one of their kind, and he is all mine, loyal to the throne and not just the checkbook, then he will certainly be worth the trouble.

The kid stood without being told they were done. For a moment, Gerry thought about ordering him to sit his ass back down, but what was the point?

“Go on,” he said, and he waved at the door. “Get me the phone. It’s an iPhone, but it has no signal. That’s all I know. If the phone puts out a signal, it’s the wrong one.”

Dax Blackwell didn’t move right away. Instead, he stood there looking at Gerry, and then he said, “The phone is one problem Carlos left behind. There might be another. Do you have an opinion on that yet?”

He meant the girl, of course.

“She’s as good as gone, is my understanding.”

“That’s enough?”

“She’s brain-dead. And even if she wakes up, what’s she gonna say?”

“You don’t know,” Dax said. “That would be precisely my concern.”

Gerry flushed and swung his feet down.

“I understand my fucking liabilities, son. I don’t need your assistance with the big picture. I need you to bring me the phone. Now get out of here and do it.”

He didn’t like the way the kid studied him and then nodded and turned away as if he’d seen something in Gerry’s anger that interested him.

No, it was more than interest, Gerry thought as he stared at the closed door, Dax Blackwell’s footsteps reverberating across the tiled floor on the other side. That expression hadn’t been one of intrigue or curiosity but something deeper, something darker.

Like whatever he’d seen in his boss had made him hungry.

“He’s just a kid,” Gerry said aloud. The words echoed in the empty room, and when they bounced back at him, they weren’t reassuring. He sounded nervous, sitting in his own office and talking about his own employee. What in the hell was that about?

About the kid’s old man and his uncle, of course. Jack and Patrick were long gone, yes, but they cast long shadows too, a pair of dark smiling ghosts.

The best hitters you ever saw. So trust the kid, Gerry thought. At least a little longer. He was a beta-Blackwell. But if he bloomed? Well, then.

Wouldn’t that be something.

15

Dax had spent an hour the previous night listening to the idle chatter in Tara Beckley’s hospital room, enough time to confirm both that they’d kept his flowers and that she remained mute, but each day had the potential for new blessings, as the Team Tara Facebook page reminded him that morning, and so he checked back in after leaving Gerry Connors’s office.

The recorder he’d placed in the flower vase was of excellent microphone quality but he was disappointed with its computer interface and mobile options. He had to use the web browser to log in, and then he had to sort through multiple files that captured dialogue exchanges of longer than two minutes. He wished he’d used a better system, but Tara Beckley was only of value-added potential for Dax; she wasn’t a threat. With threats, you spared no expense. The microphones he had planted in Gerry’s office, for example, were cutting-edge, and he’d paid accordingly.

He sat in his car and updated himself on A Day in the Semi-Life of Tara Beckley. He listened to her mother talk endlessly and aimlessly, scrolled past that, found the same with the sister, and then some nurses chattering, and then...

What was this?

“Abby’s an investigator. She tells me she’s working on your behalf.”

That was the sister talking. The investigator, when she spoke, sounded nervous. Well, no surprise there — Tara’s empty-eyed stare and those tubes could be unsettling to some. Dax doubted many people had given her the kind of deep eye contact that he’d offered.

The investigator blathered on awkwardly, not saying much of interest, but then the sister said something that made Dax sit up straight.

“Nobody talked about her phone until your boss called.”

Her phone? Well, now. The investigator might be more interesting than Dax had thought.

He listened through more chatter, the investigator agreeing that Carlos Ramirez was at fault — apparently she didn’t yet know that Carlos was also in the morgue — and then carrying on about how she didn’t like Carlos’s story. Dax had to give her some credit for this because she seemed to understand the physics of it all in a way the police hadn’t, and thus she got what a colossal disaster Carlos Ramirez had been. Time-sensitive, make-it-an-undeniable-accident instructions be damned; Carlos had picked an awfully dumb way to go about the hit. Perhaps he hadn’t cared because he knew he’d be out of the country by the time anyone showed real interest. That was fine, but the mess he’d made of things reflected poorly not only on Carlos but on Gerry Connors. And since Dax worked with Gerry, there was the risk of contamination. The Blackwell brand could be damaged before he’d had a chance to re-introduce it if Gerry stumbled. You had to be careful who you worked for in this business. Independent contractors are not immune to the perils of poor management, his father had told him often.

For a hick insurance investigator, Abby was surprisingly astute. She was also scared, it seemed, which was interesting. Information and fear didn’t go together in Dax’s mind — knowledge was power, the cliché promised, and so far in his young life, he’d found that to be true. Then why was this woman so nervous?

Probably it was Tara’s dead-eyed stare. Abby the investigator kept pushing, though, almost grudgingly, as if she couldn’t help herself.

“And one of these,” Abby said, and there was a rustling sound, “belongs to him. Unless the salvage guy kept it or sold it already. Neither would surprise me.”

“I’ve wondered about her phone,” Shannon said.

Dax Blackwell rewound and replayed that portion.

16

Another advantage of the train — beyond the fact that it didn’t make her heart thunder or her vision blur white in the corners — was that Abby could work while she traveled.

She typed up the details of the visit with Shannon Beckley (and Tara Beckley, though that felt more like a visitation, a respectful glance into the casket) on her laptop while the Downeaster rattled back north. Or, as befitted its name, back down east, a term that referred to prevailing summer winds along Maine’s coast. In most places in America, down meant “south,” but in southern Maine, down took you north.

The visit had been as pointless as Abby had promised Hank it would be — nothing that she couldn’t have accomplished with a phone call. And yet she found herself more invested in the work because she’d made that pass by the casket, glanced down at the beyond-reach Tara Beckley in her comatose state.

Those eyes. Her eyes looked so damn alert...

But Abby knew they weren’t. She’d been through that cruel illusion before.

Luke was famous for his face, but the audience didn’t understand that his eyes were what made his face work. They were so alive, penetrating and laughing and alive. There was a reason he’d moved so quickly from sending in his head shots to getting auditions to being offered lead roles in blockbuster action films, and, yes, some of it was talent, and, yes, some of it was his physical beauty, but Abby knew the secret was his eyes.

When they made love, he kept his eyes closed. When they made love, she wanted to see him. Finally, one night, when he was on top of her and inside of her but somehow still absent, she’d put her hands in his hair and tugged his head back and said, “Look at me.”

He’d opened his eyes then, and even in the darkness she’d felt that strange, powerful energy, the unique sense of life that came from within his gaze. They’d finished together, face-to-face, clenching and shuddering and gasping but never breaking eye contact, the best sex of her life by far.

“I like to see you,” she’d whispered, and she bit his shoulder gently.

He’d laughed, the sound soft and low in the room, and said, “I’ll remember that.”

And he had. He always had.

That made those moments in the hospital even crueler.

Her phone rang, pulling her thoughts away from Luke. It was Hank, calling from the office. Abby answered just as a couple seated beside her burst into laughter.

“Where are you?” Hank asked.

“Headed back.”

“Who’s in the car with you?”

“Nobody.” She grimaced and tried to shield the phone from the sound of the voices.

“Then who am I listening to in the background?”

“I’m on the train,” Abby admitted.

“The train? Why in the hell would you take the train to Boston?”

“It gives me time to work.”

“You turn a six-hour day into ten or twelve hours so you can buy time to work? I know you’re a product of Biddeford public schools, Abby, but that is really bad math.”

Hank had gone to Thornton Academy in Saco, which was a public school for some local residents but an in-demand private boarding school for the rest of the world, and he liked to wear it as a badge of honor. He rarely mentioned that he’d dropped out of community college shortly after his stint at Thornton.

“Funny,” Abby said. “But I’ve got the report caught up, and I dealt with the sister and saw Tara, so I checked all the boxes you needed.”

“Great. But you’ve got a big one unchecked that is going to stay that way — Carlos Ramirez isn’t talking to you.”

“Finally got smart enough to hide behind a lawyer?”

“Nope. He’s dead.”

“What?”

“Yup. Bullet to the brain.”

“Suicide,” Abby said, less a question than a statement, because it seemed to make so much sad sense — Ramirez knew he was looking at prison time, and he hadn’t been able to bear that prospect.

“Nope. Caught two shots down in Brighton in the passenger seat of a stolen car. I just heard the news. Guess they found him yesterday, last night, something. But he was murdered, so whatever trouble we thought he had over that accident might have been only the surface. I wonder if they checked that van for drugs. Just because his blood was clean doesn’t mean he was, know what I’m saying?”

The train clattered and swayed as Abby held the phone to her ear without speaking.

“Crazy shit, right?” Hank prompted.

“Yeah. Crazy.” Abby wasn’t sure why the news bothered her so much, why she couldn’t view it with the detachment that Hank did.

“Whatever closure Oltamu’s family might’ve felt from watching that guy go to jail is gone now, and that’s a problem,” Hank said. “Maybe they look elsewhere for it and sue the school. Meanwhile, my trusty investigator is worried that Ramirez didn’t get his facts straight when he talked to the police, which will not make the liability folks happy. Can you get yourself in line with his statement?”

“No.”

“Excuse me?” Hank sounded stunned.

“I think he lied.”

“He took the blame! Why in the hell would he lie to take the blame?”

“I have no idea, Hank, but I’m sure that he didn’t tell the truth. I don’t care if it was because he lied or because he was confused, but he did not tell the truth. That isn’t good news for your client either way.”

“No, it sure isn’t.” Hank groaned. “Are you positive his version doesn’t hold together?”

“Yes. And somebody is going to notice eventually, so we’d better warn people before that happens.”

“Shit. You’re ruining this, Abby. It was so damn simple! Wreck, fatality, confession, and then the guilty dude’s dead! That’s as clean as they come.”

That’s why this news bothers me, Abby realized as the couple next to her laughed loudly in her ear again. Ramirez being killed makes it even cleaner.

“Let’s talk it over when I get back,” she said. “Something’s wrong here.”

“You sure know how to spoil a good thing.”

“Come on, Hank, you’re an investigator! Where’s your detective’s gusto?”

“Gimme a break. I hold that friggin’ PI license only as a necessary credential to support my career as a bullshitter.”

“But this could be a break in the case. That should make your day.”

“I’ve never desired to break open any case that wasn’t filled with beers.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to do both for a change.”

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Hank said dismally.

“Chin up,” Abby said. “You might be a hero when this is all done. Get the key to the city or something.”

“I got plenty of bowling trophies, thanks. Come by the office and we’ll talk, all right?”

“It’ll be late by the time I’m in.”

“Because you took the friggin’ train. Meanwhile the Hellcat’s sitting out back.”

Abby didn’t respond, and Hank sighed and said, “We’ll catch up in the morning, then. And I’ll start looking for a new employee. ‘Wanted: slow learner with lack of ambition.’”

When they ended the call, Abby didn’t put her phone away. She sat there for a while as the couple beside her laughed again, that wonderful oblivious-to-everything-else laughter that came when you were so locked in with another person that the rest of the world was only peripheral. She wanted to glance at them but didn’t want them to catch her staring, didn’t want to intrude on that moment. Good for them if they had that connection. Hopefully they could keep it.

She found Shannon Beckley’s number and called.

“This is Abby Kaplan. I’m the one who—”

“I know who you are; I saw you less than two hours ago. What do you need?”

“Have you heard about Carlos Ramirez?”

“Heard what about Ramirez?”

“That he’s dead. He was murdered.”

Abby didn’t think it was easy to knock Shannon Beckley off her stride, but this seemed to do it. Abby heard her take a sharp breath before she said, “You’re serious.”

“Yes. Shot to death in a stolen car. I wanted to let you know.”

“Why?” Shannon asked, and it was a damn fine question. Abby hadn’t put the answer into words yet, not even in her own mind, but now she had to.

“Whatever Tara saw might be important,” she said.

“Dangerous for her,” Shannon answered. “That’s what you mean.”

“I don’t know. But I won’t rule it out. Listen, I’m not trying to scare you; you’ve got enough to be scared of right now. But Ramirez lied to the police. I’m sure of it. And now he’s been murdered.”

“It was just a car wreck,” Shannon said, but she wasn’t arguing. She said it in the way you did when you wanted to make something big small again.

“Maybe.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Shannon Beckley said, “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to let you know that this had—”

“Bullshit. You’re looking at it differently than everyone else. You didn’t believe him, and now that he’s dead, you think that means something. So let me ask again, please — what are you thinking?”

Her tone was no longer combative or even commanding. It was lonely.

“When she comes out of it,” Abby said, “be careful about the people who are around when she’s asked about the accident. Be careful who asks her about it.”

“When she comes out of it,” Shannon said softly. “I like your confidence.”

“She’s in there,” Abby said. “I’m almost positive.”

“Yeah? The doctors aren’t. So how do you know?”

“Because I’ve seen someone who wasn’t. There’s a difference.”

I’m almost positive, she repeated to herself. But of course she wasn’t. Not now when she said Tara was still in there and not back when she’d said Luke no longer was.

17

It wasn’t yet five o’clock, but Savage Sam Jones figured you didn’t always need to go by the book, certainly not at his age, and so he opened a PBR well before he locked the gates at the salvage yard. It was a quarter past four and he was hungry as well as thirsty and he wanted a slice or two of pizza from the corner store, but right now it would be the old, dried-out shit left over from lunch. For the good pizza, he’d have to wait until five.

Might as well wait there as here, he thought.

He’d closed the door to his office and turned to lock it, and he was standing with his keys in one hand and a beer in the other when he heard the car pull in.

Son of a bitch. There was business after all.

He left the keys in the door, set the beer down on the step, and walked toward the gate as a young guy stepped out of a Jeep and gazed at the place. That wasn’t uncommon; teenagers were always coming around. They were young enough to still have an interest in working on their own cars, and they didn’t have the money for new parts.

“Come on in, but don’t forget it’s gettin’ on toward closing time,” Sam hollered.

“It’s not even four thirty.” The kid said this in an amused voice, not confrontational, but still, it riled Sam. Who gave a damn what a kid thought closing time should be?

“Like I said,” Sam told him drily as he picked up the PBR can. The kid watched him and then smiled, like he’d just learned something that pleased him.

“I don’t want to impose on you, sir. I can tell you’ve got better things to do.” This was smart-ass, but he plowed on past it so fast that Sam didn’t have a chance to retort. “I’m just doing my job, which requires hassling you about a couple of cars that you towed in here from up by Hammel College a few days ago.”

“Shit.” Sam drank more of the beer. He was tired of those cars from the college. They were costing him more in headaches than they were worth in dollars. “They send you to take the pictures?”

The kid cocked his head. “Did who send me?”

“The gal I gave the phones to, she said she was coming back for pictures.”

The kid didn’t move his head, didn’t change expression, didn’t so much as blink, and yet Sam felt a strangeness come off him like an electric pulse.

“Who was this?”

“I don’t remember,” Sam said, and that wasn’t a lie. He was always awful with names and even worse when he wasn’t interested.

“Police?”

“Insurance, I think. She gave me a card.”

Sam drained the beer and shook the empty can with regret, and he was just about to tell the kid that he had an appointment with a slice of pepperoni pizza when the kid said, “You like whiskey?”

Did Savage Sam Jones like whiskey? He almost laughed aloud. It had been a number of years since he’d heard that question. He was about to shout back, Does Hugh Hefner like big tits? but then he recalled his business decorum. That and the fact that Hugh was dead and this kid might not have the faintest idea who the man was or why glossy magazines had ever been needed. The damned internet had spoiled these kids.

“Does the pope shit in a funny hat?” Sam asked instead, figuring even a youngster could follow that old gem, and the kid grinned as he approached. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder and he didn’t look like any trouble. Just lazy, that was all. You could tell that by the way he dressed, way he moved, everything. All these damned kids were lazy now, though. If he was here looking for car parts and asking about whiskey, why, he couldn’t be as bad as most of them.

“I’ve got a bottle I might share with you, then,” he said, and Sam squinted at him. This was more intriguing — and concerning. Was he some sort of street preacher? Was the whiskey a ruse entirely? If the kid got to carrying on about the spirit and the soul, that was not going to go well. It would go even worse if he was trying to sell some homebrew small-batch bullshit.

What he produced, though, was good old-fashioned American Jack Daniel’s. It was hard to argue with that. Granted, it was a higher-dollar version, something called Gentleman Jack, but Sam had seen it at Walmart and so he knew it could be trusted.

“What do you want, son?” he said. He didn’t mind the kid, and he surely wouldn’t mind the whiskey, but he also didn’t drink with strangers who showed up at five — well, close to five, anyhow — on a workday.

“Just a bit of your time. I can pour you a drink if you listen to me for a few minutes.”

Sam looked at him and then at the bottle, and then he pictured the pizza slices spinning their slow dance in the warming oven on the corner store’s counter. It would be twenty minutes at least until there were fresh slices in there.

“Who’d you say you worked for?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” the kid said, and smiled. “But I promise I’ll be less trouble than any of the rest of them.”

“Rest of who?”

“The people who are asking about those cars and the phones.”

“Son, I only towed ’em in here. I didn’t witness the damn wreck, and I don’t have the damn phone.”

“But there was a phone in the car?”

Sam wasn’t sure whether he liked this kid or not. He smiled an awful lot, but the smile seemed to belong to an inside joke, which was strange considering it was only the two of them here and Sam didn’t get the joke. “I don’t know,” Sam said. “Go call the cop who called me and ask him—”

“I don’t think we should call the cops,” the kid said. “I think we should have a drink and talk. Because you made a mistake, Mr. Jones. You shouldn’t have given that phone away to anyone who didn’t have a badge. She had to have been aware of the trouble she was getting you into, and you’re telling me she didn’t warn you?”

“Shit, no!” Sam was uneasy now, thinking of the number of phones he’d entrusted to the blond gal.

The kid made a disappointed sound and shook his head. “I know her type, all friendly talk, winking at you and then somehow leaving with property she doesn’t have any right to, and when the cops show — and they will — the cops will have heard an entirely different story than the one you were told. There’ll be petty charges, maybe, but what’s petty when it’s your own life and your business?”

Shit, shit, shit, Sam thought. Sam did not want to appear in court, and he said as much now.

The kid nodded sympathetically and said, “I think we can keep it from going that way.”

“You can? What’re you, my Boy Scout representative?”

The kid smiled. “You know, that’s not far off, really. I was raised to know what to do in the woods, that’s for sure. I can still start a fire in the rain.”

“All due respect, but I wouldn’t mind seeing your boss. Just to talk to somebody at the top, you know?”

“I’ve been involved in my father’s business since I was very young,” the kid said. “It’s a tricky line of work, and training starts early. I worked with my father, worked with my uncle. I know I look young, sir, but I assure you I know how to handle a situation like this.”

Sam thought he’d probably just heard gospel. Immature and lazy as the kid looked, he talked a mighty fine game, said the right things and said them firmly. And, hell, he was a worker. That mattered. Most kids these days didn’t show any ambition at all.

“More I listen to you, and the more I think on it, you’re right, it could get pretty bad,” Sam said. “Got one dead and one with no more brain activity than a head of lettuce, and you just know there’s going to be lawsuits coming out of that. Don’t matter that the Mexican hit them, he ain’t got no money, so they’ll find—”

“The Mexican—” the kid began, and Sam interrupted hastily.

“I don’t want you thinking I’m racist or nothing, it’s just, my understanding was that he was some kind of Mexican.”

“Correct,” the kid said with the barest hint of a smile, most of it lost to the shadows his black baseball cap cast over his face. “He was indeed some kind of Mexican, and now he’s the dead kind. He was murdered outside of Boston, I’m told.”

Sam gaped. Murdered. That was not a word Savage Sam wanted to hear in connection to any of the cars he towed, even when they were for the police. Murder cases were unholy messes. His sister-in-law over in York County had to serve on the jury of a murder trial once, and it lasted most of a month. Now, she did say the lunches were pretty decent, and the case was interesting, kind of like TV, but Sam had no desire to get wrapped up with anything that could get him on the witness stand. Once he got to explaining those phones...

“It’ll be a damned turkey shoot,” he grumbled aloud. “I shouldn’t have given the phones to that gal. If she was a cop, maybe. But she promised she’d get them to the police. That ain’t gonna sound real good when I say it, though, is it?”

The kid gave him a sympathetic look and didn’t answer. Sam lifted the PBR to his lips and then remembered it was already empty.

“What if I could get them back for you?” the kid asked. He’d walked right up to the front porch steps now. Just a child, and yet he talked with such authority that Sam might’ve believed he was a cop. “Once I understand the details of the situation, I can make sure that your property is returned and that the woman who pulled this fast one on you won’t bother you anymore. By the end, she’ll be more afraid of the police than you will. As she should be.”

“Hell, yes, as she should be,” Sam said, beginning to think it was a damned good thing that this kid had pulled in when he did. Just ten minutes later, and Sam would’ve been settled at his booth down at the store, a couple pieces of old pizza on paper plates in front of him.

“Let’s have a drink,” the kid said, “and you can talk me through it. Unless, of course, you don’t drink on the job?”

Sam answered with a snort and crushed the empty PBR can beneath his dusty work boot. “I expect I can get a couple fingers of that sippin’ whiskey down just fine.”

The kid grinned. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Sam turned to the door. The keys were still in the lock. He took them out and then swung the door open and held it so the kid could pass through.

“A few more minutes and I’d have missed you,” he said. “Now I’ve got help and whiskey.”

“Lucky break.”

“So which side of the show are you working for? The girl’s family or the dead Mexican fella’s? Or the first dead guy’s? Shit, almost forgot about him. Lot of death around that wreck.”

“There sure was,” the kid said. “Say, do you have any glasses?”

Sam got so distracted by searching for clean glasses that he forgot the kid hadn’t answered the question about who he was working for. He found glasses and sat down behind the desk. The old chair wheezed beneath him, and dust rose, but the cushions were crushed down to the shape of his frame now, still plenty comfortable. Customized, you might say.

“There you go,” he said, sliding the glasses across the desk. The kid poured him a nice healthy shot, three fingers, maybe four. Sam almost told him to stop, but what the hell. He didn’t want to come across as a doddering old-timer who couldn’t handle his liquor.

The kid sat back and capped the bottle. Sam frowned. “Ain’t gonna have any?”

“Drinking on the job is high-risk, according to my father.”

“Well, hell, now I feel like you’re getting me drunk just to get me talkin’,” Sam said, and he was only half joking.

The kid must’ve seen that because he said, “Tell you what — I’d do a beer if you’ve got any more of those around.”

“Sure.” Sam fetched him a tallboy can of PBR, and the kid drank this without hesitation, which put Sam at ease.

The whiskey went down with a smooth burn and a faint tang. Sam pulled the bottle closer and tilted it one way and his head the other so they aligned in a fashion that allowed him to read without his bifocals.

“Gentleman Jack,” he said. “Not bad, but what was wrong with just the good old stuff? Why’s it always gotta be changing?”

The kid bowed his head and said, “Ah, that’s a sentimental thing, really. My father’s name was Jack. He was a gentleman too. A charmer, sir. People who made it through a whole day or a whole night with him, they always loved him.”

Now, this was something Savage Sam Jones could embrace, a kid who cared about his father. For all the bullshit you heard about these kids and their cell phone addictions and electric cigarettes and liberal notions, it was reassuring to know there were still some good ones.

“That’s real nice,” Sam said, and that’s when it hit him — the kid had said his father’s name was Jack. “Oh, man. He’s gone, isn’t he?”

The kid nodded.

“I’m truly sorry to hear it. I lost my old man too young too. What happened to yours?”

The kid lifted his head and stared at Sam with flat eyes. “He burned up in a forest fire in Montana.”

“Shit,” Sam breathed. “A real damned hero. I’m sorry for your loss, but at least you know he went down doing righteous work. I hope you think about that.”

“Oh, I do, sir. I think about that often. Matter of fact...” He rose, uncapped the whiskey, and refilled Sam’s glass. “Maybe a toast to him, if you don’t mind? Fire season’s done here, but out in California and Arizona, they’ve still got men on the lines.”

Sam lifted his glass. “To heroes,” he said. “To men like your father.”

“To my father,” the kid said, and he clinked his PBR can off Sam’s glass and drank.

The whiskey tasted fine, but, boy, it snuck up on you too. After just two shots of the stuff — well, two pretty stiff pours — Savage Sam Jones was fighting to keep his vision clear and his words from slurring.

“So what can you tell me about this woman who came to get the phone from you?” the kid said.

Sam told him everything there was to tell. He explained his habit of scouring cars for items of potential value and his immediate quest to notify the owner when such a thing was found. He explained how if nobody claimed their shit within thirty days, then you could hardly be expected to imagine they cared about its fate, and so he’d been known to take it down to his brother’s pawnshop a time or two. This kid listened respectfully and didn’t give any of the wry smiles like the blond gal.

As his whiskey glass was refilled and went back down, he decided to give this polite kid with the dead-hero father a little more of the truth.

“It was actually in the glove compartment,” he said. “But like I said, I always give a careful look. Situation like that, where people get hurt, people die? Those sentimental things sometimes really matter to people.” He leaned back and waved his glass at the kid. “Hell, you know all about that, with what your dad did. You got anything like that left from him?”

The kid hesitated, and Sam wondered if it was too fresh, if he’d touched a wound that hadn’t yet healed. But finally the kid nodded. “More than a few things,” he said. “Most of them, I keep here.” He touched his temple, then tapped his heart, and Sam nodded sagely.

“Well, sure. Of course. I just mean some people like to have a tangible...”

He stopped talking when the kid brought the gun out.

It was a revolver, a Ruger maybe, with black grips and a blackened muzzle and bore but chrome cylinders for the bullets. It was a beautiful gun, and a mean one. Any fine-looking weapon was a frightening one. People hadn’t fallen in love with those friggin’ AR-15s because they were ugly guns. They looked the part. Hold one and look in the mirror and you felt the part. Problem was, that got in some people’s heads. Some children’s heads, for that matter.

“You just carry that with you, do you?” Sam said, and he didn’t like how unsteady his voice sounded. He’d been around guns all his life. Why did this one scare him?

“Yeah, I guess.” The kid pocketed it again, and while Sam was glad it was out of sight, he was aware of how natural it fit in the kid’s hand.

“Where are you from?” Sam asked.

“All over. Moved around a lot, growing up.”

“Because of the fires,” Sam said, thinking of the kid’s dead father. “They don’t stay in one place, nice and tidy, do they?”

The kid smiled. “No,” he said. “Fires tend to move around.” He started to pour again, and Sam waved him off, because at this point if he tried to drive even as far as the corner store for pizza, he’d be taking a hell of a chance. His vision was blurring in a way it usually didn’t from whiskey.

“Aw, come on,” the kid said. “Just one more, for my dad. His burned bones are on some mountain out there I’ve never seen. Right now, they’re probably already under a blanket of snow. Have a drink for him, would you, sir?”

How could you say no to that? A kid asking you to toast to his dead father’s bones, burned black by fire and now buried by snow, and the kid was offering his own whiskey, and you were going to say no? That didn’t seem right.

“Pour it,” Sam said.

The kid poured it tall again, but what the hell. If Sam needed to doze off here in the chair for an hour or two until he was ready to get behind the wheel, that was fine. He’d done it before. He saw no reason to be troubled by his heavy eyelids.

“The card?” the kid asked loudly.

“Huh?” Sam jerked upright. He realized he’d actually been on the way to sleep, and he’d let his eyes close.

“You said you couldn’t remember the woman’s name, the one you gave all of the phones to, but that she left a card.”

“Oh, shit. Yes. Yes, she did.” Sam tried to stand, but he was woozy. Damn, that new Jack Daniel’s had a different kind of kick to it. Sneaky as a snake in the grass. He’d stick to the old classic in the future. He fumbled around on the shelf behind the desk and then he turned around, triumphant, the card held high.

“Here ya go.” He tossed it on the desk so the kid could read it. No way Sam could pick the words out of that blur, not now.

“‘Hank Bauer, Coastal Claims and Investigations,’” the kid read. “Hank was a woman?”

“No, but that’s the card she left. She must work for him. She wasn’t as young as you, but not very far from it either. Maybe thirty. Tiny little thing, with blond hair. She was decent, I suppose, but she might be a smart-ass. And like you said, she should’ve left the... the... uh...” Sam couldn’t keep his thoughts steady, and he was beginning to sweat. “It should’ve been the police that came, is what I mean.”

“Sure. Well, Mr. Jones, consider your problems solved. I’ll take care of this whole matter, and I’ll do it discreetly.”

Sam tried to nod. Tried to say thank you. Instead he felt his eyes close, and this time he didn’t fight them.

“That’s some damn strong liquor,” he said, and the words were hard to form and seemed to echo in his own ears.

“It’s a proprietary blend,” the kid said. “I add a little custom touch to it.”

Wish you’d mentioned that earlier, Savage Sam Jones thought but didn’t say, couldn’t say. His eyes were still closed, and he felt his head lolling forward on a suddenly slackening neck.

I need some water, he thought. I need some help.

When Savage Sam Jones slumped forward in his chair, Dax Blackwell didn’t move. He waited a few minutes, calm and patient, before pulling on thin gloves and checking for a pulse.

Nothing. The old man’s flesh was already cooling. His heart had stopped.

Long after he was certain of this, Dax Blackwell kept his hand on the man’s wrist and his gaze on the man’s closed eyes. He studied the tableau of death where life had flourished just minutes ago, until Dax’s arrival on the doorstep of this man now turned corpse.

Finally, reluctantly, he released him.

There was business to do, and time was wasting.

He kept the gloves on while he wiped down the whiskey glass and the PBR can and the desk. Sam’s old chair swiveled under his weight, turning the dead man away from the door. Dax carefully turned the chair back so that his face would greet the next visitor.

When he left, he took the bottle.

18

The neurologist’s last name is Pine, and if he has a first name, he doesn’t offer it to Tara. He is Dr. Pine, period. He has a pleasant smile and smart, penetrating eyes and the kind of self-assured bearing that gives you confidence.

It gives Tara confidence, at least, until he asks her to blink.

“Twice for no, once for yes,” he says in his deep, warm voice. They are alone in the room; Shannon objected to that, but Dr. Pine insisted, and Dr. Pine won.

He is the first medical staffer to introduce himself to Tara and explain who he is. Hello, Tara, I’m Dr. Pine, your neurologist. We’re going to need to work together to get your show back on the road, okay? This will be a team effort. But I promise you I’m going to do my part.

All of this is so nice to hear. So encouraging. But then...

“Blink for me,” he says again. “Please, Tara.”

And she wants to. She has never wanted anything more in her life than to blink for this man.

She can’t do it, though. She tries so hard that tears form in her eyes, but tears are always forming in her eyes, and she doubts this means anything to him. It’s not crying so much as leaking, and nobody seems to notice it except Shannon and the black nurse whose name Tara still doesn’t know. Sometimes they will dab her tears off her cheeks.

My sister used to call me Twitch, she thinks. I was that jumpy. If you showed me a scary movie or slammed a door when the house was dark, I’d jerk like I’d been electrocuted. Now I can’t even blink.

Dr. Pine stares at her, says, “If you’re comfortable, give me one blink. If you’re not comfortable, give me two,” and Tara begins to feel exhausted from the strain of effort, an exhaustion that’s only heightened by the outrage that there’s no evidence of her effort, no sign that she’s fighting her ass off in here. She doubles down on the effort of the blink, every ounce of her energy going toward her eyelids. Come on, come on...

And that’s when her thumb twitches.

She feels a wave of elation; Dr. Pine shows nothing. He didn’t see her thumb. He’s watching her eyes, and so he missed the motion in her hand.

“That’s okay, Tara,” he says, and he pats her arm and stands up and turns his attention to his notepad.

But my thumb moved! It moved, how could you miss that, I need you to see that I can move!

Twitchy Tara the scaredy-cat girl is back and better than ever. Twitch is no longer a shame name; it’s a lifeline.

Pine looks up, smiles at her, and then says, “Let’s bring your family back in, shall we?”

Damn it, Doc, where were your eyes when I needed them!

But he’s gone, and her thumb is still again. The lifeline lifeless. He opens the door and they all file in, Shannon in front, then Mom, then Rick with his hand on Mom’s arm. Always the reassuring touch.

“Remember,” he tells Mom, “the truth is always progress.”

He keeps talking, his voice rising and falling with the softly melodic tone that Shannon always claims is attempted hypnosis. When she and Tara were kids, that was one of the inside jokes about Rick that kept them laughing and made his endless optimism and stream of life-lesson-inspiration bullshit tolerable. That and the way he kept Mom away from the pills. She’d been in her fourth stint at rehab when she met Rick, and nobody expected this one to work any better than the first three had. It would buy a few weeks maybe, but then Tara would come home and find her mother hadn’t gotten out of bed, or Shannon would open a DVD case and Vicodin tablets would pour out.

Rick, with his relentless What is your intention for this day? mantras, his vegan diet, and his awful taste in music — lyrics were an unfortunate interruption of melody, he always said — connected with Martha Beckley in a way no one else had been able to, and that was enough to make him tolerable to her daughters. Because while Mom’s obvious vulnerability was to medications, not men, there were always plenty of the latter. The construction accident that had claimed her husband’s life, taking from Tara a father that she scarcely remembers, left Martha Beckley both a psychological wreck and a wealthy woman.

Rick has been a good influence for Mom, an absolute relief in some ways, but Tara has never completely trusted him, and she certainly doesn’t like the sound of the statement The truth is always progress. He’s preparing her mother to hear a truth that will be hard to take, and he wants her to believe that it’s progress.

“Why don’t we let the doctor tell us what progress is,” Shannon snaps.

Get him, Shannon, Tara thinks.

Sometimes Mom will joke about her “guard daughters.” Mom thinks of it as a joke, at least, but Shannon and Tara take it literally. When Dad died, their lives became a revolving door of people offering help and people seeking to take advantage. Shannon, the older and the alpha, led most of the battles. Now, voiceless, motionless, helpless, Tara can only hope that her sister redirects that same fury to fight on her behalf. You are a redheaded Doberman, she’d told Shannon once. It was a joke then. Now, though, she needs the guard dog.

Do not listen, Shannon. Do not let anyone convince you that I’m just a body, mindless and soulless in here. Please, oh, please do not let them convince you of that.

Dr. Pine studies the three of them and then says, “I really wish she could blink.”

Tara’s heart drops. Why did he have to start there? Why did he have to start with what she can’t do and not with what she might be able to do — listen, watch, think! And twitch her damn thumb every now and then.

“Based on my reading, that can often take time,” Shannon says. “We’re not even a week into this.”

“Correct. I didn’t say it was cause to lose hope; I simply said that I wish she demonstrated a blink response. She’s so far ahead in so many ways, you know. Breathing without assistance is, on its own, unusual in these circumstances, and encouraging. The question of awareness, however, would be helped by a blink response.” Dr. Pine shrugs. “But it hardly means the battle is lost. Tara’s brain was banged around the inside of her skull, quite literally pulled from its moorings. That caused bruising and swelling; blood vessels were torn and axons stretched. Critical communication regions were damaged. As you know, this is what the induced coma was designed to mitigate — it decreases the amount of work the brain has to do, which keeps the swelling down, and we have a better chance at restoring these processing areas.”

“But it didn’t work,” Rick says, and Tara wishes that it was her middle finger that could twitch instead of her thumb.

“We don’t know if it worked yet,” Shannon corrects, and Dr. Pine nods.

“Yes and yes. This is, of course, going to be a possibly long and certainly painful process. Each coma patient is different. Some make remarkable recoveries and fairly swiftly. Others make less complete recoveries and over much longer periods.” Pause. “Others do not recover at all.”

Shannon looks at Tara, and Tara does her damnedest to call up a sister-to-sister radio signal. She is certain that such a thing exists. There are some people who hear you without words. Shannon has always heard her, and Tara needs her now. Oh, how she needs her now.

“There’s a coma researcher at the university hospital eleven miles from here,” Shannon says. “A doctor named—”

“Michelle Carlisle,” Dr. Pine finishes. “Yes. I know her well. An excellent research doctor.”

It feels like there’s something slightly diminishing in the way he says research doctor, as if he’s indicating the difference between practice and theory with a mild shift in tone.

“I’d like to take Tara to see her,” Shannon says.

Rick says, “I think we need to let Dr. Pine make those decisions, Shannon.”

Shannon doesn’t so much as glance at him. “Of course I want to consult with Dr. Pine while we make these decisions.”

Dr. Pine adjusts his glasses and then closes his notebook. The gestures seem designed to delay the inevitable — he’s going to say there’s no point.

“I’m a fan of Dr. Carlisle’s work,” he says at last.

“It’s another opinion,” Mom says, “and that’s good, but we haven’t heard yours yet.”

Her voice trembles, but Tara is almost painfully proud of her for speaking up.

“Every case is different,” Dr. Pine says again, a hedge that no one, even Tara, wants to hear.

“Scale of one to ten,” Rick says.

“Pardon?”

“On a scale of one to ten, how... how close to dead is she?”

“Rick, you asshole,” Shannon says, whirling on him. “What kind of question is that?”

“A fair one,” he replies, standing firm. “Dr. Pine has treated hundreds of patients in similar conditions. He has an opinion, and I’d like to hear it. We all need to hear it.”

No, we do not, Tara thinks.

Dr. Pine looks at each of them individually. Tara is last. His eyes are on hers when he says, “On a scale of one to ten, if one is the most alive, then physically she’s probably a two or three. She needs assistance, of course, but her body is healthy and it will continue to survive, though obviously not to thrive, for the foreseeable future.”

“And what about the soul?” Rick says, and Shannon rolls her eyes on cue.

“I think he means her mind, Doctor. Is she with us?”

More than any of you want to know, Tara thinks, because they’ve all had moments in front of her that she is sure they wouldn’t have wanted her to witness. Moments when their love was buried beneath fatigue and frustration. She doesn’t blame them for this, but it doesn’t make those moments any less hurtful.

“I’d encourage more tests.”

“But right now? What would you say based on the tests you’ve already done?” Rick presses.

“Eight,” Dr. Pine answers without hesitation. “Based on what we’ve already done.”

Eight. On a scale of one to ten, he is rating Tara’s brain as far closer to dead than alive.

“Then we’ll do more,” Shannon says, but there’s a hitch in her voice.

Everyone’s faith is beginning to waver.

Not fair, Tara thinks. I was just giving a ride to a stranger. Why isn’t he trapped like this instead of me?

But Oltamu is worse off than her, of course. Oltamu is dead; she’s heard them say this.

Maybe the wolf got him.

If she could shake her head, she’d do it just to get rid of that strange recurring image of the wolf with raised hackles and narrowed eyes and pinned-back ears and exposed fangs. That wasn’t real, and Tara can’t afford to have any distractions in a brain that’s already failing to do its job. She’s got tests to take, and if she can’t pass them, she’s going to end up just like Oltamu.

Don’t think that way. Once you start that, you’re done.

A voice whispers that she is already done, that it is time to give up, give in, quit. She fights it off.

Oltamu is dead; Tara Beckley is not. Tara Beckley is alive and not only that, her thumb has twitched.

She thinks again of the cellar in 1804 London Street, where she once stood in the blackness, gasping, cobwebs on her face, tears in her eyes. She remembers that in that moment of panic, she turned her head to face that darkness directly, and she found the faintest glimmer of light. It was a long way off, and she wasn’t sure that she could make it there or if freedom existed beyond it, but she had seen it, and she had tried.

There’s a glimmer of light inside this vacant house too. Among all the dark hallways and unknown corridors and treacherous stairs, there are cracks and gaps. The doors might be locked, the windows sealed and shuttered, but there are always gaps.

Find one and force it open. Then someone will notice. Someone will hear.

Tara retreats into the blackness, imagining the corridor between her brain and her thumb, and she gets to work.