If She Wakes

35

Abby waited on the kill shot. There was no reason for the kid to hold off on it now. Unless he had a sadistic streak, which Abby thought he probably did.

He didn’t take the shot. Instead, he said, “Go ahead and put it in drive.”

Abby didn’t move. Why make it easy on him? If she was going to die either way, she’d make the little prick take the shot in a crowded spot, where people would hear it and respond to the sound, where maybe surveillance cameras would give the police a lead.

“Abby?”

“Do it here,” Abby said. She could feel the weight of the SIG Sauer in her jacket pocket, where she’d jammed it awkwardly, more concerned about concealment than access when she’d walked into the library. An amateur playing a pro’s game.

“No.”

“You’re going to have to,” Abby said, and as she spoke, her eyes drifted higher on the mirror, and she estimated the distance to the curb and the slope that led over the jogging path and down to the boardwalk and that deep-channel harbor. If she could get it in reverse and keep her foot on the gas, she’d at least be able to take this sociopath down with her.

“You think you’re done?” the kid said, sounding surprised. “That’s a disappointing attitude from someone with your resilience.”

It was less than thirty feet to the curb, and once she cleared that, gravity might handle the rest. If the kid fired, the bullet was going to obliterate Abby’s brain and any control she had over the wheel and the gas pedal, but as long as momentum and gravity worked together, the Tahoe might make the water.

“I was thinking we could go back to the house in Tenants Harbor,” the kid said, and his smile brightened when Abby’s eyes returned to him. “Yes, I knew you were there. Beautiful spot. Love that detached studio too. Made me feel creative. The whole place is nice and peaceful, though, much better than this parking lot. And we’ll need to pick up your guns. They’re likely to concern the Realtor.”

When Abby still didn’t move, the kid sighed and said, “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now, get it?”

Abby pulled the gearshift down. She considered reverse, passed it, and put the car into drive.

“How’d you find me?” she asked.

“Bauer’s phone is in the glove box, and I enabled tracking. I did the same to yours, but you were smart enough to get rid of that one. You didn’t check the Tahoe out fully, though. Poor choice, Abby.”

All day and all night, Abby had believed she was off the grid, hidden. In reality, she’d been exposed and at the kid’s mercy.

“Why’d you let me live?” Abby asked, pulling out of the parking lot and turning right, then left, putting them back on Route 1, headed south.

“Priorities. You were there for the taking if I needed to do it, but the phone was the bigger problem, and I didn’t think you had that. Tell me, where was it?”

“Under the driver’s seat. You didn’t check the Chrysler out fully. Poor choice, asshole.”

The kid laughed, and suddenly the pressure of the gun was gone from Abby’s skull. “I like you,” the kid said. “I really do.”

“It’s not mutual.”

“I struggle at first impressions. Give me time.”

“Okay,” Abby said, and then she added, “Dax.”

It was the only card she had to play, the only thing she knew about him that might make him pause, but he took it in stride.

“There aren’t many people left who call me that, but go right ahead. It’s always been my preference. And, Abby? Keep a close eye on your speed, please. You’re going pretty slow, and it would be a bad day to be pulled over.”

“Where am I driving?”

“I told you.”

“We’re really going back to the house in Tenants Harbor?”

“I think we should. We could use a private, peaceful place like that to talk.”

“Not much to talk about. You’ve won.”

“Plenty to talk about, and if you hadn’t polluted Penobscot Bay with that phone, we might already understand each other better. But I’ve always preferred face-to-face conversations, anyhow. We’re going to be together for a while. Gerry is waiting on your call, and you will need to be alive to make that. Good news for you, right?”

“Gerry?”

“That’s the name of the man who answered the other phone. Gerry Connors. Crusty old bastard. I liked him. For a long time, I liked Gerry just fine.”

“He’s the German?”

“No. He’s not. But we’ll get to the German before we’re done, I think. I’m pretty sure we’re going to need to do that.”

He shifted in the backseat, and Abby looked in the mirror again and saw that he’d hooked his right foot over his left knee, as relaxed as a passenger in a chauffeured car. Which, Abby supposed, was exactly what he was now.

“You don’t work for him?”

“I did. But I think the relationship is on the rocks at this point.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Sure you do.” He leaned forward. “You’ve already tested him. You offered him the phone for my life once. You’re going to do the same thing again.”

How did he know this? He’d known Abby’s location; he knew her movements, her calls, her words. How was he so damned omniscient?

“By the way, Abby, where is the phone now?”

She could lie, but what was the point? “My jeans. Front right pocket.”

The kid nodded, satisfied. He leaned back in the seat, slouched and nearly uninterested, although the gun was still pointed at Abby’s back. It would be easy to spin the car and throw off his balance, and Abby thought there was a good chance she could do that and buy enough time to get out, but she couldn’t imagine she’d buy enough time to get out and find cover. The kid would shoot before then. Abby could flip the car, of course, but then she was as likely to die as he was.

“Do you know what’s on it?” the kid asked. “Do you actually have a clue what’s on the phone?”

“No.”

“It’s just a phone?”

Abby hesitated but realized there was no point in holding out. “It’s a fake. Looks like an iPhone, but it isn’t. As far as I can tell, it’s not really a phone at all.”

For the first time, the kid showed real interest. He shifted into the middle of the seat, where he could keep the gun trained on Abby’s head and watch all of her movements, and said, “Pass it back to me, please. I’m trusting that you won’t reach for the gun in your jacket instead. Remember, you’re still alive due to my choices and to yours. Make the right ones.”

Abby took her right hand off the wheel, slid the phone out of her pocket, and passed it back. The kid accepted it and leaned away. For a while, he didn’t so much as glance at the phone; he kept his eyes on Abby, assessing her.

“Keep driving, and you’ll keep living,” he said. “Can you do that? Keep driving?”

“Yes.”

The kid looked away then. Down at the phone. The gun was still in his hand, but his attention was compromised.

Flip the car. Just do it, you coward, flip it and take your chances. You’ll have witnesses and people calling 911 and police cars screaming out here...

She kept driving. She couldn’t will herself to flip the car, even though she’d walked away from worse before. She tried to tell herself it was because of the gun in the kid’s hand.

While Abby drove, the kid alternated between glancing at her and studying the phone. He never lowered the gun, keeping it in his right hand as he turned the phone over carefully in his left. When he finally spoke, it was softly, almost to himself.

“Didn’t expect that.”

Abby didn’t respond. The kid was silent for a moment, and then he looked up and said, “You know who’s on the screen, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“A picture of Tara. Interesting. Any idea why that would be there?”

“No.”

“But you’ve taken a swing at it, I see. It looks like you tried her name, maybe?”

Abby nodded.

“Do you know why that didn’t work?”

“No.”

“Guess.” The kid slouched back against the seat, the phone in his pocket now, all of his attention on Abby. “Show me some promise, Kaplan. Offer a strong theory.”

“It’s all fake.”

“What does that mean?”

“That the picture is pointless, maybe. A smoke screen. It’s not how you unlock the phone.” She glanced in the mirror and saw the kid staring intently at her.

“How do you think the phone is unlocked, then?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Give me another effort. I think you’re close.”

“A fingerprint. A PIN number. I really don’t know.”

“Actually, you’re very close. Not bad at all. It’s biometrics, but it’s not a fingerprint. The camera is real, so I’m betting on facial recognition.”

“Do you think it’s really Tara’s face that has to be recognized, though?” They were on a narrow stretch of the peninsula now, Penobscot Bay looming to their left, the sea gray-green under the massing clouds, a tower of battered lobster traps stacked high on a weathered wharf.

“Smart question,” he said, and his voice softened in a way that made her think he hadn’t considered the possibility before. “Is Tara the key that opens the lock, or is she a ruse? And if she is...” He let the sentence drift, then said, “I think she’s the key. Smart play by Oltamu, if I’m right. Tara Beckley would have been anonymous to anyone who took the phone. She was a stranger. That’s quite brilliant, really. The problem is that she stopped being a stranger that night. But he wasn’t counting on that.”

Abby didn’t speak, but that didn’t stop the kid from talking. It seemed nothing would stop the kid from talking. He liked conversation, and he liked to watch people. He reminded Abby of some demented dentist, poking and prodding, testing nerves, coaxing a reaction.

“I wonder if he told her what he was doing,” the kid mused. “Was she just a face, or does she know something? If he was feeling urgency... maybe Tara knows a lot more than we think.”

“Too bad she’s gone,” Abby said.

“Don’t rush to judgment on that. I received an encouraging update on her condition this morning.”

Fuck, Abby thought, and she was so defeated by that news that she let the speed fall off. The kid leaned forward and tapped her head with the gun.

“Pick it back up. Speed limit or five miles over, no more.”

Abby accelerated to five miles over the limit. She tried to look indifferent to the discussion of Tara, but all she could think about was whether the kid had heard her talking to Shannon, whether he knew what Abby had disclosed to her.

“In fact,” the kid said once he was satisfied with Abby’s driving, “the news about Tara is particularly encouraging after seeing this. She can move her eyes, Abby. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Abby was silent.

“Okay, maybe you’re not a member of Team Tara. Rather coldhearted, but to each her own. As a proud member of Team Tara, though, I’m especially encouraged after seeing the phone, because a lot of facial-recognition systems depend on active eyes. While once she might have been useless, now...”

He let the thought hang unfinished, then said, “Do you get it yet, Abby?”

Abby didn’t want to engage with him again. Each time she did, she felt like the kid was seeing more of her brain, learning her heart. It was through his strange dialogue that he opened you up somehow, laid you bare on the table and decided whether there was anything in you worth keeping alive. If he decided the answer was no, that was the end.

“I think you do, but you’re in a sullen mood. Understandable. It’s been a tough couple of days for you. I’ll explain what you already know, then, since you’re not willing to play along. If I’m right, Abby, then what we have is a lock...” He lifted Oltamu’s phone. “And Tara Beckley, bless her miraculous survivor’s will, is the key.”

He put the phone back into his pocket, braced his gun hand on his knee, and said, “That makes our next move pretty easy, doesn’t it? We’ll need to bring the lock to the key. Usually it would work the other way around, but we’re in very atypical circumstances. Tell you what, Abby — we’re going to detour. Forget the house and turn around. Right up here will work.”

He nudged Abby with the gun. They were approaching the Tenants Harbor village center, which amounted to a general store and the post office on the left, a volunteer fire department up ahead, and the school and the library somewhere off to the right. The street was empty save for one man in a rusted pickup filling plastic gas cans at the general store’s pump. He didn’t even look up when Abby pulled in behind him and then backed out. She didn’t leave the parking lot, though. The clouds had obscured the sun and now the first drops of rain fell, fat and loud as they splattered on the hood.

“Where am I going?” she said.

“Southbound,” the kid answered. “Boston or bust.”

Abby kept her foot on the brake, and this time the gun muzzle found her ribs, a jab with more force.

“Don’t sit here waiting to be noticed. Get on the move.”

Abby eased her foot off the brake. She wasn’t sitting there hoping to be noticed or expecting to find help in this isolated fishing village.

She was thinking about I-95 southbound in the rain. They’d hit the Boston area around rush hour, although every hour seemed like rush hour in Boston. Cars and trucks squeezing you from all sides, tens of thousands of drivers oblivious to the killing power controlled by their hands and feet.

And a sociopath with a gun in her backseat.

This was the first time she’d shared a car with anyone since Luke. Always, she’d made sure to drive alone in the days after that, making any excuse. No excuse offered itself now.

“Let’s go,” the kid said, and Abby moved her foot to the gas.

The Tahoe rolled out of the general store’s parking lot and passed the post office; the North Atlantic was visible briefly to the right, then gone. Abby drove on through the gathering gray as the coastal fog swept in. She told herself this would be fine, this was the simple part, whatever came next was the trouble.

Faster, Abby, Luke had whispered just before the end. Faster.

Or had it been Slow down? It was so damned hard to remember.

36

The hospital room is abuzz with joy, yet Shannon seems distant.

Tara doesn’t understand this at all. Shannon, her champion, the one who would never quit on her, is somehow the most distracted person there. She’s left the room four times now, and each time she returns, the phone in her hand, she seems farther away. She’s stopped looking Tara in the eye and she seems, inexplicably, more concerned now than she was before Dr. Pine and Dr. Carlisle arrived with their good news.

What does she know that I don’t?

Recovery prognosis. That has to be it. Either the doctors have been more honest with Shannon than they’ve been with Mom and Rick or Shannon is doing her own research. Maybe Shannon understands already what Tara fears — it would have been better if she’d failed the tests, because there’s no return to real life ahead of her. Nothing but this awful limbo, only now they all know she’s awake and alert, and that means they feel an even greater burden of responsibility. Endless days of one-way chatter, countless hospital bills, all to sustain an empty existence. This would defeat even Shannon’s willpower.

But the doctors are excited, and the disconnect there is confusing. It’s also something Tara can’t focus on any longer, because Dr. Pine is demanding all of her attention. In his hands he has a plastic board filled with rows of letters, each row a different color. The first row is red, the second yellow, the third blue, then green, then white. At the end of the red row is the phrase end of word. At the end of the yellow row is end of sentence.

This is Tara’s chance to speak.

“It’s going to feel laborious,” Dr. Pine warns, “and you might get tired. It’s more work than people would guess.”

He’s right about that. Even the yes/no answers were draining. But Tara is a marathon runner. She knows how you keep the finish line from invading your thoughts too early.

“Do you have enough energy to give this a try?” Dr. Pine asks.

She flicks her eyes up once.

“Terrific. What I’m going to do is ask you to spell something. You get to pick what it is. You’re in charge now, Tara, do you understand?”

She flicks her eyes up again and feels like she could laugh and cry simultaneously — she’s paralyzed, but he’s telling her that she is in charge, and right now, that doesn’t seem as absurd as it should. The simple possibility of communicating is empowering, almost intoxicatingly so. Her message is within her control. Such power. So easily taken for granted.

“Tell us whatever you want to tell us,” Dr. Pine says, “but I’d suggest a short message to begin. The way we get there is simple — we’re going to spell it out together. That means I’ve got to narrow down the first letter of the word. So I’ll ask whether it’s red or yellow or blue. You will tell me yes or no. Once I have the color, we’ll go through the letters. You’ll tell me yes or no. If I’m trying to go on too long, you’ll tell me that we’re at the end of the word or the end of the sentence.” He studies her. “It’s not easy. But stay patient, and let’s give it a try. Do you have a message ready for your family?”

Does she have a message? What a question. She’s overflowing with messages, drowning in them. There is so much she wants to tell them that the idea of picking just one thing freezes her momentarily, but then she remembers to flick her eyes upward, because he has asked a question and is waiting on the answer. Yes, she has a message.

“Great,” he says. “Now, is the first letter red?”

Two flicks. No.

“Yellow?”

No.

“Blue?”

One flick.

“Is it I?” No. “J?” No. “K?” No. “L?”

One flick. Tara is exhausted, but she has her first letter on the board.

Next letter. Not red, yellow, or blue. Green. Then she gets a break — finally, it’s the first letter in the column. One flick, and she has her second letter on the board: O.

It’s harder than any race she’s ever run. She’s exhausted, and the focus makes her vision gray out at the edges, blurring the columns and letters, but she’s not going to quit now. Not until it’s out there. Her first words, tottering forth into the world like a newborn. She has to deliver them, even if they’re also her last.

They’re all crying now, Mom and Rick and Shannon; even Dr. Pine might have a trace of mist in his eyes, but maybe that’s Tara’s blurring vision.

“Tara,” he says, “you just spoke. And they’ve heard you.”

She wants to cry too. She’s so tired, but she has been heard, and it is remarkable. It feels like all she has ever wanted.

“Do you have another message you want to share with us right now?” Dr. Pine asks.

Two flicks. No. She got out the one that mattered most. She can rest now.

She fades out, grateful for the break, as Dr. Carlisle begins to talk excitedly about computer software that should make this a faster process, and Rick asks if there’s a more holistic approach, which makes Shannon tell him to shut up and let Dr. Carlisle finish, and Mom tells her not to talk like that. The conversation is a chaotic swirl but Tara is not put off by it because they know she’s there now, they know she’s hearing it all. She’s so relaxed, relieved, and so, so tired. The last thing she hears before she drifts off is Dr. Pine excusing himself from the room. That makes her smile. She thinks he’s happy to leave Dr. Carlisle to handle this mess.

“I have to make a phone call,” he says.

Yeah, right, Doc. People have used that excuse around my family before.

The last sound she hears before sleep takes her is the soft click of the door closing behind him.

37

Boone’s phone began to ring while the plane was still descending, and she caught a reproachful look from one of the flight attendants.

“Airplane mode until we’re on the ground, please.”

“Right,” Boone said. She’d never used airplane mode in her life, preferring to have her phone flood with e-mails and messages while they eased down through the clouds. If this habit were truly dangerous, a lot of planes would be tumbling out of the sky, she thought. But why quibble with the flight attendant — Boone’s business cards said Department of Energy, but her expertise wasn’t really in that field.

Instead, she simply silenced the phone while pretending to put it in airplane mode. The caller went to voice mail. Boone looked at the number and didn’t recognize it, but the area code was Boston’s.

It’s a big city, she thought, trying to tamp down the swell of hope. Could be anyone, about anything. Could be the boneheads in the Brighton PD calling to state their unequivocal confidence that Carlos Ramirez was killed in a drug buy gone bad.

Or it could be her one hope: Dr. Pine.

She held the phone in her lap as the plane made what now felt like an endless descent, and as the signal strengthened, the iPhone offered an awkward attempt at transcribing the voice mail. While some of it was clearly a mistake — she doubted the phrase jazz trombone would be involved — the first words were crystal:

Hello, this is Dr. Pine.

Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch. There was hope. Dr. Pine meant there was hope.

The plane finally hit Tampa tarmac, tires shrieking, cabin shuddering. Boone was in the aisle seat, still staring at her phone, and when she didn’t rise instantly at the chime indicating they were now free to take off their seat belts and exit the plane, the passenger beside her cleared his throat loudly and made an impatient gesture toward the aisle, where people were attacking the overhead bins in a frenzy, as if they’d all boarded the last flight out of a failed nation-state. Actually, Boone had been on two of those flights, and they weren’t all that energetic.

She unclipped her seat belt and rose, ducking her five feet ten inches to avoid the overhead bins but never taking the phone from her ear. Now she could hear what the transcription software had missed.

“Hello, this is Dr. Pine, in Boston. I trust you’ll remember me. I just left a pretty jazzed-up room. Tara Beckley is alert. She has what we call locked-in syndrome. This means her ability to move and vocalize her thoughts is lost, at least temporarily, possibly forever, but her mind is intact, and she is aware. I just asked her to spell out a message to the family and she completed this task successfully. She is also capable of answering yes-or-no questions.” He paused, and Boone could sense both his pride in the moment and his conflicted feelings about sharing the information.

“I’m not sure if I would have made this call if not for the mother,” he continued. “She’s making regular updates on social media, broadcasting Tara’s condition to the world. Since it seems the news will not be hard to find, I suppose I will take a chance on telling you. If, as you once suggested, her life may be in danger... well, we’re going to need to take swift action on that. I didn’t know how to keep the mother from sharing this joyful news. Perhaps this is why you should have dealt with the family to begin with. At any rate, this is Tara’s status at the moment. If you have any questions that don’t involve a deeper invasion of my patient’s confidentiality, I would be happy to answer them.”

“You stupid bitch,” Boone said aloud, and though the sentiment was directed at a joyful mother two thousand miles away, her seatmate clearly thought it was for him as he rushed to pull his bag out of the overhead bin. Boone ignored his umbrage while she called Pine back. Answer, damn it. Answer.

She was on the jet bridge being jostled by the crowd when he picked up.

“You’ve got to shut her down,” Boone said without preamble.

“Pardon?”

“Protect that girl. Limit access to her and get the mother to pull that shit off the web.”

“Isn’t this your role?”

“Yes, it is. But I just touched down in Tampa, where I’m not even going to leave the airport, I’ll just get the first flight back north. In the meantime, I need your help.” She felt a rush of humid Florida air as she crossed the jet bridge and entered the terminal, and then the blast of air-conditioning washed it away and brought harsh reality along with the temperature drop. Boone was in the wrong city and she could not fix what had already happened. She said, “It’s too late to pull the news down, isn’t it? People will have gotten notifications as soon as she posted. They’ll be sharing it. So we don’t need to worry about the mother. We just have to limit the people who have access to the girl.”

“This simply isn’t my role,” Dr. Pine said. “You need to get the police to talk with this family if they are—”

“I understand your role, and I understand mine much better than you do. Bringing police off the street and into that hospital will only make things worse. I just need to interview her. That’s all. You say she’s able to communicate.”

“In a limited fashion, yes.”

Boone fought through the crowd to a row of flight monitors and looked for the next departure to Boston. It was a three-hour wait. Not great, but not terrible either. She wouldn’t be able to charter a plane much faster, and until she knew if Tara Beckley had any memory of the event, nobody was going to approve that budget item.

“Does she remember what happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know. That wasn’t today’s priority. Again, this is simply not within the—”

“A lot of the risk depends on whether she has any memory at all of the moments around Oltamu’s death,” Boone said. “You need to find out if she remembers the night.”

“That’s your job!”

“And I’m going to do it. But Doctor? You’re there. She’s there. Her protection and her threat are both still outside the hospital walls. Want to make sure the right one gets there first? Find out if she remembers the night. I don’t need you to interrogate her, I need you to assess whether she has any memory of it. It’s that simple, and it’s that crucial.”

Silence. She thought about waiting him out but decided to press instead. “When you do that, make sure the mother is out of the room. Then call me immediately.”

She hung up on his protest.

Did it matter that Tara Beckley was back? It was surprising — stunning, actually, based on the initial diagnosis — but it wouldn’t mean a damn thing if she couldn’t remember her ride with Amandi Oltamu. If she had any memory of that night, she would be of use. Boone was confident of that because of Oltamu’s last message.

Ask the girl.

Boone walked toward the nearest Delta gate. If she could get on the next flight to Boston, she would ask the girl. And if the girl remembered?

If she woke and remembered, they’d need the best in the game. If she woke and remembered, they’d need Boone.

38

Abby did fine until they reached Portland.

Driving out of Tenants Harbor and back to Rockland, she stayed on winding two-lane country roads that were no problem, and in Rockland she picked up Route 1 heading south, although it would have been faster to take 17 west all the way to Gardiner, where she could jump on the interstate.

She was in no hurry to get on the interstate, though. She was in no hurry, period. She wanted time to think and plan, and if the kid was bothered by her choice, he didn’t voice concern. Didn’t voice anything at all, surprisingly. His focus was undeniable, his eyes and the muzzle of the gun returning to Abby any time she so much as shifted position, but at last, finally, he was silent.

He seemed to want this time to think too, although they were contemplating different goals. Abby wondered if he was any closer to understanding how to reach his.

Traffic was minimal on Route 1, the occasional chain of stoplights in one coastal village or another breaking things up, and the road always had a shoulder if she needed it, a place to pull over and catch her breath and focus her eyes.

They curled through Wiscasset and up the hill where, in the summer, tourists would gather in long lines outside Red’s Eats waiting for lobster rolls, and then they crossed the Kennebec River into Bath, where naval destroyers rested in their berths at the last major shipbuilder in Maine, Bath Iron Works. Once they’d made five-masted schooners here; now they made Zumwalt-class destroyers at four billion dollars a ship.

The hills were lit with fire-bright colors, but clouds kept pushing in, and the rain fell in thin, windswept sheets, flapping off the windshield like laundry on a line. The pavement was wet, but the Tahoe’s tires were good and the car never slipped. Abby was trying to think about the things that mattered — Tara and Shannon Beckley in Boston, the kid with the gun in the backseat, those vivid, real things — and yet her mind drifted time and again to the feel of the tires on the wet road, to the weight of the car pressing on the curves, and to the fear that she would push too far, too fast. The power of a phobia was extraordinary. Yes, I know there’s a gunman right beside me, but I think I just saw a spider in that corner...

It was as if the brain couldn’t help but yield the battlefield when a phobia appeared, no matter how irrational the fear.

Just drive, she told herself, breathing as steadily as she could. Just drive, and keep an eye on that shoulder, and know that at these speeds, nothing that bad can happen. You’re in a big car, cruising slow.

She was through Brunswick and her mind was on the upcoming I-295 spur and its increase in speed and traffic when the kid broke the silence for the first time in nearly an hour.

“We’ll need to lose the Tahoe before we hit civilization.”

For a moment, Abby was ridiculously pleased, as if they were going to take the bus or the train from here while the kid held the gun on her and smiled at the other passengers in his polite but detached fashion. He added, “We should be in my car already, but I had different visions of the way this day was going to play out. An oversight on my part. Oh, well. We’ve got options. Stealing a car is one, but that has its own risks. The other option is at your office, I believe. The sports car. What kind is it?”

A shudder in her chest, cold and sudden, like a bird shaking water from its wings.

“You know the car I’m talking about,” the kid said. “What is it?”

“Hellcat,” Abby managed. Then, clearing her throat: “A Dodge Challenger. Hellcat motor.”

“Nice ride. The title is in Bauer’s name, but the police already searched his office, and I doubt they thought to add that plate to the mix, since the car was still there. It was pretty clear what car of his you stole after you killed him.”

To Abby, the idea of shifting to the Hellcat somehow seemed worse than the lies he was telling.

“I also doubt they’re waiting for you there,” he continued. “Small county with limited resources, and common sense says you’re not going to show up at the office. So we will.”

“Back roads,” Abby blurted.

“Excuse me?” The kid leaned forward, the gun’s chrome cylinders bright in Abby’s peripheral vision.

“I’ll need to take the back roads to get there. Otherwise, we’ll go through the toll. The tollbooth cameras will pick up this plate. They’re wired in with state police.”

She had no idea if this was true, but it sounded good.

It also apparently sounded good to Dax, because he leaned back and said, “Good call, Abby. I knew there was a reason I’d entrusted the driving to you. Take the back roads, then. We’re in no hurry.”

The approach allowed her to avoid the I-295 spur and stay in the thickening but slow-moving traffic, bouncing from side street to side street, grateful for the stoplights and speed limits. It added at least forty minutes to the journey, and in truth they wouldn’t have had to pass through a tollbooth, but Dax evidently wasn’t familiar enough with the area to know that.

Abby’s focus was entirely on keeping control — of the car and of herself — until they reached the office. Then the memory of Hank’s dead face, his head rolling on his broken neck, rose, and she felt sick and shamed. Not only had she been unable to save Hank; she was now chauffeuring around the man who’d killed him.

Dax was sitting tall in the backseat as they approached, head swiveling, scouting the surroundings for any watchers. There were none.

The office of Coastal Claims and Investigations had once been a hair salon, and Hank had kept some of the mirrors and one of the barber’s chairs. He’d insisted the chair was comfortable and too expensive to waste, and he liked to sit in it and have a cigar while he read the paper, which always made him look like a man waiting on a ghost to cut his hair.

The building and its oversize detached garage sat alone in a large gravel parking lot surrounded by empty fields. There was a Dunkin’ Donuts visible just down the road, and a gas station across from that. They were the only possible places for covert surveillance, but Abby agreed with the kid — the police would have seen no purpose for that.

“Drive past,” Dax said.

Abby cruised by, came to the four-way stop with the gas station and the Dunkin’ Donuts, and waited for instructions. The kid was leaning close again, the gun in Abby’s ribs.

“If you saw something out of place, speak now or forever hold a hollow-point in your heart.”

“Looked clear. He has security cameras, but they don’t work. Just a deterrent.”

“I noticed that in my previous visit, but I appreciate your honesty. Okay. Go on back.”

Abby turned around in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot and drove back to the office where she’d spent countless hours as a child talking tires and engines with Hank and her father, the office to which she’d returned when she couldn’t get a job anywhere else.

“Open the garage door,” Dax said.

Abby hit the button and the overhead door rolled up, exposing the low-slung Dodge Challenger with the red paint, black trim, and black hood, looking every bit deserving of the Hellcat name.

Her heartbeat quickened at the sight of it.

“Pull in.”

Abby parked next to the Challenger and put the garage door down, sealing out the daylight. She cut the engine on the Tahoe and the kid said, “Do you have keys to the office?”

“Yeah. But I’ve also got the keys for that car. There’s no need to go inside the office.”

“Actually, there is. We’re going to make a phone call.” He got out of the Tahoe and waved the pistol at Abby in a hurry-up gesture.

Abby got out and led the way across the narrow opening to the office. A few stray raindrops splattered off them, and the parking lot was pockmarked with puddles. A relentless gray day. The cars on the road passed quickly, everyone in a hurry to get home. Still, being there was a risk. Locals knew Hank, and locals knew that no one should be at his office.

“Let’s go,” the kid said, impatient, as if he was thinking the same thing.

Abby opened the side door and stepped in, entering behind a desk facing the windows. Hank’s various collections of oddities filled the room — the barber’s chair, an antique gas pump, a neon Red Sox sign, a gumball machine filled with gumballs that had to be forty years old.

The kid settled into the barber’s chair, swiveled to face Abby, and pointed at the desk. “Pick up the phone.”

“If I use that phone, it’ll be traced back here.”

“The guy you’re calling is going to ask me to trace it, so I think we’re good.”

Abby looked at him, surprised, and Dax nodded. “You’re calling my boss. Terms are going to be straightforward, and you’re going to set them, just as you promised before. You’ll give him Oltamu’s phone if he gives me up. Now, you don’t trust him, of course, so you’ll want a nice public spot. Safety. You’ll want me to come to you, not the other way around. Someplace you’re familiar with, and I won’t be. Someplace with good visual potential, where there might be cops I won’t notice. What sounds good to you?”

Abby thought about it. “The pier at Old Orchard Beach. Wide open, plenty of people, and if I got there first, I’d be able to see everyone coming and going.”

The kid smiled and pointed at Abby approvingly with the pistol. “That’s not bad. It’s even better because you thought of it. Now, where are you going to give him Oltamu’s phone? Can’t be the same place. He’ll want it before he gives me up.”

He said it without sorrow or anger.

This time Abby didn’t have an answer.

“You’re going to put it inside the mailbox of a vacant house in Old Orchard,” Dax said, “and at eleven forty-five tomorrow morning, you’ll text him the address. By noon, I’ll need to walk onto the pier. You’ve got to give him time to pick up the phone. That’s only fair.”

“He’ll think there’s a trap in both places,” Abby said.

“Yes. But he really needs that phone.”

Abby looked at him, sitting there so at ease in the barber’s chair, with the dim light filtering through the blinds and painting him in slats.

“You’re going to kill him too,” she said.

The kid shrugged. “Too early to say.”

“No, it isn’t. If he’s willing to trade you for the phone, you can’t overlook that. It’s personal to you.”

“Nothing is personal. It’s a matter of price point, Abby. I feel like mine is moving north.”

Abby parted her lips to say more, but the kid stopped her.

“Just make the call. The same number you did before.”

Abby reached for the phone, then hesitated. “I don’t know it. It’s written down, but it’s out in the Tahoe.”

She moved for the door as she spoke. If she could get to the garage alone, if she could open the door and get behind the wheel while the kid waited in here, then maybe she could—

“Good news,” the kid said. “I remember it.”

He did, too, reciting it without taking his eyes off Abby. The gun muzzle never wavered. Outside, cars passed in the rain, but there were no lights on inside the office, no indication that anyone was inside. If people gave the place a glance, they’d think nothing was amiss. Maybe they’d mourn Hank Bauer and curse Abby Kaplan for killing him, but they would not slow.

She punched in the last of the digits, and the line hummed, and then rang. Once, twice. Then — “Hello?”

It was the same man. For a moment Abby couldn’t remember what to say or how to begin. Then Dax left the barber’s chair, leaned across the desk, and punched the speakerphone button. He set a digital recorder down beside the phone, then leveled the pistol at Abby’s head.

Abby finally spoke. “I don’t want this thing,” she said to the man Dax had called Gerry. “This phone or camera or whatever. I don’t want it, and I never did. It has nothing to do with me. I don’t understand what it is, so I’m no threat to you once it’s gone. Do you agree?”

The man said, “Yes. That’s a smart choice,” with enthusiasm that bordered on relief.

“But I need him,” Abby said.

“I gave you his name.”

“And you said that it wouldn’t be worth a damn. I need him. Not his name, his address, or even his fucking fingerprints. I want him.”

Dax smiled in the darkness. Approving of the performance. His eyes, though, weren’t on Abby. They were on the phone. He was waiting to hear whether he was considered expendable.

The silence went on for a long time. Abby watched the recorder on the desk count off the seconds of silence. Eleven of them passed before the man spoke.

“How am I supposed to get the phone?”

Dax stepped away, as if he’d heard enough. He returned to the barber’s chair.

Abby followed the script — the phone would be in the mailbox of a vacant house in Old Orchard, and she’d give them fifteen minutes to pick it up and get clear. The kid would need to step onto the pier at noon. Throughout her spiel, the man never interrupted, just listened. Abby could hear the faint scraping of a pen on paper.

“What’s your plan for him?” he said when Abby had fallen silent.

Abby hadn’t anticipated this question. She hesitated, then said, “That’s my business.”

“I need to know. Are you coming for him with police or...”

The answer rose forth easily this time.

“I’ve got something else in mind for him,” Abby said. Dax lifted his head to meet Abby’s eyes. He smiled at her.

“All right,” the man said. “Then if I see a cop, everything’s off.”

“You won’t see one. After what he did, I’m not worried about police. I want him.”

Abby held the kid’s eyes while she said that, but Dax never lost the smile. Instead, he gave a respectful nod.

It was then that Abby realized that she wasn’t lying to the man on the phone. She didn’t want police. She wanted to kill him. Or try.

“So you’ll text the address at eleven forty-five tomorrow morning,” the man said, “and you’d better pick a location that’s close to the pier.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going down there myself. Think I trust you? He’ll get the phone, then I’ll get the phone, and then I’ll send him along to you. So choose your spot carefully.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Abby said. “Just make sure he’s there.”

“He will be.”

The kid left the chair, walked to the desk, and killed the connection. Then he set the phone back in the cradle, picked up the recorder, and put it in his pocket. The smile was still on his face, but it seemed to have been painted on and forgotten.

“Well,” he said. “That’s that. Nicely done, Abby. You’re going to survive all of this, I think. You’re earning your way out.”

Abby didn’t say anything. They stood looking at each other in the office that Hank Bauer had worked out of for thirty-three years, and then the quiet was shattered by a shrill ring. Abby looked at the desk phone, but Dax stepped away and reached into his pocket and withdrew his cell. Before he answered it, he lifted the revolver and put it to his lips, instructing Abby to be silent. Then he said, “Yeah?”

Abby could hear the caller’s voice faintly, but she couldn’t make out most of the words.

Dax said, “Old Orchard is pretty exposed. You couldn’t negotiate a better spot than that?”

The voice on the other end rose a bit this time, and Abby heard the phrase know your role. Dax’s face never changed.

“Right,” he said. Then: “So we’ll pull her away from the pier beforehand. You’re sure that she’ll go?” He listened to the caller. “Why don’t I pick out the house? I can sit on it all night. Make sure it’s clear.”

Pause. Then: “All right. We’ll ride together. I’ll drive.”

Pause. Then: “You’re the boss. I’ll be there. Let’s put an end to this one. This bitch has been too much trouble already.”

Pause. A smile slid back onto his face, and this time it was genuine, and it was cold. “Yes, I did allow it to happen. I realize that. But trust me — I’ll end it, too.” He disconnected and put the phone back in his pocket. “Get the gist, Abby?”

“He’s lying to you.”

Dax nodded. “In his version, he will pick the house. I would expect that’s where you and I are supposed to die. The pier was never ideal. A vacant house, even if you pick it, is much better — provided there are no police. And you know what? I think he believed you on that. He’ll check first, of course, but... he believed you. Do you know why I’m so sure?”

Abby shook her head.

“Because I believed you too,” the kid said. “I don’t think jail is the fit you want for me anymore. You want me to die.”

He seemed to wait for a response. Abby said, “Doesn’t matter either way, does it?”

“Actually, it does. You’re finally growing into someone I understand.”

He walked around the desk and opened the top left-hand drawer. The Challenger keys rested beside a spare set for the Tahoe and one for the office.

“Grab the winners,” he said.

Abby picked up the keys. The kid faced her, gun extended, and smiled. “Now we really ride,” he said. “But keep the race-car-driver instincts in check, okay? No flashing lights in the rearview mirror tonight.”

Abby moved woodenly out of the office, across the rain-swept parking lot, and into the garage. The Hellcat sat before her, looking smug, as if it had always known Abby would return.

This time, Dax took the passenger seat and not the back. Abby slid behind the wheel. The interior lights glowed bright, then dimmed down once she closed the driver’s door. She felt an immediate claustrophobia when the door was shut. When she turned the engine over, the 6.2-liter engine’s growl filled the garage and put a low vibration through the base of her spine. The dash lights glowed red, her mouth went dry, and her pulse trembled.

Beside her, the kid laughed. “This is a beast, isn’t it?”

Abby put the garage door up and backed out. In reverse, the car only hinted at its power. Once they were outside, though, when she shifted into drive and tapped the gas, she could feel it immediately. The car seemed to leap rather than accelerate. It was always crouched back on those beautiful Pirelli tires, just begging for the chance to spin off a few layers of rubber. At low idle, the engine offered both a throaty growl and a higher, impatient tone, a whine like a beehive.

“I’ll stick to the back roads,” Abby said. “Then take Route One down to Old Orchard. That’s the safest way.”

“We’re not going to Old Orchard.”

Abby looked at him. He was positioned at an angle, the gun resting on his leg, finger not far from the trigger.

“I thought that was the plan,” Abby said. “The pier and the house, all that.”

“That’s for Gerry. Something for him to chew on while I got a sense of the world through his eyes. The actual plan is a little different. We’ve got a few stops to make along the way. Starting with Boston. I have to determine whether our girl Tara is really the key to the lock.”

Boston. I-95 in the rain. All that traffic. Some of the bees left their hive in the engine and took up buzzing residence in Abby’s brain. They brought gray light with them, clouding her vision, and their stingers injected adrenaline that rode through her veins, made her heart rate quicken and her throat tighten and her fingertips tingle.

Dax studied her and said, “While you’re thinking of the chessboard, Abby, you might add this to it: People who see me are likely to die. You’ve probably noticed that trend by now. I’ll get to Tara one way or the other, but you can help pick the path.”

“Okay. Back roads are still smarter, though. If anyone is aware of this car, we’ll be—”

“I’m not worried about the car. I’m worried about time. Take the interstate. It’s faster, and speed’s going to count for us tonight. You’re just the woman for the job. I need to stay on schedule, and time’s wasting, so let’s go a little faster.”

Faster, Luke’s voice agreed from somewhere behind the droning bees.

Abby pulled out of the parking lot and drove into the darkening night.

39

The day of joy has given way to a contentious night. A showdown is brewing, and Tara doesn’t understand it. Two people are determined to test her memory, and each one is determined to do it alone.

Tara imagines that Dr. Pine is used to winning these battles. He is also probably not used to having them with the likes of Shannon.

Mom and Rick conceded without argument. The doctor said it was time to see what Tara remembers about her accident, and the doctor must be right. The doctor said this should happen in private, with less “external stimuli,” and, again, the doctor must be right. It’s his business, after all. Mom and Rick are the type of people who trust doctors.

Shannon, though, is not having it.

“I want to be the one who asks her what happened,” she insists, and she waves Rick’s objection off before he can gather steam. “I agree with you that there shouldn’t be a crowd in the room. So it will just be me.”

“We don’t have family members conduct medical tests,” Dr. Pine says acidly.

“Dr. Carlisle encouraged us to engage with her. She said, in fact, that in most cases of locked-in syndrome, it is a loved one who detects progress. Not a doctor.”

Ding — put a point on the board for Shannon.

“My colleague is right,” Dr. Pine says, “but I’m not talking about simple engagement, I’m talking about specific memory testing, and with all due respect, I am the primary—”

“This could be traumatic for her,” Shannon cuts in. “I think she’d feel less trauma if she were with someone she knows. You have no idea what she’s been through in life, what fears she has, what triggers. I do. If she remembers the night, she’ll share it with me.”

Mom tries a timid “Shannon, let the doctor—”

“No!”

Even Tara is taken aback by the fierceness of Shannon’s response. She’s always been tenacious, but there’s something different here, a humming tension under her skin. Shannon is afraid.

But why? What scares her about leaving Tara alone with a doctor now?

“I’m simply going to have to insist—” Dr. Pine begins, but Shannon cuts him off again.

“Ask her.”

“What?”

“Ask Tara. You have a patient who can communicate her own wishes, Doctor. Let’s respect those.”

They stare at each other like gunslingers, and then Dr. Pine takes a deep breath and says, “Very well. We should know her opinion. I can’t argue with that.”

He seems disappointed and also to be speaking largely to himself. As with Shannon, there’s something different about Dr. Pine’s demeanor, something beneath the surface, but Tara doesn’t know him well enough to guess what it is.

As he reaches for the alphabet board, Shannon turns and focuses her fierce green eyes on Tara. She doesn’t say a word, but she doesn’t have to. Tara feels like she’s nine years old again, being quizzed by a child protective services worker about Mom’s drug use. Shannon would fix that stare on her, and Tara would say what Shannon had prepared her to say. Things were under control. That was Shannon’s mantra. Things were always under control. Even when things were absolute chaos, Tara believed that her big sister would wrestle it all back to order.

Dr. Pine swivels his stool to face Tara, slides closer to the bed, and extends the alphabet board. He’s moving distractedly, his usual focus lost. There is definitely something else on his mind. What’s going on here?

“You don’t need the board yet,” Shannon says. “Can’t we just ask her yes or no?”

A good question, and while he seems disgusted that she’s right, he nods grudgingly. “I’ll ask her. You can watch. There is no deceit here, Ms. Beckley.”

He focuses on Tara. “Tara, are you willing to communicate your memories of the accident with me?”

She’s a ghost again; she’s the thing on the other side of the Ouija board being summoned into the real world. Are you willing to communicate? When she and Shannon were kids, they would sneak up to the attic with a Ouija board and candles and play this game, and inevitably Tara would grow scared, and Shannon would never admit that she was moving the planchette. Mostly, though, Shannon wouldn’t use those moments to scare her. The planchette’s messages were always positive. Yes, the board would say, Mom will get better. Yes, Daddy can hear you when you talk to him at night, and he loves you. No, they will not break up this family.

You have to believe it, Shannon would say, because what reason would a ghost have to lie?

Tara, now the half-ghost, has no reason to lie. She flicks her eyes up. Yes, she is willing to communicate her memories of the accident.

“Thank you,” Dr. Pine says. “Now, Tara, are you willing to be alone with me when—”

“Don’t phrase it like that,” Shannon snaps. “Ask her if she wants me to stay.”

Dr. Pine turns and regards Shannon as if he’s considering new uses for his scalpel, but he submits. “Fine. Tara — do you need your sister present for this?”

She doesn’t need Shannon present for this. Why would she? But she remembers those looks from her big sister across the years, and she remembers the messages the Ouija board carried. She’d known that Shannon was the force that moved the planchette across the board, but she never minded because that force was love. A fierce, protective love that carried Tara through the worst of her life.

She flicks her eyes up once. Yes — she needs her sister to be present for this.

Dr. Pine seems to deflate, and Shannon offers him a tight smile. When he turns away, she gives Tara a wink and a thumbs-up.

“Maybe we all stay, then,” Rick says, and Dr. Pine and Shannon answer in unison, both the word and the tone:

“No.”

“I think we want to limit the stimuli and the pressure,” Dr. Pine says, gentler. “But we can ask Tara again if you’d like.”

“I trust your judgment,” Rick says, clearly more for Shannon’s ears than Dr. Pine’s. “We can let you do your job.”

Shannon doesn’t react. Mom squeezes Tara’s hand as she and Rick pass by, and then it is just the three of them: Tara, Dr. Pine on his stool beside the bed, holding the alphabet board, and Shannon standing at the foot of the bed, arms folded across her chest, eyes hard on Tara’s.

“Okay,” Dr. Pine says. “Let’s just begin with some basics, Tara. Yes-or-no questions to start. If there is any trouble with the process or if at any point you feel you wish to stop, I want you to give me three looks upward. Do you—”

He stops abruptly because Tara’s thumb twitches. This time, he sees it. Shannon does too. They both stare at her hand, then at each other, and then Dr. Pine says, “Tara, can you do that again?”

Not yet, she thinks, but soon. I’m getting closer. Because she knows what triggered it this time, just like with the clicking of the pen — old muscle memory, a delayed response to the thumbs-up Shannon gave her. Tara wanted to return the gesture, and she just did. Or came as close as she could, at least. There’s a lag, but there’s something opening too, a door between brain and body cracking open, and in time she may be able to push it wider.

She flicks her eyes up twice. No, she can’t do it again. She wants to say, Keep trying me, though, but there’s no way to do that.

“Did you feel it?” Dr. Pine asks.

One flick.

Dr. Pine reaches for a notepad and jots something down. When he turns back, he’s frustrated again, running a hand over his face as if to refocus. He’s conflicted in some way. Why?

“Okay, back to the memory test. Yes-or-no questions to start. Tara, do you remember anything about the night of your accident?”

One flick.

“Do you remember the man in your car?”

One flick. Oltamu, the doctor from Black Lake. Yes, she remembers.

“Do you remember the moment of the accident?”

One flick.

Dr. Pine wets his lips and shifts forward. The stool slides beneath him, moving soundlessly on the tile, bringing him closer to the bed. He lifts the alphabet board, then hesitates and lowers it again. He glances at Shannon, who is motionless, still standing with folded arms. She hasn’t interrupted him yet, a surprise to Tara, so surely a shock to him.

“Tara,” he says, “was it an accident?”

This sets Shannon in motion. She takes a step forward, staring at him, and says, “Why would you ask that—”

He lifts a palm. “Let her answer. It’s important. Tara — was it an accident?”

She’s not sure. There’s no way to respond I don’t know, though. She’s supposed to answer yes or no, period, but what she remembers of the night doesn’t fit neatly into either of those categories. Those memories are fragments laced with unease and an unidentifiable fear. She remembers the doctor looking behind them, over and over, remembers the way he wanted her to secure the phone, remembers the sound of an engine and terror of... of something, no clarity here, just an overwhelming memory of her fight-or-flight response, and she’d tried to flee.

Then there was blackness. The long dark.

Tara recalls Oltamu pressing that phone into her hand, and she thinks of the engine that roared, no lights, black on black, the vehicle seeming as much a creature of the night as the wolf. A predator.

She flicks her eyes up twice. No, it was not an accident.

This is a showstopper. Dr. Pine doesn’t ask another question, doesn’t really respond. Shannon, who had been advancing toward him as if to physically prevent him from asking anything, is frozen in midstride, halfway around the bed, almost like Tara was halfway around the CRV before the impact — the blackness — came. She’s staring down at Tara, but when she finally speaks, the question is for Dr. Pine.

“Why did you ask that?”

“Memory assessment.”

“Bullshit,” Shannon says.

He turns to her and the two of them gaze at each other in a silence so loaded that it seems to have texture, like an electric fence.

“What do you know?” Shannon asks. “And who told you?”

He doesn’t answer. Shannon lets her gunslinger gaze linger, then pivots away, leans close to the bed, and says, “Tara, did Dr. Oltamu take pictures of you?”

“Hang on,” Dr. Pine says, but Tara responds immediately, one flick. Yes, there were pictures, the strange and awkward pictures, but how in the world does her sister know this?

“You need to step back and let me do my job,” Dr. Pine says, rising from his stool as if to block Tara from Shannon’s line of sight. Shannon fires off another question.

“Was there something strange about Oltamu’s phone? Something different?”

The camera grid. It wasn’t an iPhone camera. Not a normal one, at least.

Tara gives one flick: Yes. How does Shannon know this? How is she inside of Tara’s brain, moving through the dark corridors of her memories?

Dr. Pine is now attempting to physically get between them, determined to keep Shannon from making eye contact with Tara, but Shannon evades him, prowling to the other side of the bed like a cougar stalking prey.

“Tara, do you think—”

“Stop this,” Dr. Pine says, nearly hissing the words. “We’re not interrogating her, that’s not my role or yours, and that is not going to—”

Shannon speaks over him. “Tara, do you think someone killed Oltamu because of that phone?”

Because of the phone? Tara has no idea. Shannon now has access to something more than Tara’s memories. Shannon is capable of passing through the locked doors and joining Tara in her lonely house of memories, and she can also move outside it. Tara can’t match that; she’s bound to the cellar, with no idea what is happening anywhere else. But the question Shannon posed makes sense to her, though she’s never considered it in such precise terms.

Because of the phone? Maybe. Yes, maybe it was all about the phone.

She gives one flick, signaling affirmation, even though she’s not sure it’s correct. She knows it’s possible, at least, and the recognition fills her with hot anger — she is trapped in her own body, paralyzed and mute, all because of a phone?

Dr. Pine doesn’t lose his focus on Tara even while he’s trying to shut Shannon up, and he sees Tara’s eyes move, understands her answer and the weight of it. He and Shannon both do. Tara’s doing more than passing awareness tests now; she’s describing a murder. There is a long silence, and then Dr. Pine speaks in a soft voice.

“I think it’s my turn to ask who has been talking to you, Ms. Beckley.”

“I can’t tell you that,” Shannon says.

“You’re going to have to.”

“No.” Shannon shakes her head, and Tara sees the fear lurking beneath her frustration. Shannon is scared, and Shannon is never scared. Both she and Dr. Pine seem to know more than Tara, which is infuriating, and when Dr. Pine suggests to Shannon that they step into the hall to speak in private, Tara is so outraged that she wants to scream.

No sound comes — but her thumb twitches again.

I’m building a connection, she thinks. Restoring one, at least. That cracked-open cellar door is swinging a little wider, scraping across the damp concrete, the rusty hinges yielding, as if pushed by a relentless wind that is capable of rising in sudden swift gusts.

For the first time, Tara understands the source of that wind: her own willpower. Her willpower is not gone yet, and she is certain it is capable of gathering strength. She will continue to widen the crack, keep pushing until she can slip through the gap.

“You want us to stay,” Shannon says to Tara, and though it isn’t really a question, Tara flicks her eyes up gratefully.

Dr. Pine is reluctant, but Shannon is firm. “If we talk, we talk in front of her. She’s got to be scared in so many ways, scared of things we can’t even begin to understand. We can’t build more silence around her.”

Thank you, sis. Thank you, thank you.

The doctor sighs, rubs his eyes, then nods once and sits heavily on the stool.

“I don’t know much,” he says. “That’s the truth. I have been warned that Tara might have been a witness to something more than an accident. That’s all.” He looks up at Shannon. “You know it too.”

She nods.

“Who told you?” he asks.

Hesitation. Shannon doesn’t want to give up her source. She looks at Tara, considering, and Dr. Pine apparently takes her silence as a refusal to cooperate, because he gives up.

“You don’t need to tell me,” he says. “I probably don’t even want to know.”

“She’s in danger,” Shannon says, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. “I have been told that she is in danger. I don’t know how to help her. Who to call.”

“I can help you with that,” Dr. Pine says.

“How?”

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and studies Tara. When he speaks, his eyes are on her, not Shannon.

“There is an investigator with the Department of Energy who will be very interested to know that Tara has memories of the night. All of this talk about the phone and the pictures — I know nothing about that. But you’re going to need someone to trust. Tara, I’m asking you this, doctor to patient — do you want to meet with the investigator?”

Department of Energy? This shouldn’t make sense, and yet it touches off a faint chord of familiarity, something that Tara has either forgotten or never really paid attention to, something that once seemed trivial and was quickly shuffled off into the mists of memory.

Tara flicks her eyes up once: Yes, let’s meet the investigator.

Dr. Pine says, “Okay.” Then, turning to Shannon, he repeats, this time as a question, “Okay?”

Shannon looks from Tara to the doctor and nods, then stops and grabs his arm as he starts to rise.

“Hang on. What does he look like?”

“What?”

“The investigator. How old is he?”

Dr. Pine stares at her, bewildered. “The investigator is a woman. And she is probably around forty.”

Shannon releases his arm, but he looks at her with narrowed eyes. “Would you like to be more candid about who’s spoken to you?”

Shannon considers. “Is your response going to be any different if we talk about that now? Or are you going to make the same call?”

He acknowledges the point with a slight nod. “I’ll make the call,” he says. “So I might as well do it sooner than later.”

When Shannon doesn’t object, he leaves the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He forgets to take his alphabet board. Shannon looks at it, then looks at Tara, an unspoken question in her eyes.

Tara flicks her eyes up once.

Yes. Let’s chat.

40

The clouds that had begun massing along the coast during the day swept in off the North Atlantic and collided with a warm front as darkness fell, and then the night was illuminated with flickering tongues of lightning as the pressure systems fought for dominance.

Abby drove southbound on I-95, trapped between and beneath the battling weather fronts. Thunder cracked and boomed and rolled to the west, and from the east, the winds continued to buffet the car.

She didn’t notice the impact of the wind as much as she had before, though, when she was sitting up high in the Tahoe. She was low now, riding close to the pavement, only a few inches of steel separating her from the asphalt that was buzzing by at seventy-five miles per hour. She had the Challenger in cruise control so she could ignore the speed and focus on keeping her breathing and heart rate steady. She was grateful for the darkness, for the shrinking of the horizon, the tightening of the world.

The lightning, though, was a problem.

With each flash, the highway lit up bold and bright. With each flash, cars that were nothing but taillights in the darkness were suddenly given shape. With each flash, her breathing became harder to control.

The lightning was worse than a high sun and a clear sky. When the road came at her in flashes, unpredictable and unexpected, suddenly she couldn’t work saliva into her mouth; her heart was thundering, and the breathing exercises weren’t doing a damn thing. Her head felt high and light and dizzy. Just concentrate on the tires and feel the road, she told herself, but then a brilliant flash of lightning would paint the road white, the world would shudder with thunder, and dizziness drove through her brain and into her spine.

She was sweating, cool beads on a hot forehead, her shirt clinging damply to her back. Dax watched with curiosity but in silence. As Abby’s sweating grew more noticeable and her breathing more ragged, Abby was sure he would speak, but then two things happened nearly at once: The rain began to fall in torrents, clattering off the windshield as loud as coins on a winning slot-machine pull, and the kid’s phone gave a shrill chirp. Not a ring, an alert tone.

Abby had no interest in the phone. She was tunnel-vision-focused on the road, hands tight on the wheel — too tight; like an amateur, not a pro — her head forward, her hand shaking as she set the wipers to high. Even at that rate, they didn’t seem to achieve much, merely adding a slashing motion across her field of vision, which was already graying out at the edges. The Pirellis held the road, but she was certain that they couldn’t continue to, not in this weather. There was too much torque to the Hellcat. If she made a mistake, she’d start to skid.

But that was fine, she told herself, because she could steer out of a skid, she’d done it successfully thousands of times before.

Not always.

You just turned into it, that was all, the only requirement — turn back into it. Counterintuitive, but it worked. You regained equilibrium if you could only teach yourself to go against instinct and trust the physics. The world rewarded you for trusting physics. In time, that trust became instinct.

You’ll get that instinct back. You’ll get it back, and tonight’s a good run, a good trial, because there’s nothing to worry about out here, it’s just a little rain, that’s all.

As if to contradict her, the sheet lightning flashed, revealing what waited ahead — two semis, one in the left lane on its way around the slower-moving one in the right lane, passing even in this weather. There was a truck coming up behind Abby, too, one that looked to be loaded with logs from the north woods. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Why so much traffic? Why couldn’t everyone get off the road and home to bed and let Abby drive to Boston with a murderer in peace?

Dax’s face was lit by the display of his phone, his attention pulled away from Abby, responding to whatever that chirp had signified. Suddenly, voices filled the car.

It took Abby a moment to recognize Shannon Beckley’s voice. There were several in the mix, male and female, but hers rang a clarion note that the others lacked. Shannon was asking about methods for her sister to communicate easier and faster.

Abby chanced a look in the kid’s direction. He lifted his eyes immediately. He seemed preternaturally aware of Abby’s movements. The gun was in his left hand, on his lap, pointed at Abby. It was always pointed at Abby.

“Checking on our girl’s progress,” he said cheerfully. “Sounds like it was a big day, and you and I have had our share of distractions, haven’t we? I’ll need to get caught up.”

Shannon Beckley’s voice faded, others overtaking it, but they were all discussing the same thing — Tara was awake. Tara could talk.

He bugged the hospital, Abby thought. The realization was almost enough to pull her attention away from the dizzying, sweat-inducing fear of the drive.

Almost.

It didn’t last, though, because she had a car on her left now, neither trying to pass nor, evidently, aware that passing was the point in the left lane. Instead, the car just rode alongside, penning her in. She looked over and swore under her breath.

“Everything all right, Abby?”

Abby didn’t answer. She accelerated, thinking that she’d pass on the right and get out in front and then maybe this moron would get the idea and shift back into the right lane. As long as she kept some clear space, some avenue of escape, she would be fine. All the way to Boston, she’d be fine.

But these idiots, calm behind their steering wheels, were sealing her in.

As she accelerated, the semi in front slowed and flashed its headlights, signaling that the truck trying to pass was clear to shift back into the right lane. The truck driver in the left lane, like the driver of the car next to Abby, didn’t take the opportunity or the hint. Maybe it was the weather, this pounding rain, scaring them both off from making the simple lane shift. Maybe they were distracted. Maybe they were morons who never should have been issued driver’s licenses.

None of that mattered. She was trapped.

She took a harsh breath and sat up straight, then leaned forward quickly, hunching over as if caught by a stomach cramp, because she was suddenly sure that she couldn’t get air into her lungs. Or her brain. Her blood was oxygen-free, thickening and slowing, her heart thundering to try to make up for it but pushing nothing but sludge through her veins. Her vision dimmed and then came back and then went again.

The kid said, “Abby,” in a warning voice, but it barely penetrated the fog.

Going to crash. I am going to crash and I’m going to take one of these poor people out with me, because there is nowhere to go, when I black out I am going to hit them or they are going to hit me and then we’ll be skidding together through the night on the wet road, glass breaking and blood flowing and screams, someone will be screaming, but there is nothing I can do to stop it, because there is no...

She saw the gap in the guardrail of the median just ahead. It looked freshly cut, probably the result of an accident, some other night when they’d pulled dead bodies out of mangled cars. It was small, a narrow opening, not meant for access, but...

“He left the road at ninety, that’s all there is to say,” her father sang.

Faster, Luke said.

Abby pounded the accelerator; the Hellcat roared and the Pirellis spun, hunting for traction, then caught and hammered the car forward. As she shifted in front of the car on her left side, a horn blew, piercingly loud, but by then Abby was out in front and angling farther left, the guardrail looming, the gap in it no more than fifteen feet long, maybe just ten, an almost impossibly narrow target to slip through at this speed and in this rain...

She made it without creasing either side of the car. Shot the gap and pounded the brakes and brought the car to a fishtailing stop in the grassy median between northbound and southbound lanes, plowing a furrow of damp sod beneath the tires.

She fell back against the seat, gasping and half smiling, almost oblivious to the horns and the rain, aware of nothing but the victory of having gotten off the road without harming anyone.

Safe, she thought, and only then did she realize the muzzle of the gun was pressed against the side of her head.

“What are you doing?” Dax said.

“I need to breathe.”

“What?”

“I just need to—”

“If you get the cops called, a lot of people are dying tonight. You’ll be the first but not the last. You better back this thing up and get moving right now or I promise, Abby, you’re going to—”

“I just need to breathe!” Abby screamed.

The kid pulled the gun away and stared at her. Abby shoved the gearshift into park and leaned her head back against the seat and sucked in air as sweat trickled down her face in cool rivulets. The sweat was good; the cooling was good; everything needed to cool down, it had gotten too hot in here, it had gotten dangerously hot and—

Faster. Faster! Slow down. Slow down!

It had almost gone very badly.

“You’re freaking out,” Dax said. “What’s going on? Scared of the gun, Abby? You’ve done so well with it. I can’t put it away. I don’t think we have the necessary trust for that.”

Abby didn’t answer. Just closed her eyes and concentrated on that slow, sweet cooling. Tried to listen to the rain, hoping it would drown out Luke’s voice. Faster, Luke said, then Slow down! he screamed.

Shut up, Abby thought. Please, baby, just shut up for one night so I can do this thing. So I can see morning. Then come back and talk all you want and I’ll listen forever, no matter how miserable it is, but for this one night, just please... be quiet. Let me drive.

“So this is why Abby Kaplan came back to Maine,” Dax said. “You’re not hiding from media. You really can’t do it anymore, can you? You lost the nerve.”

Abby still didn’t speak.

“What a sorry shame,” Dax said. “End of a good run for you, wasn’t it? But that’s of no interest to me. And the longer we sit here, the more likely it is that a cop joins us.” He shifted around in the darkness and leaned forward and suddenly Abby’s hands, which were still on the steering wheel, were bound tight and zipped together by a plastic cord that bit into her skin.

“Get out and trade seats with me. Do it quick and do it calm, or I will shoot. There is no more patience.”

Abby fumbled with the door handle, struggling with her bound wrists, then stepped out into the pouring rain. She didn’t mind it. The rain was cold, and the rain was clean.

The kid pushed open the passenger door, then slid across into the driver’s seat, and he lifted the gun and pointed it at Abby’s face as she stood there in the downpour.

“Your choice,” he said. “Die there and leave the sweet Beckley sisters to me, or get back in and ride. Good news — you don’t have to drive anymore, Anxious Abby.”

I got one thousand dollars, Hank Bauer had said on a humid July night at a New Hampshire speedway, that says that little girl kicks all their asses and wins this thing.

Abby was fifteen years old and couldn’t drive legally on a highway, but she won that night on the track. Hank gave her half the money, and they’d piled into his truck with her father and driven into the night with the windows down and Green Day loud on the radio, and Abby’s future was firm.

The world was hers that night, and she understood that all she needed was four good tires to take it.

She looked up the highway now, through the rain and into the blur of oncoming headlights, and then she walked around the car, past those beautiful Pirellis, and toward the passenger seat. The door was open, waiting, rain streaming down the interior panel. Lightning strobed, illuminating the car, and Abby saw the kid’s cell phone. It was on the floor mat on the passenger side. He’d dropped it, maybe when he’d slid into the driver’s seat or maybe when Abby had shot the gap into the median.

And I made the gap too. Not all bad. It was reaction, not strategy, but I still made it.

“Get in,” Dax said, and he cocked the revolver.

Chill rain streamed down Abby’s spine in ribbons. She stood there for just a second longer, just enough to make sure that the kid’s focus was on her face. Then she made a show of tumbling awkwardly into the passenger seat and fell forward, almost across the gearshift, as she landed.

Dax’s attention stayed on her. He did not follow the motion of Abby’s right foot, did not see her lower her shoe onto the phone and slide it backward, did not hear it clatter up and over the door frame and out into the rain.

“Get off me!” he snapped.

Abby leaned back, said, “Sorry,” then turned her bound wrists toward the door, grasped the handle, and slammed it shut. She moved quickly, but she got a last glimpse of the phone sitting there in the rain.

Did it matter? Probably not. For a moment, though, Abby had taken one thing from him. He wouldn’t be able to play Shannon Beckley’s voice for a little while. It wasn’t much — wasn’t anything, maybe — but it felt like a victory. She’d taken something from him.

And I made the gap. Thought I couldn’t do it, thought we were going to die in the rain, maybe die with other people too, innocent strangers, all of us burning in the rain because I couldn’t hold myself together. But that didn’t happen. I saw the gap, and I took it.

I fucking took it.

The kid leaned toward her, shoved the muzzle of the revolver under her chin, and forced her head up. His face was shadowed by the black baseball cap, but you could still see the smile.

“Pretty-boy Luke London did a real number on you, didn’t he?”

Abby went for him then. She lunged forward, trying to snap her forehead off the kid’s nose, not fearing the gun any longer, scarcely aware of it.

When he hit her behind the ear with the barrel, Abby sagged and her vision went black, but she could still hear the rain.

Then he hit her again, and this time the sound of the rain went away too.

41

Thirty thousand feet in the sky, Boone sat in the bulkhead seat and turned her phone over and over in her hands, compulsively.

Check signal. Nothing. Of course nothing. Even cheating on airplane mode wouldn’t help at this altitude.

She turned the phone, turned it, turned it... and checked again.

No signal.

She was on Wi-Fi, but it wouldn’t let calls through.

Land this bitch already. The thought rose with such intensity that she almost shouted it aloud. Containing frustration was always a struggle for her. Once more, she was passive, Detroit all over again, sitting at the gate and waiting, waiting, waiting. Back then, unknown to her, Amandi Oltamu was already dead, and Boone had been reduced to waiting, clueless.

Tara Beckley wasn’t dead, though. She was coming back. But did she know a single thing that might help?

Boone’s phone vibrated, and for a glorious second, she was sure that the signal had somehow pierced the clouds.

Wrong. It was just an e-mail slipping through on the wireless network. She knew that it wouldn’t matter, but she checked it anyhow, needing something to fill her time. When she saw the sender, she caught her breath.

It was Pine.

Boone nearly jammed a thumb in her hurry to respond.

She hit Send, leaned back in the seat, and stared out the window. Lightning flashed below them, entombed in the clouds, giving an otherworldly quality to the night sky.

Shannon Beckley had lots of questions about Oltamu’s phone? Why? If Tara Beckley remembered the phone, that was one thing. But her sister? Who had been in contact with her sister? And if someone had told her sister so much about the situation that she understood things at the level Pine seemed to suspect, then there was a much bigger question: How was she still alive?

The intercom gave a burst of static, and Boone let out a relieved breath, anticipating the message — they were beginning their descent into Boston’s Logan Airport, please fasten seat belts and prepare for landing.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you might have noticed the lightning outside your windows,” the pilot began, and Boone tensed.

No, no, do not tell me we are being delayed or diverted, not tonight...

“What you’re seeing,” the pilot continued, “is part of a series of supercell thunderstorms that are moving north-northeast at the moment, and they’re delaying operations at Boston Logan until that weather clears.”

“No!” Boone said aloud, drawing stares from the flight attendants in front of her. She shook her head, closed her eyes, and clamped her molars together as the pilot kept babbling.

“We’re going to be in a holding pattern for just a bit, hopefully not more than fifteen to twenty minutes,” he said. “I’ll let you know as soon as we get word from the folks at Logan that we are cleared for descent. We don’t expect it to be a long wait, so just sit back, relax, and enjoy. The good news is that all the turbulence is below us, and the storm seems to be moving fast.”

42

Blue.

Not I. Not J. Yes, K. One flick.

Tara is exhausted, but Shannon is pressing, and Tara won’t quit on her. She’s answered every question Shannon has thrown at her so far, and she’s surprised at how the task is sharpening her memory, bringing images back with clarity and vividness. The growing paranoia she’d felt with Oltamu has more precision now, and she remembers a specific question he’d asked, about whether everyone took the same route from dinner to the auditorium. She’d thought he was worried about being on time, but a man worried about his destination didn’t keep looking over his shoulder. He was worried about what was behind him, which meant that the place he’d come from might matter, and she remembers this name and is trying to spell it out, quite literally, for Shannon.

Red? No. Two flicks.

“Yellow?” Shannon asks, and then interrupts herself, a feat only Shannon could achieve. “Hang on, we don’t need to waste your time. It’s E, isn’t it? It’s Black Lake?”

Tara gives one relieved upward flick of the eyes. You win Double Jeopardy! Tara thinks, and she wants to laugh hysterically. She’s never been so tired in her life. All she’s doing is moving her eyes, and yet it drains her more than any marathon ever has.

“He came from Black Lake,” Shannon repeats, and now she has her phone out, tapping into it, probably searching for the town. “Black Lake, New York? Or there’s... a ghost town in Idaho. I hope he didn’t come from there. Was it New York?”

Tara doesn’t know, so she doesn’t move her eyes. Shannon waits, then says, “Do you even know where it was?”

Two fatigued flicks.

“Okay.” Shannon lowers the phone. “Did he take any other pictures?”

One flick.

“Of you?”

Two flicks.

“Someone else.”

Tara hesitates, then looks upward.

“We’re going to have to spell, aren’t we?”

One flick.

And so they spell.

Yellow — H. Green — O. Red — B.

“Hobbs?” Shannon guesses.

Two flicks, more angry than exhausted now; just let her finish.

“Red?”

No. Finally, they get there. Green — O.

“Hobo?” Shannon says, voice heavy with disbelief. “He took pictures of a hobo?”

She looks at Tara as if she’s crazy, as if this is the first clear misfiring of memory, and Tara wants nothing more than the power to reach out and strangle her. Her thumb twitches against her palm, but Shannon doesn’t notice, because Shannon is watching only her eyes. This is the only window out. For now. Tara has to stay calm, stay patient, and keep working at it. It’s 1804 London Street all over again — Tara trapped inside, Shannon waiting to rescue her from the outside, and the two of them working to widen the gap in the steel doors that separate them.

“A hobo,” Shannon says, taking a breath. “Can you explain more than that?”

One flick.

“Spell it. Red line?”

One flick.

“A?”

Thank goodness, yes, it’s finally the first column and first letter. A is a common letter, isn’t it? How in the hell is Tara never drawing an A in this thing? She’s got two of them in her own damned name!

“Red line?” Shannon asks, and again, this is a yes, but Tara has to go all the way to the end of the row now to get to end of word, and halfway through she realizes that she didn’t need the stupid A anyhow — stick to nouns and verbs, damn it!

So over they begin, but good news — it’s red again! Not A, not B, not C, but D, D for Damn it, I want my voice back.

Green — O. Yellow — G. Thankfully, Shannon doesn’t make her indicate end of word again, but guesses. “A dog? That’s not what you mean. Tell me that’s not what you mean?”

If I could kick you, Tara thinks, you’d have bruises for weeks. What in the hell am I supposed to do with that phrasing? “A dog? That’s not what you mean. Tell me that’s not what you mean?” How do you answer that with a yes or a no?

So she doesn’t answer. She waits. She’s swell at waiting. She’s becoming the best there ever was in the game of waiting, a natural, a pure talent.

Shannon gathers herself, finally understanding that her typical flurry of speech is not the way to go about this, and says, “Did Oltamu really take pictures of a dog named Hobo?”

She says it in the tone of voice in which you might ask someone to tell you the details of her alien abduction. Tara gives her one flick of the eyes, a flick with attitude.

Yes, it was a dog named Hobo, and kiss my sweet ass if you think I’m crazy.

Shannon sets the alphabet board down flat on her lap and stares at Tara as if she can’t decide what to ask next. Tara wants to hold her arms up in a giant V for victory. She has achieved the impossible — not in coming back from a coma, not even in proving she’s awake despite being paralyzed. This is a truly heroic feat: she has rendered Shannon Beckley speechless.

“You’re serious. Do you think the dog matters, or am I going on a wild...” She stops herself, holds a hand up, and walks her words back. Communication with Tara favors the short-winded, which doesn’t play to Shannon’s strengths.

“Do you think it matters that he took pictures of a dog?”

Tara doesn’t know, so she doesn’t answer.

“You’re not sure?” Shannon says, beginning to understand what a blank stare means.

One flick.

“Did he take any other pictures after the dog?”

Two flicks.

“Did he tell you anything about the phone?”

Tara wishes she could think of a way to communicate the odd camera and its unique grid, but she can’t. Or she doesn’t think she can, at least, but then Shannon does what only a sister could possibly do: she seems to slip inside Tara’s mind.

“Was it a real phone?”

Two flicks.

Dr. Pine enters almost soundlessly.

“Can’t you knock?” Shannon snaps, startled.

He takes a step forward, brow furrowed, hands clasped behind his back, as if he would have been content to remain a spectator.

“Pictures of a dog?” he says.

“That’s none of your business,” Shannon says. Still not trusting him. Tara understands this but she disagrees with it. Shannon hasn’t trusted many people in her life, having been burned too many times, but for all of Shannon’s force of personality and will, she doesn’t have the most intuitive reads on people. Extroverts are too busy projecting their opinions and personalities to intuit anything submerged about anyone in their audience, in Tara’s opinion. Tara, the introvert — and has there ever been a more undeniable introvert than the current model of Tara Beckley? She’s the literal embodiment of the concept now. She does not see herself as superior to her sister in most ways, but she is more intuitive. Tara doesn’t distrust Dr. Pine. The very tics that make Shannon nervous are the reasons Tara trusts him. He’s genuinely concerned about her, and he’s genuinely concerned about his ethical dilemma in this situation.

“Where’s your investigator?” Shannon asks.

“En route. I couldn’t speak to her, but she e-mailed from the plane. She’ll be landing soon and coming directly here.” He pauses. “Would you like to wait until she is here before you tell me what you’ve been asking Tara?”

“Yes.”

“Fair enough.” He paces, hands still behind his back. Outside the window, lightning strobes in dark clouds, and the wind throws raindrops at the glass like handfuls of pebbles.

“Your parents have gone to the hotel to take a short rest,” he says. “I didn’t object. If you wish to bring them back, though...”

“No,” Shannon says, firm, and Dr. Pine seems unsurprised. He looks at Tara, and this time she answers without needing to hear the question voiced. Two flicks: no, he does not need to summon her parents. Mom is an exhausted mess, and Rick will battle with Shannon. Tara needs to save her energy for the Department of Energy — ha! Why can’t anyone hear these jokes? — and whatever information this mysterious investigator will have. Tara wants to hear answers, and that will mean providing answers, a task that she now knows is utterly exhausting.

“You could call the local police,” Dr. Pine suggests. “But you haven’t done that yet. Why not?”

Shannon looks like she doesn’t want to answer, but she says, “I’m not sure. I guess because I haven’t had time to figure out what I would even tell them. And I’ve been instructed... I’ve been warned about trusting the wrong people.”

“Warned by whom?” Pine asks gently.

Shannon shakes her head and gives a little laugh. Dr. Pine seems to read it as frustration, but it’s more than that — Shannon is unsure of herself. Tara knows. Tara is just as curious as Dr. Pine, though. Where is Shannon’s information coming from?

“Who have you told about the Department of Energy investigator?” Shannon asks Dr. Pine.

“Just you.”

“Really?” Those dubious Doberman eyes fixed on him.

“Really.”

Shannon takes a breath and leans back. “All this for a phone,” she says softly. “What in the hell was on that phone?”

Even if they were using the alphabet board, Tara would have no answer for this one.

Outside, lightning strobes again, but it is dimmer, distant. The storm is clearing. Tara hopes she can take some confidence from the symbol, but she doesn’t believe that. There are too many things she doesn’t know, and most of them are happening outside of these walls.

43

Abby fumbled for her harness. She’d been knocked out, but her helmet was still on, and she was upright, trapped in the seat. That meant she needed to release the harness, but where was the pit crew? She needed them. Needed help.

Something wrong with her arm too. Broken, probably, and it felt like her hands were smashed together. Why couldn’t she separate them?

She opened her eyes and stared at her hands as if they were unfamiliar, and only when a lightning flash lit the yellow cord that bound her wrists together did she remember where she was and that there was nobody in the pit coming for her.

But she was too upright, just like if she’d been harnessed into the seat. Why was that?

A cord was around her neck, too, that was why. She was bound against the headrest, the cord just slack enough to let her breathe but not to let her slump sideways or forward. The kid had positioned her well. He’d also put his black baseball cap on Abby’s head, pulled low, shading her face. That was what Abby had confused for the helmet. To any passerby who glanced in the car, she was just a woman in a baseball cap, dozing in the dark.

Dax Blackwell looked over. “Morning, Abby.”

When Abby turned, the cord chiseled across her throat. She winced, then refocused.

It was the first time she’d ever seen the kid without the baseball cap, and even in the dark, his hair was a startlingly bright blond. It was cropped close to his skull, moon-white and luminescent in the glow from the dash lights.

“Nice touch with the hat,” Abby said. Her voice came out in a dry croak.

“I thought it would help. You had a little blood in your hair. Sorry about that.”

The road rolled beneath them, the lights of Boston up ahead. They were still on I-95, cruising by the northern suburbs. The hospital wasn’t far away.

“You’re lucky you’re necessary,” the kid said. “I’d have very much enjoyed killing you back there, but... priorities. Nice trick with the phone too. I almost missed it.”

He took one hand off the wheel and held the phone up.

Abby tried not to show her defeat. It had been the only win, the only thing she could take from the evil prick.

“Interesting developments in Tara’s room,” the kid said. “Investigator en route, it seems. Department of Energy, no less. Do you understand that?”

“No.” Speaking made Abby’s skull ache. She closed her eyes and waited out the pain.

“You’ve done some research on our friend Amandi Oltamu,” the kid said. “Where is Black Lake? Seemed to confuse Shannon, and I don’t know anything about it either.”

“I don’t know.”

“Tara thinks Oltamu came from Black Lake, but my information said he came from Ohio. There’s no Black Lake in—”

“Yes, there is.” Abby’s eyes opened. Suddenly she understood Oltamu. Something about him, at least. And why the Department of Energy would be interested in him.

“Siri disagrees with you,” Dax said. “Surely you don’t mean to tell me Siri is confused? She’s a voice of reason in a mad world.”

“Black Lake is not a town. Or even a lake.”

The kid looked at her, interested now. “What is it?”

Abby stared straight ahead, watching taillights pull away. Dax was keeping the Challenger pinned at the speed limit, refusing to tempt police.

“It’s the nickname for a place where they run cars through performance and safety tests,” she said. “It’s fifty acres of blacktop, and from the sky it looks like dark water — that’s where the nickname comes from. You can ask a car to do anything in that space. A high-end car, tuned right, can be a lot of fun out there.”

It could also be instructional, of course. The Black Lake was all about pushing limits. Sometimes you exceeded them. That was the nature of testing limits, of playing games on the edge of the deep end of the pool. Sooner or later, you slipped into it.

“Oltamu wasn’t in the car business,” Dax said, and Abby didn’t argue, but she believed Oltamu might very well have been in the car business. He was the battery man — and every automaker on the planet was working on electric vehicles now. But if Tara was right, and Oltamu had just come from Black Lake in East Liberty, Ohio, then he’d been watching performance tests. You didn’t go to the Black Lake to test a battery-charging station. You went to the Black Lake to push a car to its performance limits — or beyond.

Dax shifted lanes. Despite the late hour and the storm, traffic was thick. Welcome to Boston. Traffic was always thick.

“We’ve had to reroute, and I’ve been tempted to drive faster, but if I got pulled over, I’d have a hard time explaining you, wouldn’t I?” He laughed, a sound of boyish delight. “It’s a waste of the car, though.”

He put on the turn signal and then shifted again, gliding left to right in a move that would attract no attention, and yet Abby could feel that he was still learning the throttle of the Hellcat, the bracing amount of torque that even a light touch on the accelerator brought. It was a waste of the car with him behind the wheel. He had no idea how to handle it, how far it could be pushed. Or how quickly control could be lost.

I made that gap in the guardrail, Abby thought dully. That was one hell of a move. Splitting traffic with the angle and acceleration perfect, then the hard brake and turn without misjudging the tires and rolling, putting it through a gap most people couldn’t hit at forty, let alone ninety, and doing it all on wet pavement... dumb, yes, and a product of panic, but... not easy to do.

Strange and sad, how that still pleased her. It was nothing to be proud of — she’d been melting down, her nerves no longer merely fraying but collapsing like downed power lines, sparking flashes of failure.

But it was also the first time she’d taken anything remotely resembling a test of the old instinct, the old muscle memory.

The old Abby.

For a moment, the woman she’d been had surfaced again. For a moment, she’d seen nothing but that narrow target, had anticipated the speed of the cars crowding in, felt the tires exploring the pavement in a way that was as intimate as skin on skin. She’d executed the intended maneuver perfectly and in circumstances where inches and fractions of seconds mattered.

There weren’t many people alive who could have pulled that off without causing a deadly pileup, and she’d landed without even scratching the paint.

And now you’re riding shotgun with a killer, tied to the seat, and you didn’t even succeed in taking his phone from him. Some victory, Abby.

Victories, though, like phobias, weren’t always rational. Sometimes they were very internal, invisible to the outside world. Matters of willpower or control were still wins. The short-term impact didn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that you’d held on in the face of adversity. A win was a win, as they said. No matter how small, no matter how private.

She watched the traffic thicken as Dax rolled southeast, and she wondered how she’d feel with the wheel in her hands again. The same old panic? Or would it be diminished by the knowledge that when things went to hell, she’d maintained enough of her old brain and body to execute the escape maneuver? Tough to call it an escape maneuver when there’d been no real external threat, nothing except the irrational dread that soaked her brain like chloroform, but the brain didn’t operate strictly on facts; its fuel was emotion.

This much, Abby understood very well.

The exit for the hospital was fast approaching, maybe five miles away. She wondered what the kid’s plan was and if he had any concern, any fear. He projected nothing but confidence. He was to killing what Abby had once been to driving — a natural pairing, in total harmony with his craft.

But killing Tara Beckley wasn’t his goal. Not tonight, at least. He had to get Oltamu’s phone to her, and she would need to be alive for that. How he intended to walk through a hospital and achieve this without attracting attention, Abby couldn’t imagine.

She figured she’d be a part of it, though. There was a reason she was still alive, and it wasn’t his compassion.

Dax shifted right again, decelerated, and exited. Abby didn’t follow this choice; if time was now an issue, then he shouldn’t abandon the interstate this far north. Then they were moving into a residential stretch, high-dollar homes on tree-lined streets. Driving farther from the hospital.

The kid pulled into a parking space on the street, tucking in behind a behemoth Lincoln Navigator, and studied the road. His eyes were on the houses, not the cars, but then he paused and checked the mirrors as well. Satisfied by whatever he saw or didn’t see, he killed the engine.

“Time to start earning your keep,” he said, turning to Abby. The boyish features seemed to fade, and his hard eyes dominated his face, eyes that belonged to a much older man.

“What are we doing?”

“You’ll be sitting right there. But you’ll be watching too.” He picked up his phone from the console, tapped the screen, and then set it back down. The screen displayed a live video image of the interior of the car. Abby twisted her head, searching for the camera, the cord rubbing into her throat. She didn’t see a camera, but when she looked back, she realized the video was in motion. When she stopped, it stopped.

Dax smiled. “I’ll need my hat back,” he said.

He took the hat off Abby’s head, and the video display followed the jostling motion. He settled it back on his own head, then turned to Abby, and Abby’s face appeared on the cell phone display, a clear, high-definition image. She saw there was dried blood crusted in her blond hair from where he’d hit her with the gun.

“I need to confess something,” the kid said. His voice seemed to echo, but it was really coming from the phone’s speaker. “Covert audio recording is illegal here in Massachusetts. This is a two-party-consent state.”

He sighed, and the sigh echoed on the phone like a distant gust of wind.

“I’ve had to make my peace with that,” he said, “because my uncle was a big fan of recording things. Knowledge is power, right? The more eyes and ears one has, the more one knows. I think my uncle would’ve liked this hat. I never got the chance to show it to him, but...” He shrugged. “I’m confident of his opinion.”

He moved his hand to the ignition and started the engine again.

“You’re about to meet the man who’s responsible for the unfortunate trouble Hank Bauer encountered,” Dax said, pulling away from the curb.

“You killed him,” Abby said. “I don’t care who paid you.”

“Sure you do.”

At an intersection, they paused at a stop sign, then they continued along the dark street and pulled into a driveway that was flanked by ornate brick pillars, a gate between them. Dax put the window down, punched four buttons on a keypad mounted in one pillar, and the gates parted. He drove through. The gates closed behind them and locked with a pneumatic hiss followed by a clang.

He pulled down the drive, parked, and cut the engine.

“Just sit tight,” he said. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but at least you’ll have a view.”

With that, he stepped out of the car, slammed the driver’s door, and locked the car with the key fob, engaging the alarm. If Abby tried to smash the window, it was going to be loud, and the kid would have plenty of time to get outside. There was a slim chance that a neighbor might come to investigate, but probably not. Car alarms were viewed as nuisances, not cries for help. Unless Abby freed herself from the passenger seat, she wasn’t going to achieve anything by breaking a window.

Dax walked around the back of the house and disappeared from sight. Abby’s eyes went to the cell phone, and now she could see from Dax’s point of view: a light came on in the back of the house. Dax went to knock, but the door opened before he could make contact, and a short, wiry man with graying hair and a nose crooked from a bad break stood in front of him, gun in hand.

For an instant, Abby thought this could be good news — she didn’t care who this guy was; anyone who shot the kid was on her team.

But the man didn’t shoot. He lowered the gun and said, “What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“My job,” Dax said. If he was in any way troubled by the gun, he didn’t show it.

“Your job? You don’t come to my fucking home unless I tell you to! That’s not your—”

Something moved at the edge of the frame and then came into the center. Dax was holding up Oltamu’s phone. “This was my job, Gerry.”

The man stared at the phone. He leaned forward, then pulled back, suspicious and confused.

“How’d you get it? Kaplan said—”

“Kaplan’s trying to bluff her way back to life,” Dax said. “Let me in. I don’t want to stand outside and talk about this shit.”

Gerry hesitated, then nodded, and stepped aside. Abby followed the bouncing path of the camera as the kid walked through a sunroom with a marble fireplace, opened another door, and stepped into a kitchen that was filled with expanses of white cabinets and stainless-steel appliances.

“You alone?” Dax asked.

“Yeah. And remember, the questions are—”

“The questions are yours to ask, right. I didn’t think that one could do much harm.”

Gerry paced back into the frame. His body language was tense, like a fighter’s before the bell. The kid worked for him, but he didn’t seem to have his employer’s trust.

Maybe that was because Gerry had just arranged to kill him.

“How in the hell did you get that?” he asked.

“Kaplan’s been bullshitting you the whole time. She never had it. The salvage-yard guy gave it to his brother. It was in his pawnshop. I bought it for ninety bucks. I assume I’ll be reimbursed?”

“Let me see it.”

Dax passed it over. Gerry set his gun down on the counter to study the phone.

Unwise, Abby thought, watching in the car. She was captivated by the scene playing out on the phone’s screen, but it was time to worry about more important things — she was literally captive within the car, and that wasn’t going to change unless she could free her neck.

She reached for the cord with her clumsy, bound hands. There was just barely enough room between skin and cord to get a grasp, and when she did, the cord had no give. She leaned forward, straining painfully, and twisted until she got her hands over her shoulder. It was an awkward movement that put pressure on her rotator cuff as well as her throat, but she was able to feel the way the cord had been looped around the headrest and knotted. The knot was a pro’s work; Abby wasn’t going to be able to untie it from this angle, working blind and unable to separate her hands.

There was, however, another option. She was tied to the headrest, which was a perfectly effective approach when the headrest was in place, but the headrest could be removed. It would be awkward, and it would be painful, but if she could lift the headrest out, the cord would slide off it.

She arched her back, wincing at the pain, stretched her shoulders until the tendons howled in protest, and began to hunt for the headrest release with her fingers.

44

When he’d seen the kid arrive at his back door — his back door, he didn’t even walk up the front steps like a normal human — Gerry was tempted to shoot him. It had been years since he’d killed anyone, but he intended to do it in the next twelve hours regardless, and the sight of Dax seemed to portend trouble. Gerry didn’t want to kill him on his own property and in a quiet neighborhood with an unsilenced weapon unless it was necessary, though.

Then he saw the phone, and killing Dax Blackwell became less of a concern. The phone was the whole point, and somehow the kid already had it.

Standing in his kitchen, Gerry was no longer thinking about the arrangements he’d made in Old Orchard or the suppressed handgun that was under his driver’s seat, the one that already had a bullet chambered for Dax. The phone had all his attention.

It was the right phone — no signal, a clone, and with a lock screen featuring a picture of the girl. Everything about this was good news except for the last.

“How do you unlock it?” Gerry said.

“Either with facial recognition or a code name.” Dax leaned laconically against the counter. “But does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!”

“Why?”

Gerry lifted his head and stared at the kid. He was standing there in the shadows, slouching and wearing his hoodie and the dumb friggin’ baseball cap, same as always.

“If you can’t open it, then it’s not worth a shit.”

“Were you hired to open it?” Dax said. “Or just provide it to your client? My understanding was that he wouldn’t even want you to wonder too much about it.”

Gerry’s angry rebuttal died on his lips. It was a fair point. He could do more harm than good if he even told the German about the lock screen. Let the German deal with it.

“I do think it could change your price point, perhaps,” the kid said.

“Change my price point.”

“Sure. The girl is alive. If your client wants us to bring that phone to her, I can do it. We can unlock it, which I’d assume is your client’s desire. But that’s above and beyond the initial job, isn’t it? Value added should not be free.” He shrugged. “At least, not in my opinion. But it’s your show.”

Damn right it was Gerry’s show. However, the kid was spot-on. The German was inevitably going to want to get the phone to the girl if this was indeed a biometric lock, and Gerry wasn’t doing that shit for free. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to do it at all, though. This job had been sliding sideways from the beginning.

“Maybe he wants this thing to disappear, period,” Gerry said, turning the phone over on the counter. It was a perfect replica of an iPhone. “That’s all he wanted for Oltamu.”

“He wanted Oltamu dead. The phone, he wanted in his possession. If he’d planned on having it destroyed, he could have asked you to do it. But he didn’t.”

Gerry had made it his business not to ask questions that he didn’t need the answers to, but the German had wanted the phone, and Gerry was curious just what was on this thing that made it so valuable. Already, the German had been willing to go to two million for the job. Gerry hadn’t even had to push to get that much. How much could he get for an unlocked version?

“Call him and ask,” Dax said, as if Gerry had voiced the question aloud.

Gerry looked from the phone to the gun and then up at the kid. He couldn’t see his eyes because of the shadow from the black baseball cap, but his posture was the same as it always was, the slouch of a bored delinquent. In this way, he was different from both his uncle, who had a military bearing, and his father, who was always in a state of physical calm but had presence, a means of commanding attention and respect without any alpha-male posturing. The kid would need to grow into that or learn the hard way that he came across as more sullen than sinister. Hard men would look him over and feel like they could test him. The more that happened, the more likely it was that one of them would succeed, and Dax Blackwell would be in a coffin before he was twenty.

His mind and his hands worked fast, though. He’d killed Carlos and walked away clean; he’d eliminated a pair of difficulties in Maine; he’d called Kaplan’s bluff and found the phone. While Gerry had been scrambling to deal with Kaplan, Dax had been solving problems. Maybe he was right. Maybe this was worth making a call.

“We’d have to be sure we can get to her,” Gerry said.

“I can.”

“Yeah? How? She’s in intensive care, she’s got doctors and nurses and family all over her, and there are cameras everywhere in a hospital.”

“I’ll get to her,” Dax said, unfazed. “I look the part. A visiting friend from good old Hammel College. I don’t need to stay long — I can just pass through, say a prayer, take a picture.”

Gerry grinned. The kid could probably play that role just fine. He was young enough to get away with it. “Okay,” Gerry said, straightening. “I’ll make the call. But keep your mouth shut. He’s going to need to think I’m alone.”

“Sure.”

It was two in the morning in Germany, but Gerry figured he’d get an answer. He wasn’t even sure if his man was still in Germany. He was supposed to be in the States by tomorrow, so maybe he was on a plane or already on the ground.

Wherever he was, he answered the phone. They used an end-to-end encryption app that allowed for texting, voice, and video calls. Virtually untraceable, and the messages vanished. The German also used a voice-distortion device, though Gerry had never wasted time on that.

“Do not tell me there is trouble,” the German said. Through the distortion, he sounded cartoonish, a Bond villain.

“None on my end,” Gerry said. “Maybe some on yours.”

“Explain.”

Gerry did. Told him that Oltamu had put a facial-recognition lock on the phone before he died, and the face wasn’t his but the girl’s. He could get to the girl, he said, or he could hand the device off and let other people deal with it. He didn’t care; his work was done.

There was some swearing, and then some silence. Gerry was beginning to think he’d made a mistake by allowing the kid to goad him into this when the German said, “Do you know it will work? She is in a coma. Will it work with someone who is in a coma?”

Gerry looked at Dax, who nodded, pointed at his eyes with two fingers, then moved his fingers up and down.

“It should,” Gerry said. “She’s got eye movement.”

Dax gave him a thumbs-up. The kid was so damned cocky. He was also awfully good. In fact, after Dax’s work on this job, Gerry’s faith in him was renewed. The kid was more than a beta-Blackwell; he was the real deal.

And to think, Gerry had planned to kill him. What a waste that would have been.

“If it can be done safely,” the German said, “then do it. Otherwise, back off.”

“Fine,” Gerry said. “And how much is that worth to you?”

Another pause. Then: “Half.”

Half was a million. If Dax Blackwell could walk into that hospital, hold the phone up to Tara Beckley’s face, and unlock it, Gerry was three million dollars richer.

“Fine,” he said again, but he saw Dax shake his head and gesture upward with his thumb. He wanted Gerry to go higher. The balls on this kid. Gerry didn’t respond, just glared at him, and Dax shrugged and jammed his hands back into the pockets of his hoodie.

“Has to happen fast,” the German said.

“It will. Or if it isn’t doable, I’ll back off.”

“We meet at the same place and same time, no matter what. Don’t risk anything that compromises that. I won’t wait.”

“You won’t have to.”

They disconnected. Gerry put his phone in his pocket, looked at Dax Blackwell, and smiled. He was feeling warm toward the kid, and why not? He’d just made Gerry an extra million bucks. “It’s on,” he said. “Think you can get to Tara Beckley without trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t push it.”

“Of course not. What about Kaplan? She’s still out there. She doesn’t have the phone, but she’s still a threat. Somebody ought to meet her in Old Orchard, right?”

“Ought to be you. You’re the one she’s seen, the one she wants.”

“It’s personal to her, huh?”

Gerry was still riding the buzz of an extra million, and problems seemed to be solving themselves, so he nodded. “Yeah, her bullshit was that she’d trade the phone for you.”

Dax said, “I don’t recall you mentioning that.”

Gerry hesitated, realizing that he hadn’t brought that up before, then shrugged. “Wouldn’t have mattered much. We’d have taken her tomorrow and gotten the phone. Now it’s even easier. Cleaner.”

“Because we have the phone.” Dax was watching him intently.

“Right,” Gerry said. “So tomorrow, it can be quick. No need to waste time. Just clip her and move on.”

“Where will you be?”

Gerry frowned. “Taking the phone in.”

“Where?”

“The hell business is that of yours?”

“Abby Kaplan wants to see you. Maybe we should both be there.”

No, Abby Kaplan wanted to see the kid. The kid would go there and kill her. Or possibly he’d go there and fail, but Gerry had trouble believing that. If the bitch actually appeared, the kid would handle her. And if Abby Kaplan was somehow leagues better than anticipated and had arranged for cops all over the pier, well, Gerry still wasn’t overly concerned about that. Dax didn’t seem like the talking-to-cops type, and if it turned out he was, Gerry had silenced people in prisons before.

“Let me handle my shit,” Gerry said, “and you handle yours.”

He didn’t like the way the kid was looking at him. It was that clinical, under-the-microscope stare, penetrating and yet distant, the look that his father and uncle wore so naturally. The look they’d given those hard boys in Belfast all those years ago.

As if reading his thoughts, Dax said, “I’ve cleaned it all up pretty well so far. Things had the potential to get out of hand, and now they’re back in my control. Do you still think my father and uncle would have done it better?”

“They couldn’t have done it any better than this,” Gerry said, “and there were two of them.”

Dax’s face split into a wide smile beneath the shadow cast by his baseball cap.

“You’re right,” he said. “Since there’s just me, I’ve got to be twice as good, don’t I? Nobody in my corner. They were good, but there were two of them. I’m solo. I have to reach their level and then push beyond it.”

“You’re on your way,” Gerry told him, unsettled by the conversation, by the way the kid happily measured himself against dead men. He nodded at Oltamu’s cloned phone, which was still sitting on the counter. “But you got some work left to do. Let’s not waste time.”

“They liked you,” Dax said, as if he hadn’t heard the instruction. “They didn’t like many people either. But my father once told me that there were only two things I could trust. One of them was Gerry Connors.”

This was oddly flattering. Gerry had looked out for the kid. Giving him chances, bringing him along in the business. And now, he’d decided to let him live. He’d extend their relationship; grow it, even. It wasn’t too late for that.

“Glad to hear I earned their trust,” Gerry said. “Who was the second man?”

“What?”

“You said he told you to put your trust in two things.”

“Oh.” Dax laughed. “I confused you, sorry. The second one wasn’t a person.”

Gerry cocked his head and frowned. A question was rising to his lips when Dax Blackwell said, “It was this,” and then there was a clap and a spark of light that seemed to come from within the kid’s black hoodie, and suddenly Gerry was down on the floor, hot blood pumping out of his stomach. He put a hand to the wound and let out a high moan that brought the taste of blood into his throat and mouth. He looked at the counter and saw his gun sitting there, out of reach.

Dax took a black revolver with gleaming chrome cylinders out of his hoodie pocket and waved it in the air like a taunt. Or a reminder.

It was this. Gerry saw that gun and remembered where he’d seen it before: Jack Blackwell’s hand.

Of course, he thought, the pain not yet rising, the panic not rising, nothing rising but the taste of blood and the sense of inevitability. Of course Jack would have told the boy to trust the gun above all else.

Dax knelt beside him and brought his face down low. This close, Gerry could finally see his eyes beneath the shadows of the baseball cap. They were a light blue, and the expression in them could almost pass for compassionate. Gerry needed some compassion now. Just a trace of it. He needed the kid to understand that they could make this right. They could get Gerry patched up, could save his life, and if that happened, he would never turn the kid in, would never try to get revenge for this. He’d never even speak of it. If the kid just gave him life, there would be no end to Gerry’s kindness.

He opened his mouth to speak, to convey his promise, but all that left his lips was a warm stream of blood.

Dax Blackwell looked down at him sadly, and then he leaned even closer, his eyes still on Gerry’s, his gaze unblinking.

“I want you to know,” he said, “how much I’ve appreciated the opportunities.”

When Gerry opened his mouth to beg for his life, Dax shoved the gun between his lips and pulled the trigger once more.

Gerry Connors died on his kitchen floor, three thousand miles and thirty years from the place where he’d first met the Blackwell family.