“We’re not stopping now,” Agent Carter says. “This is a lot bigger than this room, Ms. Beckley. This is more crucial to more people than you can possibly fathom.”
“I’m not asking anyone to stop, just to give me a minute alone with my sister,” Shannon says, and if she’s intimidated by Carter, she doesn’t show it. In fact, her bearing seems oddly helped by the strange hat, all that flat black beneath the lighter silver thread that draws the eye above the brim.
“You’ve had plenty of time to discuss this,” Agent Carter says. “Tara just gave me consent in front of her doctor. I will not waste her time or put her at risk, but I will also not be interrupted. If you’d like to—”
“Hang on.” This is from Dr. Pine, and Shannon and Agent Carter seem surprised that he is still in the room. He and Shannon have clashed from the start, but he’s looking at her intently, seeing the insistence in her eyes, and when he looks back at Tara, he takes a protective step in her direction.
“This isn’t your jurisdiction,” he says, pointing at Agent Carter with his right index finger. “And it isn’t your decision.” He points at Shannon with his left. “This is my hospital, Tara is my patient, and she and I will make these decisions together. Tara gave consent to an interview, yes, Agent Carter. She also has the right to have a few private words with her sister beforehand.”
“I’m not trying to stop you,” Shannon says again. “But the private words…I need them.” She looks at Tara, trying to convey how badly she needs these words, but the look is unnecessary, because Tara knows the hat.
Dr. Pine pivots, looks at Tara. “It’s your call, Tara. I’m going to ask you two yes-or-no questions. First: Would you like a private word with your sister at this point?”
One flick. Yes. Very much so. Because that hat…
“I’m going to—” Agent Carter starts, but Dr. Pine cuts her off with a wave of his hand.
“Second: Once you’ve concluded that exchange with Shannon, are you willing to continue the interview with Agent Carter?”
One flick.
Andrea Carter’s chest rises and falls with a frustrated breath. She’s been overruled by the locked-in girl, and she doesn’t like that at all. Tara finds a strange pleasure in this. She can’t move or speak, but she can control the room. It’s a sense of power she hasn’t felt in a long time.
“Make it quick, Ms. Beckley,” Agent Carter snaps. “There’s a lot riding on this.”
Commands like this usually don’t sit well with Shannon, but tonight she barely seems to register the tone, just gives a half nod and keeps her eyes straight ahead. As Dr. Pine passes by Shannon on his way out, she whispers, “Thank you, Doc.” He almost stumbles, he’s so surprised.
“Of course,” he answers, and then he and Agent Carter are out the door. It closes behind them with a soft click, and the Beckley sisters are alone. With their respective questions. Tara knows hers—Where did the hat come from, and what does it mean, and did he hurt you? but she can’t voice any of those, so she has to trust her sister. She’s back in that basement at 1804 London Street again, steel doors between them, a thin band of light, and a lifetime of trust.
The doors are heavier here, the band of light narrower, but the trust has only deepened.
“Tara,” Shannon whispers, “I need your help right now. For both of us. And for Mom and Rick. I need you to understand that without me saying much more. I need you to trust me.”
Tara gives her one flick.
Shannon smiles awkwardly. Her grateful smile, the least natural, the most heartbreaking.
“Everything that you’ve been through,” she says, “and I need you to save us all. No pressure, T.”
Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone.
No, wait. It’s not her phone. It’s a black iPhone without a case. Tara understands immediately: It is Oltamu’s phone. Somehow, Shannon has come into possession of this oddly desired item, and it has something to do with the reason she’s wearing the black hat and is afraid.
Tara’s pulse begins to hammer. Not since they sealed her in the tube so she could demonstrate proof of life has she felt an adrenaline rush like this.
“Do you know what this is?” Shannon whispers, her voice so low it’s scarcely audible.
One flick.
“Okay. I don’t know if this will work, but I need you to try.” She taps the screen with her finger and then turns the display to Tara. The blackness has been replaced with an image: Tara standing uneasily beside Dr. Amandi Oltamu above the Willow River, the spindly shadows of the railroad bridge visible just beyond them.
The last memory Tara has of when her body was her own.
For a moment, her vision grays out, and she’s afraid she’s doing something that would seem impossible—can a paralyzed patient faint? She’s about to. But then there’s gold-green beneath the gray, and she sees the girl in the kayak, sees the river wide and rushing and the girl riding it out, riding the current into that shimmering gold-green mist, and Tara knows the mist this time—it is spray from a waterfall. There’s a waterfall up ahead, but the girl in the water is paddling straight for it, and she is unafraid.
Suddenly all of that is gone and the room is back and the phone is before Tara once more. Shannon’s face is hovering just behind it, her eyes darkened by the terrible black baseball cap.
“I’m going to turn this around now and try to capture your face. Just like a camera. It’s locked, and you…you might be able to open it. You understand what I mean?”
One flick. Tara grasps the idea, and, bizarre as it sounds, she thinks she even understands it. The odd photos, the way Oltamu gave her the phone…nothing was accidental. Not those choices, and not the choices of the man who drove into the two of them just seconds later.
All part of competing plans. Tara is the pawn in the middle. She has been turned into a human key.
Shannon wets her lips, breathes, and turns the phone around. Tara wants to adjust her head to face the small camera lens, but of course she can’t do that. She has to trust that Shannon will get it right.
It takes longer than it should, and Tara is sure it’s a failure, but then Shannon arches up a little and changes the angle, pointing the camera down at Tara’s eyes from above, and Tara can tell from the way her body relaxes that she has the result she wanted.
“Okay,” she says. “That’s good, and bad. Take a look.”
She turns the phone back to Tara. It says FRS verified and there is a green check mark. But just below that, there’s a red X and a white box beside the command Enter name of FRS-verified individual to complete authentication.
FRS. Facial-recognition scan? That seems right, but it wasn’t enough to unlock the device. The name prompt remains.
“Do I just try yours? First and last? First only?” Shannon’s voice is rising now, and her attention is totally on the phone, and that can’t happen, because Tara knows what she needs to enter, Tara knows this and has to speak it and—
The gray-out comes again, and then the green-gold mist, and Tara is riding the waterfall, tumbling and falling to an endless depth, spiraling down through the green-gold liquid light…
When she comes back, it’s with a vengeance—her thumb twitches, yes, but so do two of her fingers. A rapid twitch, a plucking gesture, like a child’s frantic grab at a firefly.
She’s not immediately sure that it was real, but then she sees Shannon staring at her right hand in shock, and the shock confirms the sensation.
Tara is opening the channel. Tara is forcing her way back into the world.
“Did you feel that?” Shannon asks.
One flick.
“Can you do it again?”
She can’t. Not yet. But maybe soon…Tara opts not to respond to that question. She doesn’t know the answer yet. Her control of her own body no longer belongs to the land of yes-or-no answers. What an amazing thing that was. She wishes Dr. Pine had seen it. And Mom, Rick, all of them. But at least Shannon was here. At
least Shannon saw.
“I tried your name,” Shannon says then, and Tara remembers the phone, the reason for all of this. “It says ‘access denied.’ I’ve got only one try left.” Her voice quavers. “T., do you have any idea what he called you?”
One flick.
“You’re sure?” Shannon says.
One flick.
“Can you spell it?”
One flick.
Shannon reaches for the alphabet board with a trembling hand.
53
Her hand moved. Abby thought it was an optical illusion, some disruption of the camera’s feed, but then Shannon Beckley’s questions turned it into reality.
Tara can move. Maybe not consistently, but she can move.
“The name matters,” Dax said. “Shit. That slows us down. That might derail the whole thing, actually. Because if Tara doesn’t know what he put in there…”
He rubs his thumb over the stock of the revolver distractedly, a circular motion. Abby watches him and thinks about Tara’s hand, that sudden twitch. She’s coming back. Maybe. Or was it just a spasm? Regardless, it was something more than Luke had ever managed. Tara has vertical eye motion, and one of her hands can move. She’s not only still alert in there, she’s progressing.
“Boone is in play,” Dax said, uninterested in everything else, his attention lost to the blond woman who’d left the room. “But who put her in play? Not Gerry. I’m sure of that.”
Abby didn’t respond. Her attention was focused on the screen. All the things that had mattered just seconds ago seemed less consequential.
Tara can make it back, she thought. And then: If nobody kills her first.
54
Pine wanted privacy. He took Boone down the empty corridor that smelled of a disinfectant tinged with juniper and then turned into a small office. A desk took up all of one wall, and the other walls were lined with filing cabinets and bookshelves. The only chair was the one facing the desk, but he offered it to her. She sat, although she didn’t want to. She was buzzing with anger and energy, too close to be wasting more time now.
“If that sister tries to talk Tara out of cooperating, I’m not going anywhere. I hope you understand that. It matters—”
“Too much,” Pine finished for her with a weary nod as he closed the door. “I get it, I get it. I also think I’m going about this wrong.”
Boone cocked her head. “Meaning?”
“Something’s wrong with Shannon.”
“The sister. You’re worried about her?”
“Yes.” He looked at her defiantly. “I am worried about them all. But as I tried to explain to you, she knows a lot. She knows more than I do. She won’t tell me how, but she knows more than I do, and I have no idea who is giving her that information. Her behavior has changed since you arrived, but it’s not about you. I think she’s hearing something.”
Boone started to rise. “You believe all this, but you let her sit in there alone?”
Pine blocked her. “Yes! She deserves that. And I deserve a hell of a lot more than I’ve been given. You tell me how much is at risk here, but not what. I understand confidentiality, trust me. It has been my business and my life. I respect it. But this is…” He searched for the words. “Already operating at a level of secrecy that I’m not comfortable with. That I never should have allowed.”
“Dr. Pine?” Boone’s voice snapped like a whip. “Do not make a mistake at this stage. I will talk to that girl tonight. I don’t care if I have to get a DOJ order to make it happen, I will—”
“That’s exactly what should happen!” he fired back. “I want the damned order! I want the right security. I want the administrators of this hospital to be made aware of all possible risks. There are many patients here besides Tara Beckley. You’re acting as if they’re not a concern. I can’t do that.”
Boone was sitting on the edge of the chair, muscles tensed, eyes on Pine’s. She made a show of slackening. Easing back into the chair. Giving him a posture of thoughtful consideration that bordered on the verge of concession.
“I have an acquaintance with the special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Boston,” he said. “Her name is Roxanne Donovan. You know her, I assume. Or of her?”
“Yes,” Boone lied.
“Perfect. Then let me call her. Let me bring someone into this building whom we both know, whom we both trust, and proceed from there. I can’t let all this”—he waved a hand toward the closed door that led to the hallway—“continue in silence. Tara Beckley has experienced enough damage from silence. I won’t let the same thing happen to others. Or let any more of it happen to her.”
Boone steepled her fingers and rested her chin on them. Thoughtful. Then, with a sigh, she said, “I’ll make the call,” and she reached into her pocket as if going for a cell phone. She stopped before withdrawing anything, paused as if reconsidering, and looked at his desk phone, which was just past her left shoulder.
She said, “No, actually, you should make the call. From the hospital, and on speaker, so I can hear it. You can call Donovan. No one else. And no details should be shared before I have clearance to share them. Can you get her here with that much? Is your relationship that strong?”
“Roxanne Donovan will be here immediately when she understands the stakes,” Pine said confidently. “Can I at least share your name?”
“By all means.”
“Thank you,” he said, an exhale of relief following his words. He leaned forward and reached past her shoulder for the desk phone. He had his hand on the receiver and his focus on the keypad when Boone withdrew the syringe from her pocket, flicked the cap off with one snap of her thumbnail, and drove the stainless-steel needle into the hollow at the base of Pine’s throat.
His eyes went wide and white and he reached for his throat, but the needle was already gone, and Boone was up and had her hand over his mouth. He tried a punch then, but she blocked it easily with her left arm. She held him upright as he stumbled backward, kept him from falling, from making any noise. He looked at her with a cocktail of horror, accusation, and shame before his eyes dimmed completely. She watched him see his mistake and consider its ramifications just before his heart stopped.
Then she eased him into the desk chair. His head slumped forward onto the desk, his cheek on the keyboard, depressing keys, but they made no sound. It looked natural enough for a man who’d suffered a massive coronary, so she didn’t adjust his position. A standard autopsy would show a heart attack, and only if the coroners had reason to look very, very carefully would they find any evidence to suggest otherwise.
If that happened, Boone would be long gone.
She was pleased to find that the office door had a push-button lock. It wasn’t much of a security feature, but it would delay the discovery. She doubted any of the night nurses would want to disturb a doctor of Pine’s stature if he’d closed and locked the door. He had big things to work on, after all; he’d brought a woman back from the beyond.
Boone locked the door behind her and walked briskly back to room 373. The clock was speeding up now, and the time for games and lies was gone.
55
Twitch? You told him your nickname was Twitch?”
Shannon seems either disbelieving or disturbed. Tara—fighting for patience because Shannon doesn’t understand how hard it is to keep battling this current, to keep the channel open, commanding her eyes to answer properly even while her own mind races with unanswered questions that she can’t voice—gives one flick of the eyes. Yes, Twitch.
“If the facial recognition worked,” Shannon says, “maybe this will too.”
Her voice is doubtful but she turns her attention to the phone and taps the name into the display. She’s holding her breath.
“It worked,” Shannon says, and Tara adds this to her growing collection of points of light. Everything is progress right now. Everything is trending the right way.
Tara and Shannon are so focused on each other that neither one notices sh
e’s no longer alone in the room.
Then Andrea Carter says, “I’ll need to see that.”
How long she’s been standing there, Tara has no idea, but it can’t have been long. Shannon has her back to the door, but Tara thinks she would have glanced right eventually. Carter’s face is a hostile mask. Apparently she feels Shannon has held her at bay long enough. Dr. Pine isn’t with her.
Shannon rises from the stool, lowering Oltamu’s phone and pressing it against her leg.
“Do you mind?” Shannon says. “I’d asked for just a little bit of privacy. If you could just give me a few more…”
Tara is watching Shannon, so she doesn’t understand why her voice trails off, why her eyes go wide. Then Tara looks back at Andrea Carter and sees the knife.
It’s a small knife but it seems to be all blade, a curved piece of metal with a razor edge, a crescent-moon-shaped killing tool. She’s holding it in her right hand, down against her leg, in a posture that mirrors Shannon’s with the phone.
“You need to be very quiet,” Carter says, “and you need to give me that.”
She advances with her eyes on Shannon, her movements sleek as a panther. Tara wants to scream but can’t; Shannon could and won’t. In fact, Shannon’s face seems oddly unsurprised, as if she’s been anticipating something like this. “What’s your real name?” she says.
Carter is only a stride from her now, and she moves the knife out and to the side, the curved blade glistening, and extends her left hand, palm up. “The phone.”
Shannon doesn’t hesitate, and Tara is relieved. There’s something in this woman’s eyes that promises violence. Her eyes remind Tara of the eyes of the boy in the black hat. The hat that is now on Shannon’s head. They must belong together, this woman and the boy. But why, oh, why is Shannon wearing the hat?
56
Dax was very still, his thumb on the revolver’s cylinder, his eyes unblinkingly focused on the video display, even his breathing so restrained that it was scarcely noticeable.
If She Wakes Page 30