If She Wakes

by Michael Koryta

  That’s Lisa Boone. She worked with my father. She’s a professional killer.

  In those short sentences, he told Abby more about himself than he had in all the terrible hours they’d spent together. It explained the bizarre pairing of youth and skill, emptiness and professionalism, brutality and calculation. Abby knew his world now, and his world explained him. An assassin’s son was just right. Nature and nurture.

  She found a strange comfort in this idea, as if there might be a rationality to him where before she’d seen only a sociopath.

  Then again, she was still bound to the passenger seat, and less than an hour had passed since Dax had committed a murder. You took your reassurances where you could find them, but this one was a hell of a stretch.

  When Lisa Boone stepped back into the frame, alone this time, no doctor at her side, Dax tensed and reached for the door handle, then stopped himself, lowered his hand, and relaxed back into the seat.

  He knows it will be easier to take it from her once she’s outside, Abby thought. Entering the hospital was a risk that Dax clearly intended to avoid—he’d gotten Shannon to make the actual room call, and that was, Abby realized with dismay, a smart move. Right now, however capable a killer Lisa Boone was, she was a full step behind him, and he was patient enough to realize that as long as he had the upper hand, forcing the action was unnecessary. He saw more of the board than she did.

  None of that was reassuring.

  Abby watched the camera shift and weave as Boone approached and took Oltamu’s phone from Shannon Beckley’s hand. Then she walked backward, sure-footed and graceful, to the door. Only when she was there, with plenty of distance between herself and Shannon, did she glance at the phone.

  For all of Abby’s horror, some small part of her just wanted to know—what was on it?

  Whatever it was, it didn’t please Boone. Her face twisted in anger, and she said, “What is this?”

  Offscreen, speaking from behind—and below—the camera, Shannon Beckley said, “How do I know?”

  “Because you just said it worked. The facial recognition and then you put in her nickname and said that it worked. I heard you and watched you.”

  “It did work. I thought it did. It changed screens, at least. The old screen was her. Once I held it up to her eyes and put in that nickname, it reloaded and the screen changed.”

  She was speaking too loud, as if trying to draw people’s attention. Lisa Boone said, “Keep your voice down.”

  Shannon went silent. Boone looked at the phone once more, studied it, then said, “It changed from her face to this?”

  “Yes.”

  Beside Abby, Dax sighed and said, “I’d like to know what this is.”

  An instant later, Boone said, “Then what in the fuck is this?”

  Dax spread his hands and gave a theatrical nod, like Thank you!

  “I don’t know,” Shannon said, voice softer now.

  “Does she?” Boone asked.

  Shannon didn’t respond. Boone advanced, phone in one hand, knife in the other.

  57

  Tara hasn’t seen the image yet, but she has an idea of what the woman with the knife is looking at. In fact, she’s pretty sure she knows exactly what it is.

  Andrea Carter is moving toward her, and Shannon steps protectively between them, and then the knife is nearly at her throat, the movement so swift and sudden that Tara scarcely registers the fact that her hand twitches again.

  Carter speaks with the blade pressed against Shannon’s neck.

  “There’s a way to do this without your sister dying,” Carter says. “But you need to cooperate.”

  Shannon gives a strange, high laugh that surprises Tara as much as it apparently surprises Carter.

  “Step back,” Carter says, “and shut up.”

  Please listen, Tara urges silently. Do what she says, because I can answer her next question, I already did, I told you what he took pictures of, and then he was dead, so I know he didn’t take any more. I can answer her questions, and she will leave.

  But will she leave? As Shannon moves away, taking two steps toward the foot of the bed, Tara watches Carter and is not so sure. If Tara doesn’t answer her questions, then they both have to die. But if she does…what changes? Is there really any way this woman is leaving them alive?

  “Show Tara the phone,” Shannon says, and she looks at Tara for the first time, and there’s a knowingness to the gaze. Tara thinks, I am right about what’s there, and Shannon remembers what I said.

  The woman turns the phone display to her then, and, sure enough, there he is: Hobo.

  “What is the dog’s name?” the woman asks.

  Tara looks at Shannon. Flicks her eyes up once. Yes, tell her. What is the point in protecting this? Saving our lives, that’s the point. But Tara’s instinct says that talking is better. It’s a strange instinct for a woman who can’t speak, and yet there it is.

  “What does that mean?” Carter asks. “The way she looked at you. Her eyes moved up. That’s a yes. What is she saying yes to?”

  Her voice tightens with anger, and Tara is terrified of what will happen if Shannon lies or resists, but for once, she doesn’t.

  “She’s saying yes to me because she wants me to tell you who the dog is,” Shannon says.

  “You know?”

  Shannon nods.

  “Say it.”

  “Hobo,” Shannon says, once again in a loud voice, but this time the woman doesn’t tell her to lower it. She just stares at her as if she’s making a very dangerous joke.

  “Hobo.”

  Shannon nods again.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she told me. Earlier. When the doctor and I were asking her about her memories of the accident. Before it happened, Oltamu took a picture of her and a picture of Hobo.”

  Andrea Carter eyes Shannon, then Tara. She sees either no indication of a lie or no reason for them to lie. She flips the phone over in her hand, and taps on it with her thumb.

  “Doesn’t work,” she says, but her voice is troubled and she keeps staring at the screen.

  “I think,” Shannon says cautiously, “that’s because you’ll need the dog’s eyes.”

  The woman looks at Shannon as if she wouldn’t mind gutting her with that knife right here. Suddenly, Tara has a terrible fear for Dr. Pine. Surely she wouldn’t have killed him in a hospital.

  But where is he?

  Dead, she thinks. The fear turns into a certainty, and that grows into a certainty over how this will end. She and Shannon will die too. All for something Tara will never understand, all for whatever is on this stranger’s phone. Damn it, don’t they at least deserve to know what they’re dying for?

  “That’s how it worked with her,” Shannon says. “Facial recognition first, then name.”

  The woman looks at the display again, and Tara thinks she must be seeing a message that confirms this, because she seems even more frustrated by the device than by Shannon.

  “That’s insane,” she says. “For a dog? It won’t work. The technology doesn’t exist.”

  “Actually,” Shannon says, “they use it on pet doors. I saw an ad for one.”

  “I don’t have time for this bullshit. You don’t have time to do this.”

  “Google it,” Shannon says. “You can buy pet doors that open with facial recognition. I don’t know why. To keep out raccoons or whatever, I have no idea. But I am telling you, the way it worked with her was to get the facial-recognition lock first, then put in the name. The dog is named Hobo. I am positive.”

  They stare each other down for a moment. Finally Andrea Carter says, “Where is the dog?”

  “He was up there by the bridge. Where Oltamu died. She says he is a stray.”

  “You’re lying,” Carter says, but it’s more hopeful than forceful.

  “Ask her,” Shannon says.

  Carter turns to Tara. “Is she lying?”

  Tara flicks her eyes twice. No, Shannon is
n’t lying.

  Carter pauses, seems to fight down building rage, and then says, “Will the dog be up there? Is he easy to find?”

  Hobo is not particularly easy to find, and he certainly won’t be for a stranger, but Tara sees more hope for them in that lie than in the truth, so she gives one flick—yes.

  “He took a picture of you and asked for a nickname,” Carter says. “And then he took a picture of the dog and asked for the dog’s name?”

  One flick. Yes. Growing more certain with each answer that she’s sealing their fates, but not seeing any way out. The world is an extension of her body now—a trap with no escape.

  “Was that the last picture he took?” Carter asks.

  Tara’s thumb jerks. Carter and Shannon both see this.

  “What does that mean?” Carter asks warily.

  “Nothing. It’s a spasm.”

  But Shannon is wrong. That thumb twitch means everything. It means the girl fighting against the current has found the green-gold waters again, the secret channel where the water rotates and then the current becomes friend and not foe. It is so much more than a spasm. It is Tara coming back. Finding her way through dark halls and riding dark waters, chasing thin bands of light.

  “Just use your eyes this time. Was that the last picture he took?” Carter repeats.

  Tara sees it then, as if the last twitch of her thumb were a courier arriving with critical news, a message Tara should have understood already: She has power here. She has control of the situation in a way none of them suspect she does.

  Yes, she is motionless and mute, locked in. But now she recognizes the strength in this. The only move that can save them will come because of her condition. She can buy Shannon time, at least. She can do that much.

  She flicks her eyes twice, telling this awful woman, No, it was not the last picture he took.

  Tara can’t do many things, but she can still think, and she understands the dilemma she’s placing the woman with the knife in now—the lie is worth the risk, because Tara knows what’s coming.

  Sure enough, the question arrives like a hanging curveball, belt-high.

  “Did he take another one of you?” Carter says.

  One flick, and Tara swats it out of the park.

  Yes, she lies, he took one more of me. And you know what that means, bitch? You can’t kill me yet. You’ll need my eyes again. Think about it. Won’t work with a dead face. Or at least, you’re not sure that it will. And you can’t take me to Hammel with you, so that means you’ve got to come back to find me, dead or alive. I’ll be harder to find if I’m dead, and you’ll have to trust that the phone will recognize my face if I am. I don’t think it will.

  There’s a pause that seems endless but that can’t be more than five seconds. Those seconds feel like the countdown before an explosion, though. The crescent-moon blade glimmers, Andrea Carter stands with every muscle taut, and Shannon looks as paralyzed as Tara.

  “Here’s how we’re going to handle this,” Carter says at last. “Shannon and I are going for a ride. Together. We will find the dog and test your story, Tara. If it works, and no one follows us, then Shannon will drive back to you. If it doesn’t, or if you somehow send someone after us? Well, I suppose you’ll have plenty of time to think about that in the days to come.”

  Shannon is looking at Tara with an expression that Tara remembers well—quiet and restrained, thoughtful. A quiet Shannon is something to worry about, because on the rare occasions that she swallows her anger and retreats, she is lost to thoughts of settling the score. This is good, because it means she knows that Tara lied and that the phone will prove that. Tara bought her time, but Shannon will be alone when the lie is discovered.

  “All right,” Andrea Carter says, and the blade disappears into a black handle that vanishes into her hand. “Then we’ll ride, Shannon. You’d better hope your sister understands the stakes. People will ask her questions about me. Her answers are going to decide your life.”

  Shannon doesn’t respond to that. She just looks at Tara.

  “You know how much I love you?” she says.

  Almost too late, Tara remembers to look upward once.

  Shannon nods and turns away. She opens the door and steps out with Andrea Carter walking just behind her, the knife not visible but not far away.

  58

  Brilliant play!” Dax shouted at the video like a color commentator breaking down a playoff game. “She’s caught lovely Lisa, do you see that, Abby? Do you understand? Lisa can’t kill Tara now. Not if she’s going to need her again. That’s ingenious. It might even be true that she’ll need Tara again, but I doubt it. Boone probably doubts it too. What can you do, though? You can’t pick the girl up and take her with you. So you take the sister and hope that keeps her quiet. But Tara called the shot on that one. Good for her.”

  He spoke with true admiration, although Abby had no doubt that he would still kill Tara himself without hesitation or pity.

  No one had passed them in the garage since they arrived, and only two cars had pulled out from the floors below. A hospital never shut down, but it had quiet hours, and they had arrived in the midst of them. When Shannon Beckley exited room 373 and began her walk out of the hospital with Lisa Boone alongside her, the camera showed a quiet hallway ahead. They avoided the main lobby and entered a side stairwell.

  Dax started the car.

  He backed out of the parking space and started down toward the garage exit, driving slowly, unhurried as always and seemingly sure of his choice. His treasured phone, the item worthy of all this bloodshed, was in the hands of an apparent rival, but he seemed unbothered.

  They passed an elderly couple walking to a Buick, and if the pair had looked into the Challenger, they might have noticed the cord around Abby’s neck, but they did not look.

  “Are you following them?” Abby asked. Once she’d hated listening to the kid’s incessant talk, but now she wanted to know. It felt, surreally, as if a part of her were rooting for Dax now. Shannon Beckley seemed more likely to die at Lisa Boone’s hands than his at this moment, and he was the only person who knew enough to intercede. Other than Tara, of course, mute and trapped.

  “That wouldn’t be smart,” Dax said.

  “You’re giving up? Just letting her take it?” Abby had a horrible thought: What if this Lisa Boone worked with Dax? What if his surprise at her presence was simply because she’d been unannounced, not because he viewed her as a rival?

  Then he said, “Oh, we’re certainly not going to do that. Come on, Abby! We’ve come too far to give up now.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  If the questions bothered him, he didn’t show it. He put his window down, fed a ticket and a credit card into the automated garage booth, and the gate rose. He took the credit card back, put the window up, and pulled away, out of the lights of the garage and back into darkness.

  “It would be a mistake to follow her,” he said. “Boone is too good. At least, that’s my understanding. It’s a long drive, and she’d see us, and she would have the advantage then. Right now we have the advantage, Abby, don’t you see? We know where they’re going. And we can watch them.”

  On the cell phone’s display, the camera was bobbing along, Shannon Beckley still on foot, walking across the street and toward a parking lot on the other side of the hospital. Lisa Boone was not in the frame.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Dax said, “but haven’t you been to the accident site?”

  Abby didn’t answer right away. She was seeing the idea coalesce. It was a very simple trap, but a trap set for an assassin. She couldn’t imagine how anyone was going to make it out of this night alive. Dax might. Or Boone might. One or the other had to win. But as for Abby and Shannon Beckley?

  He’ll get out of the car, she thought. He’ll have to, down there. And when he does, he’s going to leave you here. You’ll need to be a lot faster with that headrest than you were last time.

  “Haven’t you?” Dax
repeated, an edge to his voice now.

  “Yes,” Abby said. “I’ve been there.”

  “Then you’ll guide me and tell me what to expect when I get there. It’s important that you remember it accurately. If I lose my advantage, well, that could become an ugly situation for everyone.” He caught a green light and turned left, heading for the interstate. “We’ll need to drive a bit faster too. Boone won’t want to take risks, but I don’t think she’s inclined to waste much time.”

  Once they were all on the highway, the camera’s livestream began to fade in and out, but they weren’t missing much. Just the open road in front of Shannon Beckley, the same open road that was in front of Abby. Dax paid the video feed no mind, but Abby watched, trying to identify mile markers and signs that would show her how far behind Boone and Shannon were. She guessed they were maybe ten minutes behind when Dax exited the interstate and began following the winding county roads that led to Hammel.

  They were in the hills now, and a low fog crept through bare-limbed trees and settled beneath those that still had their leaves. A few houses had Halloween decorations up, and jack-o’-lanterns with rictus smiles sat on porches or beside mailboxes. The wind shivered dead leaves off skeletal branches. Autumn charm was dying; winter was on its way.

  Dax drove with his right hand only, the gun in the door panel, close to his left hand, which rested on his thigh. Abby watched him bring that left hand up time and again on curves. Usually he didn’t bring it all the way to the wheel, but Abby knew that the Hellcat was still foreign to him, and even though he wasn’t driving recklessly, he was uneasy about that power and handling. Didn’t trust himself with the car yet.

  Watching his weakness gave Abby a feeling of strength that would have seemed absurd to any spectator—one person had the gun and the wheel, and the other was tied to the passenger seat. And yet, as a passenger, able to watch the way Dax handled the car and the uncertainty he brought to it, she felt her confidence grow. That uncertainty was a small thing, but it was a weakness. If Abby could get the wheel back, he’d be gone. The gap she’d found in her panic on the rain-swept highway when she’d sliced through the semis and cars and glided through the break in the guardrail seemed to have carried some of her old brain back into her body. A door had opened in that moment. If she got behind the wheel, she could find it again. She could kick that door down if it didn’t open willingly.