You're Next

Cha walked Shep down the hall and into the elevator, then leaned in and hit the button for the third floor.

A clerk jogged down the hall toward them. ‘Dr Cha? An attorney is holding on line three. It’s about Annabel Wingate, and he says it’s urgent.’

Dr Cha winked as the doors slid shut, wiping her from view.

Before Shep could protest, he was rising. He stared down at Annabel. Fluids moved through tubing. Equipment beeped. She breathed, the skin of her neck fragile and translucent, showing faint blue veins beneath. He wondered what the hell was going to happen next.

The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and a team of folks in scrubs were waiting in a semicircle, a serious- looking young woman at the forefront.

‘I’m Dr Bhatnagar. Is this the patient Dr Dubronski wanted transferred here?’

The doors banged shut on Shep as he wheeled Annabel out into their hands.

He rubbed his shoulder. ‘Sure.’

The woman snatched the clipboard from where Dr Cha had left it across Annabel’s shins. On the medical chart beneath, the personal information had been blacked out as on a CIA document. ‘Do we have a name for this patient?’

An elderly man in a wheelchair butted Shep aside and punched at the elevator button impatiently. Shep said, ‘No.’

She scribbled “UCF 2” across the chart. At Shep’s look of incredulity, she said, ‘Unidentified Caucasian Female. Yes, we already have one. They’re falling out of the sky today.’ A quick nod to Annabel. ‘I understand she’s a victim of domestic abuse.’

Shep said, ‘Possibly.’

‘We’ll hide her in the pediatric ICU, then. Thanks so much. We got it from here.’

She nodded, dismissing him. Shep stepped back into the elevator, nearly stumbling over the man in the wheelchair. The doors closed, and they whistled down to the lobby. The entire episode had occurred in a matter of seconds.

Shep cleared his throat and said to the elderly man or the quiet confines of the elevator, ‘I will never understand smart women.’

Kat splashed in the bathtub, which Mike had rinsed out extensively before filling. The motel, a variation of the ones they’d been ping-ponging through, was in a seedy part of Van Nuys, a stone’s throw from the park where he’d smashed up that forest green Saab with a baseball bat.

He was sitting on the bed, a heavy old-school phone in his lap, his stomach all acid and dull pain. The dust that had risen when he’d sat on the rust-orange bedspread swirled and swirled, impervious to gravity. It danced along a shaft of light slanting through the sole window, which provided an alley view of plastic wrappers snared in a chain- link fence. Dusk came on in fast-forward, the shaft dimming even as Mike watched it, a flash-light losing batteries.

He’d already spoken to Shep several times. Annabel’s transfer had squeaked through. When Shep had last seen her, she’d been stable, though her improvement seemed to have stalled out. Shep had made clear that being in contact with the doctors at her new location could put her or Mike – and, by extension, Kat – in harm’s way. It was a needless risk, and though it felt like swallowing barbed wire, Mike had acceded.

The upshot was that Shep was turned loose, finally, to run down Kiki Dupleshney. But none of that was what had Mike’s gut in an uproar.

It was the two boarding passes in Kat’s name, folded and rumpled from his pocket, sitting beside him on the bed. One for the 5:30 P.M. flight, one for 11:45.

The beside clock showed 5:01.

Hands sweating, he dialed, routing through the prepaid card’s calling center.

‘American Airlines, LAX.’

‘Will you please put me through to the gate for Flight 768?’ he asked. ‘I have an extremely urgent message for a passenger.’

His response was hold music. Daniel Powter was better than the usual, but Mike didn’t need the reminder that he’d had a bad day. The blue sky haaaw-liday was cut short by a singsongy male voice.

Mike said, ‘I have an important message for a ticketed passenger, Katherine Wingate.’

A pause. ‘Okay. Yes.’ Some rustling as the phone receiver was covered, and then, ‘There is someone here who can help you with that. Let me hand you off.’

A cool feminine voice. ‘Hello?’

Smart – they’d posted a female cop.

‘Hello,’ Mike said cautiously.

‘I’m with Katherine Wingate,’ the woman said. ‘I was told you have a message for her?’

Mike hung up. He bowed his head. If they were checking Annabel’s PayPal account and looking for flights under Kat’s name, that meant they’d be monitoring trains and borders and extended-family members. Which meant that he had no idea, beyond the four walls of this shit-ass motel, where to take his daughter that was safe.

Kat splashed away in the tub, the water’s reflection wavering off the open door. She was singing softly, the same off-key tenderness that infused Annabel’s voice when Mike listened to it through the baby monitor.

‘Lulla-by and good-night, with ro-ses bedight – Dad? What’s bedight? Dad?’

His voice was husky. ‘To decorate.’

‘Oh. Be-di-ight. Lullaby and good night-’

He ripped the boarding pass for the 5:30 flight in half, then kept tearing and tearing, the hundred tiny pieces fluttering like snow to the carpet. The lump in his throat was making it hard to breathe.

‘Lullaby and good night, thy mu-ther’s delight. Mother’s delight?’

‘You, honey,’ he managed. ‘That’s you.’

He tore up the boarding pass for the 11:45 flight that he was actually going to put her on if the first run had been clear, then stared down at the scraps.

What now? ‘

Bright angels beside my dar-ling abide. They will guard thee at rest.’

Mike tilted his head back, cleared his throat, wiped his nose. Kat was out of the bath now, drying off, her pink body stretched thin, elbows and kneecaps poking into sight at the towel’s edges. Absorbed water had bubbled the cheap particleboard counter; rust ringed the faucets. He thought, This is no place for her.

He remembered the plea Annabel had made as dark blood drooled from the gash between her ribs. For him to get Kat away from all this. For him to keep her safe.

And he considered the hard reality of what he might have to do to fulfill that promise.

He scooped up the confetti from the carpet, dumped it in the trash, and went to Kat. The towel, draped over her shoulders like a boxer’s robe, parted around the slight pout of her tummy. She’d dried her hair too exuberantly, the curls all ratted up. Of course no detangler spray, which Annabel would have thought to buy. He brushed patiently from the bottom up, working an inch at a time, the needling pain wearing Kat down until she was whimpering.

‘Stay still, honey, I have to-’

‘Ow. Ow.’ She pushed away. He caught her hands, lowered them, started over. He got half the job done and did his best to fight a ponytail through a hair band. Her eyes were watering from the pain, and he was growing more frustrated, trying to force it, trying to make it right. ‘Ow. Not like that, Dad.’ She finally pulled away and put her back to the counter, like a combatant. She was digging at her scalp with her nails now, scratching hard enough to raise welts at the hairline.

A calm dread descended over him. ‘Let me look.’

‘I don’t have lice.’

‘Let me look.’

‘No.’

‘Kat.’ He took her by a skinny arm, turned her, and tilted her head.

Tiny white dots at her nape.

Eggs.