The Select

Maybe she hadn't really seen it, or maybe she didn't believe she'd seen it. It didn't matter which. He'd never get a chance like that again. It was over. Might as well pack in the hope and forget about ever getting out of here.

Still staring helplessly at the ceiling's mottled whiteness, Tim felt himself tumbling into a black hole of despair.

TWENTY-TWO

This isn't a highway, Matt thought. This is a parking lot.

The New Jersey Turnpike wasn't exactly stopped dead, but for an hour now it had been moving too slowly for the speedometer to register. As far ahead as the he could see, the three southbound lanes were a stagnant river of glowing brake lights fading into the falling snow.

Not falling, exactly. Racing horizontally was more like it. And lots of it. The windows on the passenger side of Matt's Cherokee were caked with an inch or better of white. It was piling up on the road and the shoulders.

Matt banged impatiently on the steering wheel and glanced at the dashboard clock. Nine o'clock. He should have been there by now. Instead he was just south of Exit 7A, only halfway through Jersey. And the longer he stayed here, the worse it was going to get. He'd played all his CDs twice, and the radio had nothing but traffic reports about the snarl-ups all over the East Coast and weather reports about how much worse it was going to get during the next few hours.

This little jaunt was turning into an ordeal.

A sign on the right with logos for Roy Rogers, Big Boy's, and Sunoco told him that the 'Richard Stockton Service Area' was two miles ahead. Matt glanced at his gas gauge and saw it edging onto 'E'. At his present pace, those two miles could take an hour, maybe more. Running out of fuel now would be the icing on the cake.

He edged the Cherokee to the right and began riding along the shoulder at around twenty miles per hour. It wasn't legal, but at least he was moving. He just had to hope he didn't run into a cop. A ticket would be the candle on the icing on the cake.

He slammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt as a beat-up, twenty-year-old Cadillac DeVille with New York plates pulled out in front of him and stopped. Matt flashed his high beams and honked, but the Caddy didn't budge. He had two choices: sit here behind the guy, or try to slip past him on the right, but that meant risking the snowy slope that dropped away from the shoulder at a good forty-five-degree angle.

He got out and walked up to the Caddy. The driver window rolled down as he approached and a bearded face glared at him.

'Don't fuck with me, man.'

'How about letting me by,' Matt said. 'I'm trying to get to the service area.'

'You wait like the rest of us.'

'I'm going to run out of gas.'

'Tough shit.'

Matt stared at him a moment. Everyone was fed up, but this guy was looking for a fight. Matt was tempted to help him find it, but for all he knew there could be three others like him in that car. He looked at the big heavy caddy, at the snowy slope beyond it, and had a better idea.

Without a word, he returned to the Cherokee. He put her in four-wheel drive and slowly eased to the right. The Cadillac responded, moving right to block him. Matt edged further onto the slope, and the Cadillac mimicked him, matching Matt's every rightward move.

When he was sure all four of the Caddy's tires were on the slope, Matt pulled sharply to his left, darting back uphill. The heavier car tried to respond but its rear wheels spun uselessly on the snow. It began to fishtail as it slipped further down the slope, swerving ninety degrees until it was sliding back-end first, its rear wheels spinning madly. It stopped with a jolt in the gully at the bottom, its headlights pointing skyward.

Back on the shoulder again, Matt gave two quick toots on his horn and drove away.

'All I wanted to do was get by,' Matt said softly.

No one bothered him the rest of the way to the service area.

'What's the problem up ahead?' he asked as the attendant filled the Cherokee's tank. He had stringy blond hair and was maybe nineteen. 'It can't be just snow.'

'It ain't. Scanner says a tractor trailer jack-knifed coming down the Exit 6 on-ramp.'

'Six? That's where I get off. Damn, I'll be here forever.'

'Maybe longer. We heard that four cars piled into the truck. There was a fire and everything. A real mess. If I was you I'd find a parking spot, get a comfortable seat in Roy's or Big Boy's, and figure on spending the rest of the night there.'

Uh-uh, Matt thought. He saw a set of headlights glide across the overpass just south of the service area.

'Will that road take me to the Pennsylvania Turnpike?'

The attendant followed Matt's pointing arm and nodded.

'Yeah. Eventually. If you could get on it. But there's no off-ramp to that road. Like the man says: You can't get there from here.'

'Suppose I make my own ramp?'

The attendant looked at the Cherokee, then back at Matt.

'There's a corn field back of the service area here. With four-wheel drive you just might be home free.'

'I'm not heading home, but at least I'll be free of the Turnpike.'

'Hope it's real important to get where you're goin'. You bust an axle or blow a tire out in that field you'll have a lotta explaining to do in the morning.'

'I've got a friend in need,' Matt said.

The attendant grinned. 'And you're the friend indeed, right?'

'You might say that.'

'I got my break in a couple of minutes. I'll show you a way out the back.'

Matt shoved a twenty into his hand.

'Show me now.'

*

Quinn sat cross-legged on the bed in her darkened room and watched the snowflakes tumble through the bright cones from the dorm's exterior floodlights. She wished she could glide out the window like one of the kids in Peter Pan and get lost in the storm.

Then she wouldn't have to think about that patient in Ward C, and the hand signal he'd made for her.

It was Tim.

As crazy as it sounded, it had to be Tim. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became.

He was Tim's height, had Tim's build, and he'd given her the signal, the Hawaiian hang loose that only Tim would have known to give.

Quinn's first impulse had been to run to the police, to call Deputy Southworth and demand that he charge into Ward C and save Tim from whoever had imprisoned him there for whatever reason.

She'd made it as far as her door before having second thoughts. And third thoughts.

She imagined the conversation with the sheriff's department:

'Who do you think kidnapped your boyfriend and imprisoned him in the burn ward, Miss Cleary?'

'Dr. Alston, I guess. He's in charge of Ward C.'

'Why would The Ingraham's Dean of Medical Education want to do something like that?'

'I don't know. Maybe because Tim discovered the place was bugged.'