Detour

by Kurtz, Sylvie

  On the wings of the dream, I drifted about, reveling in my freedom, until the deep blackness turned into a starry sky and the scene below me opened up into a familiar sight—Southern New Hampshire in March. I barely got the chance to orient myself before the sky-board beneath my feet disappeared, plunging me into the nightmare again.

  I sank in a speeding rush, a scream ripping helplessly from my throat. Arms spread wide, hands splayed, legs braced, I battled to brake the fast descent.

  I plopped behind a steering wheel and was driving north along the Everett Turnpike from the southern end of Nashua. Not Betsy, my beloved van. A rental, from the canned new-car smell of it. Was Betsy in the shop again? My gaze focused straight ahead into the black of night and purpose hummed through my body. Where was I going? Where was I coming from? Was I on a case?

  The blinking lights on top of the orange-and-white construction barrels warned two lanes were narrowing to one. Although no one else shared the road with me, I signaled the lane change. When had I become so polite?

  “There’s a fault,” I said, and the words surprised me. So did the huskiness of the voice. Fault? What fault? “A terrible fault.”

  Me, but not me. Outside, yet inside.

  With a hand, I reached into a leather briefcase on the passenger’s seat and extracted a sheet filled with neat boxes of computer-spewed data. As I looked at the unfamiliar figures, I shook her head. Fear rippled through me in an unexpected wave, draining my fingers and feet of warmth. “I was right. Oh, Wyatt, what should I do?”

  Almost before I could wonder who Wyatt was, headlights blazed behind me. I shoved the paper between the seats and gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled strength. With a sharp turn to the right and into the barrels, I avoided the ramming from the car behind me.

  Sierra, girl, that’s not the way to handle this. When had I lost my driving touch?

  The car came at me again, engine growling. I fought to control the wheel, but my hands and feet didn’t obey. Just like before when I’d almost died.

  The surge of adrenaline scuttling through me rendered the March night in bold clarity—diamond-bright stars on an indigo canvas, the neon-white patches of snow on the embankment, the road shiny black, there, then gone—and I saw the inevitable before it happened.

  The car careened off the road and took flight. I sailed forward. My head cracked against the windshield, exploded with pain. My body came to rest across the steering wheel like a shapeless shirt on a hanger. The sound of the horn blaring filled my head with an agonizing pulse.

  From afar came the creak of the passenger door opening. I shivered in the sudden gust of cold wind.

  No, please, don’t. People will die.

  The words echoed in my brain, but didn’t make it out my mouth. Neither did muscles obey my commands to move. Papers from the briefcase swirled like dry autumn leaves churning on a breeze until black-gloved hands plucked at them. The rearview mirror swayed crookedly in my line of vision, drawing my attention.

  Don’t look, Sierra. Don’t look.

  A wide wound gashed the forehead. Red tears streamed down the cheeks. The mouth, bright with lipstick and blood, twisted open and a gush of breath rushed out.

  Black hair. Dark brown eyes. China-delicate features.

  “No!”

  The face in the rearview mirror wasn’t mine.

  Then I was caught in a whirl of blackness, falling helplessly to the echoes of an unfamiliar voice. There’s a fault. People are going to die. Help me. Help me!

  I awoke in a sweat, gasping like a fish on dry land, trying desperately to escape the suffocating bonds of the afghan wrapped around me. The room stopped spinning, came into focus.

  The ghost’s gauzy white form hovered in front of the television, long hair fluttering as if caught in a breeze. Behind her translucent body, the screen crackled with the fire of a military jet that had crashed in some thick, green woods. As she floated toward the couch, the orange fire of the downed jet glowed where her heart should reside, and its black smoke filled her lungs, until every white line of her tortured face became a three-dimensional etching. Her arms stretched forward, reaching for my chest.

  Blood cold in my veins, I scrambled against the fat leather arm of the couch just as the ghostly fingers scratched at my sweatshirt. I placed both hands protectively over my heart. “I won’t give it back. It’s mine now. Mine.”

  “Help me,” the apparition pleaded. “It’s started. People are dying.”

  “I can’t help you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go away!”

  The woman shimmered and faded. Help me!

  I shivered, huddled in the corner of the couch. The ghostly sobs echoed in my heart and left behind a compelling hammer of time running out.

  Wednesday, April 12

  The next day I hid out in my office with the door closed, hoping to avoid my brother, Van’s, too-keen eye when it came to sleepless nights. When a knock startled me out of the chaos of my thoughts, I wished I’d had the presence of mind to grab the phone and pretend I was busy.

  Too late. Van strode into my office and parked himself in one of the two green leather wing chairs opposite my desk. Even worse, the open door taunted me with the freedom I couldn’t reach. I braced myself while Van took aim.

  “You know what your problem is?” Van stared at me through pinched pale-blue eyes.

  I dropped my purple Gelly Roll pen on the desk and leaned back nonchalantly in my chair. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  Van ignored the sarcasm and plowed on. But then bulls were supposed to have thick skins, weren’t they? And Van, despite his styled gray-salted brown hair, black Brooks Brothers suit, and polished wingtips, could still charge through life with the best of them. I toyed with the idea of waving a red cape in front of him, then decided against it. I was having a hard enough time trying to shake the unusual anxiety tightening my chest since this morning. Might as well hold my tongue and get this over with quickly.

  “The problem with you, Sierra, is that you’re afraid of commitment.”

  I bristled. Van’s tone reminded me too much of Mrs. Craig, my third-grade teacher, and the way she’d looked at me over her glasses, down her long nose, exasperation dripping from every enlarged pore. “I want to see you after class, young lady.” Which had meant I’d be deprived of yet another recess. Half the time the transgressions hadn’t even been mine.

  I studied Van, seeing Mrs. Craig in his place. A small smile quirked one side of my mouth. Part of my old daredevil spirit returned.

  “How can you say that?” I asked, deliberately pushing one of his buttons. “I’ve had Betsy for eight years, and I haven’t traded her in. That’s commitment.”

  “I’m not talking about your mode of transportation, and you know it.” Van glared at me over his rimless glasses.

  “I come to work every day.”

  “But you aren’t closing any files.”

  “Sure I am.” But not lately. Not commitment, but something much deeper fed my fears. I’d tried time and again to explain to Van about my feelings of not quite being myself anymore, but Van wouldn’t trade shoes even for the moment it took to understand. “Investigative work takes time and patience. It’s all in the details. I’ve generated enough paperwork to keep Noelle busy.”

  “Sierra,” Van warned.

  The toro was goaded. “Well, how else could I justify keeping such a formidable assistant around?”

  Van’s mouth tightened and his nostrils dilated, fluttered, then returned to normal. “Have you exercised today?”

  There he goes. I pretended not to notice. Elbows on the chair’s arms, I laced my fingers across my lap. “I jogged through half an hour of Good Morning America.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  I shrugged, brushing off Van’s question. “I had a bowl of oatmeal and a banana.”

  “Have you taken your pills?”

  “Yes, Nurse Van. I’ve been a good girl.”

  His gaze sharp
ened, but he didn’t charge at the red bait of sarcasm. Either he’d gotten much better at controlling his temper or I’d lost my touch at cape waving.

  “I had to hire another investigator to get the video I needed for the workman’s comp case,” he said calmly. “Why?”

  “I didn’t have the time. I do have other cases.”

  I shuffled file folders I’d yet to open across my desktop. The fraud perpetrator in this case was a beefy teamster who wouldn’t have taken kindly to being photographed carrying a piano when his back was supposedly too out-of-whack to work. I couldn’t take the risk of being twisted into a pretzel. Not to mention the germ factor in that part of town. I shivered involuntarily.

  “I’ve had a lot of backgrounding to do on the Grenier case. And I need the billable hours to pay the rent,” I said.

  “What about the Pendleton case?” he asked.

  “Noelle’s working on it.” I rearranged my in-basket.

  “What does a secretary know about finding a deadbeat dad?”

  “Everything I do.”

  “Noelle’s tied to the office.” He paused and tented his hands over his lap. “What’s really going on? You procrastinate until I have no choice but to get someone else to do the job. And you take more than enough breaks for both of us—”

  “Got to stop and enjoy life once in a while. You should try it sometime—”

  “But I must admit, when you apply yourself, your work can be exceptional.”

  I jerked forward in my chair, mouth open. “A compliment? From my brother?” I riffled through my agenda to find the day’s date. “Excuse me while I mark the calendar.”

  “I’m trying to be serious here, Sierra.”

  “I know.” Forearms on the desk, I leaned forward and did my best imitation of Van’s scowl. I wanted to hug him to break this awful tension between us. But my family wasn’t the touchy-feely type, and caring was carefully hidden behind criticism. That hadn’t changed with my heart transplant. “That’s the problem with you, Van. You’re much too serious about everything.”

  “Life is serious business. You, of all people, should realize that.” He brushed away imaginary lint from his lapel.

  “Naw, life’s full of possibilities just waiting to be explored.” A year ago I truly would have believed the words spilling automatically from my mouth. Now tension zinged through me, calling me a liar.

  “You’ve never played by the rules.” Van waved vaguely in my direction, indicating my Yankees sweatshirt and faded jeans.

  Everyone had a weakness, and Van’s was propriety. “It’s much harder to catch a crook in action when you stick out like a sore thumb,” I said. “Call it camouflage.”

  “We have an image to protect.” Van’s nostrils flared just enough to please me. Any minute now the steam would follow. A twinge of guilt plucked through me. I flicked it away.

  “How many times must I explain this to you?” Van said. “Our father worked hard to build this firm to what it is today. Family values and propriety are big watchwords these days. A small, general law firm like ours has to capitalize on those family values to thrive.”

  “I’m a private investigator, not a lawyer.” I yawned and stretched my hands behind my head. He should know better than to play word games with me. “And doesn’t winning cases keep this sacred image of yours going?”

  “Yes, but we have a history to live up to. There’s a certain standard, a certain decorum our clients expect from us.”

  “I dress appropriately for the task.” I leaned back in my chair and deliberately planted a scuffed basketball shoe on the desk. “Has anyone complained?”

  Van wrinkled his nose. “Not exactly.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” I snapped down my arms, jolted my foot off the desk and pretended outrage. “Is this about Betsy again?”

  Van’s nostrils widened but he managed to check his temper and keep his voice even. I had to give the guy credit. For a bull seeing red, he wasn’t charging at the cape recklessly.

  “No, it’s not about your van,” Van said. “Although I do wish you would park in the back of the building and not on the street where everyone can see that piece of junk. And don’t try to sidetrack me, either. The problem is that I’m spending too much time worrying about you and covering for you. It has to stop. I can’t bear to watch you waste your second chance at life.”

  “You think I’m wasting my life? You don’t know—”

  He cut off my rant. “I’ll subsidize your share of the rent for one more month and that’s it. If you don’t start pulling your weight, I’ll have to hire someone who will.”

  I cocked my head in stunned disbelief. Because he was my brother, I’d felt safe in Van’s employ. Why the sudden change to tough love? “You’d leave me homeless and jobless?”

  Van waved away my comment. “No, you’d move back home with mother.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “I have partners I have to answer to.” Van’s bullish stubbornness came through in the stern set of his mouth. “I have a business to run.”

  “Moving back home is cruel and unusual punishment, Van.”

  “Nevertheless, I’m still your primary support person. And you’ve proven you can’t handle your job full-time yet. Which means the show runs my way.”

  “Where do you get off telling me how to run my life? I’m doing fine. I don’t need you watching over me every second. The obligation was temporary while I was recovering from the transplant. I set you free.”

  He leaned forward and reached for my hand. “Your nightmares are just dreams, Sierra. They’re not real. You have to get over them and get on with your life.”

  Like a toreador who hadn’t moved fast enough, I lurched as Van’s implied horn gored my side. I snapped my hand from beneath his. Damn you, Van.

  “I can’t believe Dr. Katz broke confidence and called you,” I said.

  “He didn’t call me. I called him.”

  Of all the asinine ideas Van had come up with since he’d assigned himself my primary support person this had to take top prize. Calling my shrink. Spying on me! “That violates my constitutional rights.”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “That doesn’t excuse his actions.” I stared at Van pointedly. “Or yours.”

  Van sighed. “Sierra—”

  “You don’t understand.”

  He thrust his hands forward, palms up. “Then make me.”

  “I see her die every night. Her death wasn’t accidental. It was murder. Someone deliberately ran her car off the road. He stole—”

  “Sierra—”

  I slapped the desktop with both hands. “You weren’t there.”

  Van peered down his nose at me as if I were a witness he’d caught in a lie on the stand. “And you were?”

  I shrugged and spun the chair to face the window. “I’ve tried to explain…”

  “And I’ve run out of options with you. I need to be able to depend on you, or I’m going to have to find another private investigator to handle the firm’s workload.”

  Incredulity stymied me for a moment and I forgot all about wanting to see steam come out Van’s ears. My own brother was really going to fire me. Muscle tension cranked to near breaking, I faced him again. “You think making me pretend I don’t have dreams is going to make them go away? You think pretending I’m the old Sierra will bring her back? Don’t you think I’ve tried? I don’t like who I am any more than you do.”

  Van dismissed my comment with a wave of his hand. “I think concentrating on your job, your family, your friends will do wonders for your sagging spirits. It’s not like you to mope around an office all day. Once you’re active, your nightmares will fade.” His voice softened. “What’s happened to all your energy?”

  “I thought you didn’t like all my ‘energy.’ Suicidal, you used to call me.”

  “Maybe. But there’s a difference between careful and catatonic.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Martindale, for yo
ur expert psychiatric advice.” I rolled the chair forward and gave Van my best intimidating glare. “But you don’t have a stranger’s heart beating in your chest. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “No, I don’t. I just want to see you happy again.”

  I narrowed my gaze and tapped my index finger thoughtfully against my lips. “I could leave, you know. My birthday’s coming up in June. I’ll have my inheritance.”

  “Sure, you could leave and live off your inheritance. But is that what you really want? To spend your life twiddling your thumbs?”

  “I could go someplace where my unique talents would be appreciated and—”

  “What? And prove you still have the guts to investigate?” Van shook his head, girding me with a knowing gaze. “That’s why I’m doing this, Sierra. For your own best interest.” Van rose gracefully for someone with an overfed girth and made his way to the door. “You have a month.”

  The door snicked closed behind him.

  I spun the chair around to face the window. The shadows cutting through my neatly appointed office fell across me like solid bars. My shoulders sagged, and the sadness in my chest weighed like an unfulfilled obligation. The urgency returned. I fought the tears salting my eyes and the restlessness infiltrating my limbs.

  Two floors below, the late-afternoon sunlight gleamed off the black asphalt and cars on the street. Part of me longed to run out into the sunshine, feel the wind on my face as I rushed down a dirt path on my mountain bike, feel the sweat trickle down my back as I zipped on in-line skates, feel adrenaline swamp my body as I parachuted from a Cessna. The taste of action had me salivating as it once had. I hated the fear that robbed me of my identity. Illogical, I know. But then, the definition of fear had everything to do with emotions and little to do with logic.

  Van had backed me into a corner, and I didn’t like cul-de-sacs.

  He was right, though. I hadn’t taken a risk since I’d caught Finn Murdock on tape. Truth was, I was afraid. Afraid to be myself. Afraid to die. But not taking chances wasn’t giving me the security I’d hoped.