Again, he tried to tell himself there were other options. They could flee the country, go to a remote island, and spend the rest of their lives engaging in spectacular bird-watching. Only they couldn’t run forever. This was a stalker none of them would shake. No matter where they hid, Dan’s infamy would find them and he’d be dragged through the mud by the media and the court system. He’d be demonized, found guilty in the court of public opinion before the trial even started. He’d be the man who assaulted the senator’s daughter. It would get very ugly for all of them. If he thought any differently, he’d be a fool. They’d done it to others, to politicians, to CEOs, to athletes, and they’d do it to him. This was the only way, the only escape.
Finally the summit was upon him. The trees cleared and rocky outcroppings populated the road’s edge, forming a natural guardrail. Beyond the rocks, the terrain dropped off in a sharp decline that went on for a couple hundred feet. A light snow fell at this higher altitude and already covered the roadway with a dusting of what could have passed for confectioner’s sugar if it were a make-believe mountain. But this was no fairy-tale road and would lead to no castle with a good king who would save the day.
For the second time in one day, tears formed in Dan’s eyes, blurring the path before him. He dashed them away, but more came and spilled down his cheeks. He didn’t want to spend too much time up here lest he change his mind. This was what had to happen. He was doing the right thing.
To the steering wheel and the dashboard and the snow outside, he said, “I’m doing the right thing. I am.” And when no answer came, no words of confirmation or gentle commiserations, he said to the man in the mirror, “I am. For Sue and the boys. Because I love them too much.”
Then he was there, in the middle of the lane, the man in the black suit, the man with the pocket watch.
Before Dan had time to think or reason, he yanked the wheel to the left to avoid the idiot and swerved into the other lane. The tires slipped along the asphalt, spinning madly, until they finally found some purchase and gripped the road, pushing the heavy vehicle to the right.
Instinctively Dan hit the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left to avoid the embankment, but the tires lost traction again and spun on the freshly fallen snow. The front end pointed at the rocks along the side of the road. The car’s tires hit a small boulder and bumped the vehicle up and over it. The undercarriage scraped violently and groaned. The back wheels caught on the boulder, slowing the vehicle’s momentum but not enough to stop it completely.
Reflexively, Dan hit the gas, sending all four wheels spinning. The rear tires found what they were looking for, lifted the car up and over the rock and down the side of the mountain. For a second the vehicle remained on its wheels, aimed straight down the hill, picking up speed as it careened toward a stand of pines in the distance.
But Dan wasn’t done. His survival meter was maxed out and his will to live erased any other plans he had. Pressing the brake to the floor, he spun the steering wheel left, hoping to counteract the indefatigable power of gravity.
Instead, it caused the vehicle to pitch and roll. The world then went into chaos. Sounds of breaking glass and crunching metal surrounded Dan, pushed in on him, jerked him about. He was in the mouth of a tornado and the tempest was confined to the cabin of the Volvo.
At some point the seat belt snapped loose, and he was tossed around inside the cabin like a rock in a tumbler. This was the end of Dan Blakely; this was what it was like to die, and here, at the end of it all, he regretted what he’d done.
5
The outside world seemed a million miles away, maybe in another solar system, another galaxy. Or maybe it was a fantastical world, that mythological place where the roads were covered with sugar as fine as powder. In the distance a hawk screeched, a terrible sound that pierced the atmosphere like nails on a chalkboard and dashed any hope Dan had of being rescued by a hospitable troupe of dwarves. The car’s engine ticked arrhythmically, and a low irregular wheeze came from somewhere near. Dan Blakely slowly peeled open his eyes and stared at the washboard clouds and falling snow. The hawk circled above him, just a silhouette carving wide, knifelike arcs against the textured, scarred sky.
At first, disorientation clouded Dan’s mind. He didn’t know where he was or how he’d been transported there, but slowly and painfully, like the thawing of frostbitten fingers, reality materialized. He was on his back in the dirt; a rock dug into his right kidney.
Warm, thick liquid oozed into Dan’s eye and colored the world red. He lifted his right hand and wiped the blood away. A nasty gash had split the flesh above his eye. He tried moving his left arm, but it sent searing pain up into his shoulder, as if someone had shoved a white-hot poker along the shaft of the bone. The humerus was bent at a sickening angle just above the elbow, and his forearm and hand had already swelled to twice their normal size.
He tried to pull in a deep breath and discovered the wheezing he’d heard was the sound of his own lungs struggling to fill with air. Pain was there too, stabbing him in the sides with each inhalation. Broken ribs had most likely punctured a lung.
As the cobwebs in Dan’s head cleared, he noticed two things that sent his heart rate into a tailspin bound for doom and destruction. One, the twisted bulk of the Volvo sat squarely on his legs; in fact, the lower half of his body was not even visible. The windows were busted out, the dashboard cracked right in half. One of the tires still turned silently. And two, he had no voluntary control of nor feeling in either of his lower extremities. It was as if they’d been broken clean off and he was now only half the man he’d been at the start of the day. He was trapped and dying with the odor of fuel wafting into his nostrils. He tried to sit but couldn’t, tried to pull his legs but it was futile. There wasn’t a thing he could do but lie there and wait for his body to empty itself of blood or be burned to death in an angry inferno. If given a choice, bleeding to death seemed the less painful way to go.
Dan dropped his head to the hard ground and shut his eyes. Memories reeled through his mind like an old movie clip at double speed. The first time he kissed Sue. They were on the porch swing that hung from the old sycamore in her parents’ backyard. He hadn’t planned to kiss her—he wasn’t that smooth. It just happened. He could still feel her lips on his, taste the salt on them. Man, he loved kissing her, never grew tired of it. She was the first woman he loved . . . and the last.
An image of the boys was there too, standing by the bank of the creek that passed through the field behind their old home, fishing rods in hand. Murphy had caught his first fish there, a little sunny. His eyes got so wide, Dan thought they’d pop out of his head.
“Daddy, look, look, it’s huge!” Murphy held up the line with the sunny dangling on the end, no bigger than a dollar bill and twisting and flipping itself around.
He’d never see his boys again, never hold them or stroke their hair. Never play catch or chase. He’d never kiss Sue again, never feel her body pressed against his. Her laugh would never touch his ears and lighten his mood. Would she ever laugh again? For anyone?
What had he done?
Then he remembered the guy on the road, the man in the suit. Dan had swerved to avoid hitting him, slipped on the snow, careered off the embankment. How he’d gotten there so fast was a mystery but one Dan didn’t want to bother trying to solve right now. He had more important things to think about—like getting help. Like staying alive.
“Hey!” With his damaged lungs and ribs, Dan’s voice was little more than a strained whisper. There was no way anyone would hear him. His only hope was that the man would either call for help or descend the mountain himself and rescue him. But the incline was steep, and black suits and wing tips weren’t exactly anyone’s climbing clothes of choice.
Dan reached for a nearby stick and used it to strike the frame of the car. The sound was not much more than a dead, hollow thump, but it was something and hopefully would alert the man on the road that Dan was still alive, that he’d miraculou
sly survived the wreck. Each effort sent shocks of pain up his right side all the way to his neck, but he had to keep going, keep hitting. Eventually, he stopped to listen and catch his breath, his lungs wheezing like air escaping a balloon.
“Hey! Help.”
The man in the suit would be crazy to not call for help. He had to have witnessed the wreck—he was right there, right in the middle of the road. Unless . . . No, the thought was ridiculous yet demanded to at least be fully formed and considered. Unless he was a hit man of some sort and had been planted there to cause this exact effect. Maybe the senator had even arranged things; maybe he wasn’t the straight shooter Dan had thought he was. Everyone had dirty secrets they kept tucked away in the closet of the soul. He certainly had the clout and money to pull something like this off.
The more he thought about it, the clearer the senator’s evil plot became. Of course, the man was at the campus watching Dan, stalking him, biding his time. When Dan stormed from Gary’s office and headed home, the hit man followed at a safe distance, then followed him to the mountain’s summit. No, he couldn’t have gotten ahead of him that way. He led him to the summit! Dan had always been a very conscientious driver and never failed to use his turn signals with plenty of warning for drivers behind him. The hit man had driven in front of him, watching his signals and making turns before Dan did. Now that he thought about it, he was sure the same black Lincoln was in front of him until . . . until Skyview Drive. He couldn’t be certain of it, of course, because his mind was on so many other things, but he was almost certain, at least 50 percent certain. Once on Skyview, there were no turnoffs, so the man simply drove ahead and waited at the summit for his mark to happen upon him. Whether he planned for the car to do a Bode Miller down the side of the mountain or not was beside the point. He had intended violence and mayhem; he had intended to get rid of Dan in a way that would never implicate Erin or the senator.
More blood leaked into Dan’s eye, and he dropped the stick to smear it away. He cursed himself now for attempting to draw the man’s attention, to make it known he had survived the wreck, and now hoped the hit man’s wing tips found no traction at all in the freshly fallen snow on the hill.
And that’s when he heard the whistling. Faint and distant but a familiar tune, familiar enough that he couldn’t place it, like running into someone you knew but whose name could not be recalled. Gradually, the whistling grew louder as its source approached. Now he could hear footsteps, slipping in the snow and dirt, knocking small stones loose. He couldn’t see up the hill because he was pinned on the downhill side of the car but it was definitely footsteps. Someone was coming. It had to be the man in the suit. The hit man come to finish the job.
Dan said nothing and momentarily thought of making like an opossum and playing dead. But if the hired gun was worth what the senator was paying him—which, no doubt, was a hefty sum—he would finish the job regardless of Dan’s present state. At the very least he would check for a pulse, and when he found one, he would then finish the job in a manner that appeared as though death had been brought on by the crash. He would not quicken death with a slug to the brain; it would be slow and painful for Dan.
The whistling increased until it sounded like it was just on the other side of the twisted pile of metal sitting atop Dan’s legs. The footsteps stopped and all grew silent except the persistent tune, so familiar yet just out of reach, like a nagging, unreachable itch.
Then it came to him. Of course.
The Rolling Stones.
“Time Is on My Side.”
6
The footsteps rounded the vehicle and finally brought the man into view. The man who killed for money and maimed for kicks. Still whistling, he casually approached Dan and squatted next to him. The look on his face was one of indifference, of carefree apathy. Not even a shadow of alarm, of pity or urgency. It was the look of a stone-hearted professional killer if Dan ever saw one, though he’d never seen one before.
The man withdrew from his pocket the watch he’d been looking at on campus. It was silver and ornately engraved with the number 7 on the back of it. Nonchalantly, as casually as if he’d just pulled up to the drive-through of his favorite fast-food joint, he replaced the watch and stopped whistling. His suit was well-pressed and classic in its cut. Expensive, maybe Italian. He wore a white shirt with a thin black tie. On his feet were the polished black wing tips Dan had envisioned, now wet and muddy from his trip down the hill.
The man surveyed the scene, the wreckage, Dan’s broken legs, his mangled arm, the gash above his eye. His face remained expressionless, as if seeing this type of carnage—violence, suffering, death—every day no longer fazed him even the slightest. “Didn’t quite turn out the way you thought it would, huh?”
“Who are you? Who hired you?” Dan knew who’d hired him, of course: one of the Schrivers. The man had no doubt been paid half up front, half upon confirmation of Dan’s most unfortunate and untimely death. He probably had the cash in his pocket now, burning a hole through the silk lining of his expensive suit.
The man pushed a lock of dark hair from his forehead. His eyes were a strikingly bright shade of blue set against skin as pale as milk. “Hired? I work for no one.”
“What do you mean?” Dan’s muscles spasmed, tightened his rib cage, and sent a shock of pain the whole way around his trunk.
“I mean I am employed by no one. I work alone.”
“I thought—”
“Forget what you thought. You’re dying, Dan. I think you know that. What you don’t know is that under all that metal on your legs, your femoral artery is severed and you’re bleeding out.”
But somehow Dan had known it. He could feel his life slipping from his body like air from a punctured tire. If his visitor was a hit man, he’d have to do nothing to dirty his manicured hands; he’d only need to stand by and wait for the last of Dan’s blood to flow from his body.
“You have less than ten minutes to live,” the man continued.
“Help me,” Dan said. “Please.” He thought that maybe he could appeal to the stranger’s sense of pity. Surely he had to have a soul, a heart. He was after all human, and unless he’d been raised by maniacal and abusive parents who had kept him locked in a room and let out only long enough to both verbally and physically beat him, he had experienced some happiness in his lifetime, had cared for something, had felt for someone. There had to be a shred of humanness left in him.
The man patted Dan’s shoulder. “You’re in luck, my friend.” He smiled wide and it was a genuine smile. “Because time is on my side.”
“What do you mean?” The man made no sense.
“I have a gift for you, Daniel Blakely, a second chance, if you wish. I’m going to give you the opportunity to live a little longer.” He looked at his fingers as if inspecting his carefully trimmed nails. “Funny how everything changes when your time is up, isn’t it? When you’re this close—” he held his thumb and index finger a half inch apart—“to the end and can feel the life slipping from your body, fading like vapor disappearing into the atmosphere. Things change, don’t they? It’s as if the veil has been thrown back and you can finally see clearly.”
“What are you getting at?”
“My gift, Danny. My gift. I’m getting to it. I’m going to extend your life seven more hours. You can relive any seven hours from your past or spend the next seven hours right here, waiting for help to come. But either way, at the end you’ll be forwarded through time—” he drew an arc in the air with his index finger—“to the moment of your death.”
Either the man was a hired gun and was just having some last-minute fun with his mark, the kind of amusement only heartless killers could enjoy, or he was plumb nuts and was no hit man at all but rather a narcissistic maniac who believed himself a god.
“You’re crazy.” Dan’s only other thought was that he was hallucinating, that the trauma his body had suffered, the stress it was under, had caused the synapses in his brain to misfire and
concoct an image of this man, the man he’d seen on campus.
“Oh, I’m not crazy. Quite the opposite actually. I’m probably the most sane thing in your life right now.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Thomas Constant.” The man stuck out his hand, looked at Dan’s bloody and dirty hand, then withdrew the offer of geniality. “So what’ll it be?”
“What if I don’t want to play your game?”
Constant shrugged. “That’s your choice. But please know, this is no game. It’s quite serious actually. Of course, you can choose to do nothing and die. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
It was what Dan wanted, or at least what he thought he wanted. He had enough life insurance that Sue and the boys could stay in the house and get out of debt. She would be okay and wouldn’t have to worry about money for a very long time.
Constant slipped the watch from his pocket and glanced at it. “Time keeps ticking forward, Danny. It waits for no one. And your time is almost up. I need an answer.”
The way Dan saw it, he had two choices: lie there and die a slow, lonely death or take this Constant fellow up on his ridiculous offer. He was now convinced Thomas Constant was nothing more than a raving lunatic, but he had nothing to lose by playing along.
A bolt of pain shot up Dan’s back and landed in his skull. A pounding headache set in, throbbing out a steady rhythm like a primal war drum calling the demons of death. Like a ceiling breaking free from its support beams, the sky suddenly grew darker and loomed closer. Snow landed lightly on Dan’s face; he licked the wetness from his lips. He was so thirsty. The sound of his own breath, that raspy, labored breathing, faded to a whisper.
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