The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2019 by Michael Koryta
Cover design by Allison J. Warner
Cover photographs: Paper Boat Creative / Getty Images (eyes); Sylvia Cook / Arcangel Images (trees)
Author photograph by Jonathan Mehring
Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN 978-0-316-29395-2
E3-20190410-DANF
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One: Ignition 1
2
3
Part Two: Locked In 4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Part Three: On the Back Roads 19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
Part Four: Exit Lanes 35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Part Five: The Long Way Home 45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
Acknowledgments
Also by Michael Koryta
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Part One
Ignition
1
Nineteen minutes before her brain and her body parted ways, Tara Beckley’s concern was the cold.
First night of October, but as the sun set and the wind picked up, it felt like midwinter, and Tara could see her breath fogging the air. That would have been crisp New England charm on another night, but not this one, when she wore only a thin sweater over a summer-weight dress. Granted, she hadn’t expected to be standing in the cold, but she had a commitment to deliver one Professor Amandi Oltamu from dinner to his keynote presentation, and the professor was pacing the parking lot of the restaurant they’d just left, alternately staring into the darkness and playing with his phone.
Tara tried to stay patient, shivering in that North Atlantic night wind that swept leaves off the trees. She needed to get moving, and not just because of the cold. Oltamu had to arrive at 7:45, and precisely 7:45, because the Hammel College conference was coordinated by a pleasant woman named Christine whose eyes turned into dark daggers if the schedule went awry. And Professor Oltamu—sorry, Dr. Oltamu, he was one of those prigs who insisted on the title even though he wasn’t a medical doctor, just another PhD—occupied the very first position in the program of Christine with the Dagger Eyes, and thus he was worthy of more daggers. It was, after all, opening night of the whole silly academic show.
“We have to go, sir,” Tara called to the good doctor. He lifted a hand, asking for another minute, and studied the blackness. Pre-speech jitters? Couldn’t he at least have those indoors?
Conference coordinator Christine and every other faculty member and student who’d attended the kickoff dinner for Hammel’s imitation TED Talks were already long gone, leaving Tara alone with Dr. Oltamu in the restaurant parking lot. He was an odd man who seemed like a collection of mismatched parts—his voice was steady but his posture was tense, and his eyes were nervous, flicking around the parking lot as if he were confused by it.
“I don’t mean to rush you, but we really—”
“Of course,” he said and walked briskly to the car. She’d expected him to ride shotgun, but instead he pushed aside her yoga mat and a stack of books and settled into the back. Good enough. At least she could turn on the heater.
She got behind the wheel, started the car, and glanced in the mirror. “All set, Dr. Oltamu?” she asked with a smile intended to suggest that she knew who he was and what he did when in truth she hadn’t the faintest idea.
“All set” came the answer in the chipper, slightly accented, but perfectly articulated English of this man who was originally from…Sudan, was it? Nigeria? She couldn’t recall. She’d seen his bio, of course—Christine made sure that the student escorts were equipped with head shots and full bios of the distinguished speakers they’d be picking up throughout this week of grandeur, when Hammel College sought to bring some of the world’s finest minds to its campus. The small but tony liberal arts school in southern Maine was just close enough to Boston to snag some of the Harvard or MIT speakers looking for extra paid gigs, and that looked great in the brochures to donors and prospective students alike. You needed to get the big names, and Hammel managed to, but Dr. Oltamu wasn’t one of them. There was a reason he was batting leadoff instead of cleanup.
This was Tara’s second year serving on the student welcoming committee, but it was also her last, because she was close to an exit. She’d taken extra classes in the summers and was set to jet in December, although she could attend the official graduation day in May. She hoped to be immersed in bigger and better things by May, but who knew, maybe by then she would want to return. That wasn’t hard to imagine. In fact, she was already nostalgic about Hammel, because she knew this was her last taste of it. Last autumn in Maine, last parties, last midterms, last of a lot of things.
“We are good on time, yes?” Dr. Oltamu said. He checked an impressive gold watch on his left wrist, a complement to his fine suit, if only the fine suit had actually fit him. It seemed he’d ignored tailoring, and as a result he would be presenting his speech in the sartorial equivalent of an expensive hand-me-down from a taller, leaner brother.
Presenting his speech about…
Damn all, what does he do?
“We’ll be just fine,” she said. “And I can’t wait to hear your presentation tonight.”
Presentation on…
“There is a planned route?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“From the restaurant to the theater. Everyone would drive the same way?”
“Uh, yeah. I mean, as far as I know.”
“Can we go a different way?”
She frowned. “Pardon?”
“Give me the Tara tour,” he said, turning back around and offering a smile that seemed forced. “I’d like to see your favorite places in the community.”
“Um…well, I need to get you there on time, but…sure.” The request was bizarre, but playing tour guide wouldn’t slow her down. In fact, she knew exactly where she would take him—down to the old railroad bridge where she ran almost every morning and where, if she timed it right, she could feel as if she were racing the train itself. That bridge over the Willow River was one of her favorite places on earth.
“It is very beautiful here,” Oltamu said as she drove.
Indeed it was. While Tara had applied exclusively to southern schools for her graduate program in a concerted effort to bust out of Maine before another February snagged her in its bleak grasp, she would miss the town. The campus was small but appealing, with the right blend of ancient academic limestone towers and contemporary labs; the faculty was good, the setting idyllic. Tonight they’d gone to a fine restaurant on a high plateau above town, and as she followed the winding roads back toward the sea, she was struck by her affection for this town of tidy Colonial homes on large, sloping lawns backed up against forested mountains that provided some of the best hiking you could ever hope to find. The fall chill was in the air, and that meant that woodstoves and fireplaces were going. This blend of colored leaves against a sunset yielding to darkness redolent with woodsmoke was what she loved about New England—the best time of day at the best time of year. She left her window cracked as she drove, not wanting to seal out that perfect autumn scent.
Dr. Oltamu had turned around and was staring behind them again, as if the rear window were the only one with a view. He’d been respectful but reserved at dinner, which was one of the reasons she couldn’t remember what in the world he was there to speak about.
Oil? Energy crisis? No…
They wound down the mountain and into town. There was the North Woods Brewing Company on the left, a weekend staple for her, and there was the store where she’d bought her first skis, which had led to her first set of crutches, and there, down the hill and past the Catholic church and closer to the harbor, was Garriner’s, which had been serving the best greasy-spoon breakfast in town for sixty years. Down farther was the harbor itself, the water the color of ink now but a stunning cobalt at sunrise. Along this stretch were the few bars that Hammel could claim as its nightlife, though to most people they were nothing but pregame venues—the serious drinking was done at house parties. It wasn’t a big school, and it wasn’t a big town, but it was pleasant and peaceful, absolutely no traffic tonight as she drove toward the auditorium where Dr. Oltamu would address the crowd about…
Climate change?
“Lovely place,” Oltamu said, facing forward again. “So charming.”
“It was the perfect college town for me,” she said, and she realized with some surprise that she wasn’t just delivering the student-tour-guide shtick. She meant it. She could see the area just as he did: bucolic, quaint. A town designed for a college, a place for young adults to bump up against the real world, every experience there for the taking but with a kinder, gentler feel than some of the large campuses she’d visited.
“It is truly excellent when one finds where one belongs,” Dr. Oltamu said as Tara drove away from the harbor. The car climbed and then descended into the valley, where the campus waited across the Willow River.
Oltamu was gazing behind them again.
“I’m looking forward to your talk tonight,” she tried once more. Your talk about…artificial intelligence?
“I appreciate that, but I’m afraid I’ll surely bore you,” he said with a small laugh.
Come on, gimme some help here, Doc. “What’s the most exciting part of your work in your opinion, then?” she asked. A pathetic attempt, but now she was determined to win the war. She would figure out what he did without stooping to ask him flat-out.
He paused, then said, “Well, the Black Lake is certainly intriguing. I’ve just come from there, actually. A fascinating trip. But I doubt there are many creative-writing majors who are fascinated by batteries.”
There it was! Batteries! He designed some sort of solar panels and batteries that were supposed to save fuel consumption and, thus, the earth. You know, trivial shit.
Tara was embarrassed that she hadn’t been able to remember this on her own, especially since he’d somehow remembered her major from the chaotic introductions at the restaurant. Then again, he had a point—batteries were not an area of particular fascination for her. But you never knew. There was, as her favorite writing professor always said, a story around every corner.
“Where is Black Lake?” she asked, but he’d shifted away yet again and was staring intently out the back window. A vehicle had appeared in her rearview mirror in a sudden glare of lights and advanced quickly, riding right up along her bumper, its headlights shining down into the CRV, and she pumped the brake, annoyed. The taller vehicle—a truck or a van—backed off.
Tara drove beneath a sugar maple that was shedding its leaves, a cascade of crimson whispering across the hood, bloodred and brittle. No matter what warm and beautiful beach was within walking distance of wherever she was next year, she would miss autumn here. She understood that it was supposed to be a somber season, of course, that autumn leaves meant the end of something, but so far in her life, it had marked only beginnings; each fall brought another birthday, a new teacher and classmates, sometimes new schools, new friends, new boyfriends. She loved fall precisely for the way it underscored that sense of change. Change, for Tara Beckley, twenty-two years old as of a week ago, had always been a good thing.
She crested the hill, made the steep descent down Knowlton Street, and turned onto Ames Road, a residential stretch. The headlights behind them vanished, and Dr. Oltamu faced forward again.
She was just about to repeat her question—Where is Black Lake?—when he spoke.
“Why so dark?”
“Pardon?”
“The street is very dark.”
He wasn’t wrong. Ames Road was unusually dark.
“There was some fight with the property owners over light pollution,” she said, a vague memory of the article in the student newspaper coming back to her. “They put in new street lamps, but they had to be dim.”
She flicked on her high beams, illuminating another swirl of rust-colored leaves stirring in the road.
“I see. Now, Hammel is a walking campus, I understand? Things are close together?”
“Yes. In fact, we’re coming up to a place where I run every morning. Almost every morning at least, unless there’s a big exam or…something.” Something like a hangover, but she didn’t want to mention that to the good doctor. “There’s an old bridge down here that crosses from campus into town, and it’s for pedestrians and cyclists only. There’s a railroad bridge next to it. In the morning, if I get up early enough, I can run with the train. I race it.” She gave a self-conscious laugh.
In the darkness below, the old railroad bridge threw spindly shadows across the Willow River. Beside it, separated by maybe twenty feet, was the new pedestrian and cycling bridge, part of a pathway system that wound through the campus and town. Tara started to turn left at the last intersection above the bridge, but Oltamu spoke up.
“May we stop and walk?” he said.
It was such an odd and abrupt request that it took her a moment to respond. “I can show you around after your talk, but they’ll kill me if I get you there late.”
“I would very much like to walk,” he said, an
d his voice now matched his tense posture. “It’s my knee. Stiffens up and then I’m in terrible pain. Distracting pain.”
“Um…” She glanced at the clock, doing the math and trying to imagine how she might explain this to Christine.
“Please,” he said. In the mirror, the whites of his eyes stood out starkly against his dark face. “You said the bridge goes to campus, correct?”
“Yes, but we’d really be pushing it for time. I can’t get you there late.”
He leaned forward. “I would very much like to walk,” he said again. “I would like to see the bridge. I will make it clear to anyone involved that this was my delay. But I walk quickly.”
Even with that bad knee? “Sure,” she said, because she was now more alarmed by the strange urgency in his request than by the specter of an angry Christine. “We can walk.”
She eased the car down the hill, toward the old railroad bridge and the new footbridge. A dozen angled parking spaces waited beside a pillar with a plaque identifying the railroad bridge’s historical significance. The spots were all empty now, but in the morning you’d see people piling out of their cars with dogs on leashes, or removing bikes from racks.
She pulled into one of the angled spaces, and Dr. Oltamu was out of the car almost before it was parked. He stood with his back to the river and the campus and stared up the hill. Everything there was lost to darkness. He’d wanted to see the bridge; now he faced the other way. He’d been worried about time; now he wanted to walk. He had a bad knee; now he craved exercise.
“Why don’t we head across the bridge, sir,” she said. But he ignored her, took his cell phone from his pocket, and beckoned for her.
“May we take a picture together? I’ve been asked to use social media. You know…for a broader reach. I am told photos are best for engagement. So may I? You are my Hammel escort, after all.”
She didn’t love the way he said escort, but she also wasn’t going to be shy about putting an elbow into his windpipe if he tried to grab her ass or something, so she said, “Sure,” and then leaned awkwardly toward him for the photo—head close, ass away—and watched their image fill the screen of his iPhone. The phone seemed identical to hers, but the camera function was different; the screen was broken into a grid of squares. He tilted the phone in a way that centered Tara in the frame, and her smile grew more pained and she started to pull away as he snapped the photo. He didn’t touch her, though, didn’t say anything remotely lewd, just a polite “Thank you very much,” and then he turned his attention to the screen, tapping away as if he intended to crop, edit, and post the photo immediately.
If She Wakes Page 1
