Swerve

by Inglath Cooper

  But today, today, Mia had seen Emory smile at something Grace’s mother said to her about a book she’d just finished reading. She really couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Emory smile out of the blue like that. Had it been before their parents were killed? She tried to think of when the last time would be, but all she could come up with were memories of when she was really little and Emory was a teenager. Maybe it had been the time she had let Mia try on her makeup, watching as she applied it herself and ended up looking more like a clown than the high-fashion model she’d been attempting to look like.

  She decided then that it didn’t matter when exactly. She was just glad to think that Emory might be happy again. Because if she could be happy, then maybe Mia could be too. Maybe that would make it all right not to feel guilty.

  “Your sister’s really pretty,” Grace said from her spot beside Mia on the dock.

  Mia dragged her toes through the warm lake water and said, “A lot prettier than I’ll ever be.”

  “You’re pretty too,” Grace said.

  “Thanks,” Mia said. “But Emory looks like our mom. And she was beautiful.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “I miss her and my dad. But sometimes, I wonder if my memories about them are real. Or if they’re just dreams I’ve had.”

  “I bet they’re real,” Grace said.

  “It scares me that they’ll all go away. And I won’t have anything of them left.”

  Grace went quiet for a few moments, and then, “Maybe you could think of some special memories and go through them every now and then. Sort of like practicing the memories so they stay strong.”

  Mia glances at Grace and says, “You’re really smart.”

  Grace shrugs. “I’ve thought about how hard it must be for you and Emory. Not to have your parents, I mean.”

  “Maybe it’s been harder for Emory than for me,” she said, glancing at her sister who is still talking with Grace’s mom. “She kind of had to grow up overnight.”

  “She sure does love you,” Grace said.

  “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to me if Emory hadn’t been my sister.”

  “Well, she is, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

  The two girls sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, glad for their friendship. At ten, Mia didn’t take any of the people in her life for granted. She knew how one day everything seemed like it would last forever, and the next it could all go away.

  “Wanna swim?” Grace asked, getting up from the dock and shucking off her jean shorts.

  “Sure,” Mia said, pulling off her coverup.

  “One, two, three,” Grace said. “Here I go!”

  Mia watched as Grace dove headfirst into the water. She glanced at the life jackets a few feet away and then at Emory whose back was to her. She knew the rule was that she always had to wear a life jacket in the lake, but Grace hadn’t, and just this once wouldn’t hurt anything.

  Wanting to jump in before Emory spotted her, Mia dove headfirst into the blue green water just out from the dock.

  It felt amazing, cutting through the surface. She felt herself going down, down, down. She hadn’t meant to dive so hard. Fear shot through her, and she wished she hadn’t jumped off. Her head hit the bottom of the lake, and she opened her mouth in a scream, instantly choking on the water that started filling her lungs.

  Disoriented, she tried to swim up but found herself hitting the dirt floor again.

  Panic grabbed her by the throat, and the desire to breathe was almost more than she could resist. Her lungs felt like they had been pumped full of water, her chest so tight that she feared it would rip open beneath the pressure.

  She began to flail with her arms and legs, her mind screaming with fear. She found the bottom of the lake with her feet and pushed off, reaching for the surface, for air.

  She felt the hand grab her arm, and instead of latching on and letting it pull her to the top, she began to fight. Her lungs felt as if they were on fire. She kicked in an effort to break through the surface, grabbing onto the waist of the person trying to help her.

  She opened her eyes and in the murky water could make out the pattern of Emory’s bathing suit. It took a few seconds for Mia to realize she was preventing her sister from getting them to the top. She forced herself to quit fighting even though her brain screamed for her to climb over Emory.

  They broke the surface then, and Mia could hear Emory coughing and gasping. And then she was coughing too, so hard that it felt as if her insides would come up through her throat.

  She locked her arms around Emory’s neck, holding on so tight that she pushed her sister beneath the surface.

  Others were in the water now, Grace’s mother, wearing a life jacket, and Grace, also wearing one. They each grabbed Mia’s arms, pulling her away from Emory and dragging her toward the dock.

  Mia was aware of Emory resurfacing, coughing and gasping. Every instinct screamed for her to continue fighting, but she was too exhausted. She let herself be dragged to the shore where Grace and her mom pulled her onto the sand. Grace’s mom dove back into the water, swimming toward Emory and then helping her back to safety.

  Once Emory was on the ground beside her, Grace’s mom ran back to the dock, and Mia could hear her calling 911, pleading with the operator to send someone quickly.

  Mia was so spent she could barely hold her eyes open. But she could see Emory’s face through her squint, how pale she was and the way her chest heaved for air. Another kind of fear swept over her then, and she reached for her sister’s hand, realizing that in addition to nearly drowning herself, she had almost drowned Emory.

  “I’m sorry, Em,” she said in a barely audible voice. “You saved me. I—”

  “Shh,” Emory soothed, linking their fingers together. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”

  Mia wanted to thank her, but she couldn’t force another word past her lips. She lay there, staring at her sister, imagining what would have happened if she had not come to her rescue, knowing she would now be on the bottom of the lake, staring straight up with her eyes open but unseeing.

  ~

  IT’S THIS IMAGE that brings Mia upright from her position on the cold, stone floor. A scream is stuck in her throat, and she can’t draw air into her lungs.

  It was a dream. She’d been sleeping.

  But the sensation of not being able to breathe is the same as the one she’d known drowning in that lake all those years ago. She opens her mouth and forces air in, grateful for the fact that she’s not filling her lungs with water, but oxygen.

  She presses her hands into the concrete, her back screaming now from her sleeping position on the hard floor. No blanket, no pillow, just the cold floor.

  Tears well in her eyes, slide down her face, even as she hates herself for them. Something tells her this is what they want. They want her to break. To stop fighting. Accept whatever it is they have in store for her.

  She wonders if Grace is nearby. Has she stopped fighting?

  Is it inevitable? Can someone break your will simply by being determined to hold out longer than you?

  She wonders how many days it has been since she’s had food. The water comes through the window in the door at what seems like regular intervals. Just enough each time to keep her mouth from drying up to the point that she can’t swallow.

  She wonders if this tomb they have created for her is a slowed-down version of drowning. She thinks about the bottom of that lake, the terror she’d felt in imagining that she would find death there.

  She feels the same terror now for the thought that she might find it here, in this dungeon-like room. She forces herself then to think of what Emory would do. Pictures her sister diving off the dock that July day to save her with no thought as to her own endangerment.

  Is Emory looking for her now?

  Of course she is.

  Mia knows her sister. Knows how devoted she is.

  Even if she doesn’t deserve that de
votion.

  Mia feels a bone-deep shame for the way in which she’s taken that devotion for granted. She vows then and there that if she makes it out of here alive, she will never again take Emory’s love for granted.

  Loneliness hits her like concrete being poured onto her chest. She starts to cry, even though she hates the undeniable evidence of her own weakness.

  “Please don’t give up on me, Emory,” she says out loud. “Please keep looking. I don’t want to die here. Please don’t give up on me.”

  Laughter echoes from the other side of the door, sending a chill up Mia’s spine. A woman’s laugh. Amused. Indulgent?

  Mia wraps her arms around her knees and covers her head with her arms. She will not cry. She will not. She. Will. Not.

  The Proprietor

  “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”

  —Ernest Hemingway

  APPARENTLY, THE GIRL hasn’t spotted the camera tucked behind the air vent in the ceiling.

  She stands outside the door and listens to the silence the young girl has forced herself into. She studies her on the small screen attached to the door.

  Tough, this one.

  She doesn’t mind that. In the long run, the girl will last far beyond those who give in early on. From an investment point of view, this is far preferable.

  So much goes into the initial process. The breaking down of the will. Time being the most precious resource, of course. In these first days, the world is still looking for them, tracing every possible clue, connection, lead.

  But she’s seen the timeline often enough to know what begins to happen when the connections fall through, the leads don’t pan out.

  The girl is right to worry.

  Whoever Emory is, whatever role she plays in the girl’s life, her commitment to finding her will start to wilt like cut flowers in a glass vase. No matter how much you replenish the water, place them in a stream of sunlight, the flowers will die. Cut off from their life source, death is inevitable.

  And so is the original charge of determination so admirable in the families of the abducted. Hope is their life source, and when that begins to fade, the fire of their commitment reduces from flame to spark to cinder.

  But the girl can’t know that. And so she will continue counting on rescue. Holding onto her resistance, as if her family will be able to feel that, to know that she is waiting on them to come for her, that she will never give in to what is expected of her here.

  There is a very different truth awaiting her though.

  She walks to the end of the hall, stares at the monitor on the door and the very different picture provided to her here.

  The other girl is eating from the plate of food brought to her this morning. Two large, glazed donuts and a tall glass of milk. Her expression is one of extreme gratitude, and she can see the girl has already begun the descent into submission.

  Very good.

  Soon enough, this one will be ready to release from the trap and introduce to her new world.

  She glances down the hall at the other door. Her friend will take a bit longer. But she’ll get there. Eventually, they always do.

  Knox

  “But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.”

  —John Donne

  IT’S THE SECOND time he’s been called into Chief Parker’s office in as many days, and no one needs to tell him there’s not going to be a positive outcome.

  Knox takes a seat in front of the chief’s desk. “You wanted to see me?”

  “I tried,” she says, giving him a long, assessing look. “There’s video, apparently.”

  This gets his attention. “What do you mean?”

  “There was a camera in the apartment. In the bedroom to be exact. Apparently, Senator Hagan was on to his wife’s philandering.”

  He knows this should bother him, wonders why it doesn’t. He weighs how to answer. “And?”

  “I was told to fire you. From high enough up that I’m risking my own position to debate that decision.”

  “So why would you debate it?” he asks without letting his eyes waver from hers.

  “I have no idea. But there’s something I know about you, Helmer. I just don’t know the why.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you start getting a little too good at something, you hijack it with self-sabotage.”

  He tries not to roll his eyes. “Was a psych degree a prerequisite for your job, Chief?”

  “No,” she says evenly. “But I know what it takes to make it to the level you reached as a SEAL. Creative thinking and teamwork under ridiculously high-stress and high-risk situations. Most of the missions you were a part of probably made what you do here look like child’s play. Are you bored, Helmer?”

  “No, ma’am,” he says quietly.

  “You’re up for a promotion.”

  “It wasn’t my intention to mess that up.”

  “You sure about that?”

  He starts to nod, then stops himself because, all of a sudden, he isn’t sure at all. Does he really want this job? Is this where he’d imagined himself ending up?

  He’s been with the department for four years, seen most every twisted crime the city’s been able to throw out and, until now, hasn’t questioned whether this is where he belongs or not.

  “I don’t know,” he says quietly.

  “Well, maybe this is your chance to figure it out. Higher-ups have agreed to six weeks suspension without pay. That’s the best I could do. Why don’t you take the time to figure out whether or not you want to come back?”

  “Guess there’s no changing your mind,” he says.

  “It’s not up to me,” she answers.

  He stands, pushing aside his own self-flagellation long enough to show appreciation. “Thanks, Chief. I don’t deserve your loyalty.”

  “You could change that if you wanted to.”

  He doesn’t share her optimism.

  “Give John your notes on the Benson-Marshall case. I’ll see you in six weeks.”

  At his desk, he opens drawers, pulling out anything that seems necessary to his surviving his time away. There isn’t much, but he throws what there is into a leather backpack and heads for the elevator without letting himself meet eyes with anyone he’ll have to offer an explanation to.

  It’s only after the doors slide closed that he slams a palm against the side wall.

  The Senator

  “Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts. Perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”

  —John Steinbeck

  IT PAID TO have friends in law enforcement. Or at least people there who were a little afraid to cross him.

  He could have gotten Helmer fired. But that was the kind of thing that created permanent enemies. He made a policy of avoiding that when possible. The suspension was good enough. He’d been right about the military background. Navy SEAL, in fact. The detective probably thought he deserved the suspension. Man of honor and all that.

  At least he’s not likely to have a second go-round with Savannah. And if he does, well, he can come up with something worse than getting fired. Anyway, he has bigger things on his plate to deal with right now.

  A knock sounds at the office door. He closes the file he’d made on Helmer and slides it inside his desk drawer. “Come in.”

  The door opens, and Will Arrington steps into the room. He’s dressed in a crisp Armani suit, his style as effortless as it is enviable. “You wanted to see me, Senator?”

  “I did. Thanks for giving me a few minutes. Come in. Sit down.”

  At age thirty-one, Will Arrington is the youngest elected member of the Senate. He’d graduated at the top of his Harvard class and makes every decision put before him as if the survival of America depends on it. With his GQ good looks and Upper East Side enunciation, he’s received more requests for appearances on MSNBC than most of the other senators comb
ined. And he takes it all in stride, as if it is his birthright.

  Tom pushes aside the unproductive resentment and says, “Will, I wanted to talk with you about the upcoming vote on that expedited DNA analysis.”

  Will takes a seat in the chair closest to the desk. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees, his expression one of deep concentration. “I read through the company presentation again. Have to say I still have some reservations.”

  Tom tries not to exhale the sigh threatening to rise up out of him. “What reservations?” he asks, keeping his voice as even and light as possible.

  “The reliability of the results, actually. Previous methods proved their accuracy. And because DNA evidence can send a man or woman to prison or free them, our decision seems a critical one.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Tom says, leaning back in his chair and making a tent of his fingers. “That’s why I met a third time with experts from DNA Answers. They are cutting edge. And I believe several steps ahead of the next company in line.”

  “I wish I could agree.”

  The two men meet eyes, and not for the first time, Tom wonders if all is as it appears with young Senator Arrington. If his agenda is as pure as it is presented to be. Somehow, some way, he’s going to have to convince him to vote for this bill. He thinks of his last meeting with the founder of DNA Answers. Of the Cayman account in which he will find a transfer of funds, significant funds, if he can bring Arrington to a yes vote.

  He’d like to think he has the time to bring him around the old-fashioned way, some long conversations over a few lunches in the Senate dining room. But the vote is coming up, and he doesn’t have that kind of time. No, he’ll have to settle for another method of bringing Arrington around to his way of thinking.