by Diane Capri
A fully loaded eighteen-wheel automobile carrier passed her in the left lane, moving much too fast for the conditions, rocking her little car on its springs and spraying a solid sheet of water onto the windshield in its wake. The Toyota’s overmatched wipers worked at clearing it all away, the rapid whup-whup-whup of the wiper blades trying to lull Lisa back into the state of intense drowsiness she was trying so hard to avoid
Lisa’s gaze snapped immediately into focus as her car plunged into a long, deep, and nearly invisible pool of black water stretching into the travel lane. Instantly the car began to hydroplane. She wrenched the wheel to the left as the Toyota slewed out of control toward the guardrail, water splashing in massive fountain-like arcs outward from both sides of the vehicle.
She knew enough not to hit the brakes, although the temptation to stomp on them was almost overwhelming. Instead, she concentrated on steering out of the slide, allowing the car’s momentum to slow on its own. She held her breath as the guardrail crept closer and closer. After seconds that felt like hours, the Toyota was back under control, and Lisa gradually began to increase her speed. She checked her mirrors and then angled out of the breakdown lane.
Chuckling nervously and breathing hard, Lisa muttered, “Well, at least now I’ll be wide awake for a while. Nothing like the occasional near-death experience to give you a jolt of adrenaline!”
She was no longer drowsy but still longed to be home with Nick, couldn’t wait to be in his arms. A Pentagon auditor, Lisa spent every Monday through Thursday in Washington away from her husband, who was forced to stay alone at the couple’s Merrimack, New Hampshire, house. Nick was employed as an air traffic controller at one of the busiest airports in the country, unable to relocate to a city nearly five hundred miles away.
At the close of administrative hours at the Pentagon every Thursday, Lisa’s standard routine was to eat dinner in a small café a few blocks from the mammoth office building and wait for the Beltway area traffic congestion to ease. Then she would hit the road in her trusty Toyota, which was only three years old but which had already racked up well over 150,000 miles. She would work her way up Interstate 95 to New England, then zigzag various interstate highways to Route 3 into New Hampshire, eventually reuniting with the other half of her tiny family. Lisa’s ten-hour workdays Monday through Thursday allowed her to spend a couple of full days every weekend with Nick.
It certainly wasn’t the perfect arrangement. Making a marriage work was enough of a strain for a husband and wife who were together every day, but the challenges faced by a couple forced to spend nearly three quarters of their lives apart sometimes seemed insurmountable.
The Jensens had been enduring exactly that situation, though, for most of their married life, and the plan was to continue in a similar fashion for several more years. By then they estimated they would have enough money set aside for Lisa to quit her job and stay at home to raise a family full-time. That was the theory, anyway. At moments like this, she wondered about the wisdom of The Plan, but the prospect of that happy family, complete with two or three children running around their home, was the carrot dangling on the end of the stick that kept her going even when things were the most difficult.
As she drove, Lisa’s mind wandered inexorably back to the mess she had somehow gotten mixed up in at work, to the intrigue that seemed to reverberate within the dozens of miles of passageways running through the Pentagon. She wished she could discuss it with Nick. She hated deceiving him, but knew in her heart it was best to keep him in the dark, even though he was a valuable sounding board and never failed to give her good advice when she asked for it—and sometimes even when she didn’t.
She wondered what a relationship expert would say about the fact that she was how hiding things from her husband, the person with whom she was supposed to have a closer relationship than anyone else in the world. After all, everyone knew honesty was the foundation of a good marriage. Lisa chewed on her lower lip, a habit she had developed as a youngster when confronted with stress. Hiding things from Nick. She detested the idea and considered what it said about her.
Ensuring Nick’s safety was paramount, though, and Lisa’s work situation was potentially explosive, even when compared with the enormity of some of the other secrets held inside the walls of the massive Pentagon building.
As hard as it was for her to believe, there seemed to be the very real possibility of people getting hurt or even killed because of her discovery. Hell, killing seemed to be the whole point of it, and she was determined not to do or say anything that might put Nick’s life at risk. Lisa pursed her lips and shook her head firmly as she drove, trying to bury the small nugget of guilt eating away at her insides.
This afternoon Lisa had come to the conclusion that it was time to involve her supervisor. She had been dealing with the situation on her own for the last two weeks, quietly digging, searching for evidence of a serious—perhaps even treasonous—criminal conspiracy.
Against her better judgment, Lisa had agreed to allow Nelson W. Michaels, one of the men she suspected of heavy involvement in the activity, an opportunity to explain himself when she returned to D.C. next week. The evidence she had uncovered against Michaels was so damaging that it could ruin Nelson’s life. She knew she would never be able to look herself in the mirror every day if she allowed a man’s career to be destroyed without first giving him the chance to prove his innocence.
But there was a lot of evidence. Some of it was tucked securely away in the hard drive of her laptop, the one she was careful to keep in her possession at all times when she was at work. The rest was stowed safely in the back of the walk-in closet of their home in Merrimack. Lisa had stacked it all behind a pile of sweaters and parkas. Attempting to safeguard the evidence in her office at the Pentagon would be foolhardy, even if it were kept under lock and key, and the same thing went for trying to hide it in the studio apartment she rented outside D.C. There simply wasn’t any place to secure enough to conceal the papers in the three tiny rooms.
She didn’t like the idea of storing potentially dangerous material in their home, but she reasoned that it would be there for only a few more days. Besides, what was the likelihood that anyone searching for the evidence would even know she had a husband and a home in New Hampshire, anyway?
Lisa sighed. She couldn’t wait for Monday, when she could haul everything back down to D.C. and dump it all into her boss’s lap. She would leave it up to him to figure out how to pursue the investigation. The implications of her discovery, if correct, were far above her pay grade. She decided to schedule a consultation with her supervisor immediately following her planned meeting with Nelson Michaels Monday morning. If by some miracle Nelson was able to convince her that her concerns were groundless, she would simply cancel the meeting and appear silly in her boss’s eyes. She wouldn’t mind that in the least.
By now Lisa had nearly completed the long drive home. It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and she had been so wrapped up in the consideration of her work situation that the miles had flown by. She knew Nick would be waiting up for her, a cup of steaming tea in one hand and some sexy lingerie he had picked out for her in the other. “To get to know each other again,” he would say with a mischievous smile, in what had become a part of their weekly routine they both looked forward to.
Lisa smiled at the picture in her head and accelerated through the traffic light at the end of the long, winding off-ramp leading from the highway to the surface streets of Merrimack. It was still pouring; to Lisa’s amazement the rain had gotten heavier over the course of the last eight hours as the storm moved up the East Coast and gained in intensity. She stopped at the red light, even though it was ludicrous to think that any other cars would be out at this late hour, especially in such miserable weather.
She pulled through the intersection when the traffic light flashed green, planning to make a left turn toward her home. As she did, her side window was filled with the bright white headlights of an eightee
n-wheel semi hauling beer from the Budweiser brewery that was one of the town’s biggest employers. The massive rig had run the red light, its driver obviously thinking exactly what Lisa had been thinking just seconds before—that no one would be out in Merrimack this late.
The huge vehicle lost traction on the slick road, its driver locking up the brakes in a desperate attempt to avoid running down the little car. The truck barely slowed, its own momentum and the water-covered pavement combining to thwart the efforts of the frantic driver.
Lisa hesitated, then jammed the accelerator to the floor, praying that she could shoot across the street in front of the semi; it was her only option. For a second, it appeared that it might even work. Maybe on a dry road it would have.
But the road wasn’t dry, and her tires spun, and the drive wheels stuttered for purchase. Lisa watched through the side window in utter helpless horror as the massive truck smashed her Toyota broadside.
CHAPTER FOUR
The occupant of the nondescript blue sedan that had been tailing Lisa Jensen’s car since leaving Washington—known in the United States as Tony Andretti, although that was not his real name—watched in amazement as the eighteen-wheeled behemoth lost traction on the wet road, sliding out of control and running over the Toyota, the mass of the truck virtually enveloping the much smaller car. Tony could not believe his good fortune. This unexpected but welcome development would make his job even simpler than it already was.
The force of the violent impact drove the young woman’s car – splattered all over the truck’s grille like a bug – across the road, straight through the deserted oncoming traffic lane, and directly into a huge maple tree.
Fire erupted from somewhere underneath the car, which was instantly mangled beyond recognition and buried under several tons of beer-laden tractor-trailer. Moments later the truck’s driver, apparently injured but only superficially so, tumbled out of the cab and limped to the front of the vehicle, obviously hoping to be able to pull the other driver out of the wreckage. Tony sat in the blue sedan and watched closely through narrowed eyes as the man skidded to a halt next to the tree and shook his head. For all intents and purposes, the car had vanished, compacted to a fraction of its original size.
Tony eased his vehicle behind the beer truck and flicked on his emergency blinkers. It would be the worst sort of cosmic irony to have his car rear-ended by some damned fool motorist driving along in the middle of the night not paying attention to what he was doing.
He put on a light jacket and stepped into the heavy rain. The deluge instantly plastered his clothing to his skin, but he didn’t care. He walked alongside the jackknifed trailer toward the cab in time to see the weeping driver of the beer truck flop down on his hands and knees on the pavement and crawl under his rig. The man still hadn’t noticed him.
Tony sighed deeply and squatted as well, peering under the truck’s frame. Thick black smoke poured out of and around the engine compartment, issuing from where he assumed the car must now be, as flames licked their way around the fenders on both sides of the cab. He could see the beer truck’s driver, outlined by the rapidly expanding fire against the twisted metal now barely recognizable as a car. “Are you okay? Hello? Is anybody there?” the frantic man shouted in the direction of the ruined Toyota.
Tony listened for any sound that might indicate someone was alive in the wreckage. There was nothing. All he could hear was the crackling of the spreading fire, greedy and grasping, consuming everything it could reach and still searching for more. He began to smell the unmistakably sharp odor of gasoline and considered the possibility of explosion. He knew it was unlikely, something that happened a lot more in the movies and on television than at accident scenes in the real world, but he also was well aware that it was not unheard of, especially when the fuel tank of one of the vehicles was nearly empty. The fumes, not the actual gasoline, were the truly explosive component, and a tank with very little gas left in it was by definition filled with potentially deadly fumes.
Tony had been following this car since D.C., and he knew it had been hours since Lisa Jensen had stopped to refuel, meaning it was critical he finish this now before he became part of the tragedy.
He stood and strode along the muddy shoulder to the maple tree. The battered car, now flickering in the eerie glow of the expanding fire, had been crushed up against it. The driving rain slicked his curly black hair flat against his skull, and he gagged from the stench of burning rubber as he clambered up the hood of the Toyota, careful not to slice his skin open on a razor-sharp edge of crumpled sheet metal. It was an easy climb; the entire front section of the car had been compressed down to about a four-foot square.
The impact of the crash had smashed the vehicle’s windshield, and Tony nodded appreciatively. The shatterproof safety glass had come completely dislodged from the frame, allowing easy access to what was left of the cabin, which was not much. Lisa Jensen lay motionless, pushed by the devastating impact mostly into the passenger’s side of her car. Her eyes were closed and she was covered in blood. Tony wondered whether he could possibly be so lucky as to discover she was already dead.
Then she moaned, the sound thin and quavery. Her eyes remained closed, so Tony knew she was unconscious, but there was no longer any question about whether she was alive or dead. Tony shook his head and sighed again. Nothing in life was ever easy.
He had to admit, though, that the car wreck was an incredibly lucky break. It would take the authorities some time to discover that Lisa Jensen had not actually been killed in this horrendous accident; she had been murdered. And by the time they pieced it together, it would no longer matter, at least not to Tony. This unexpected bit of good fortune had saved him from following the Jensen bitch to her home and killing her there, which had been the original plan.
This was better.
He fumbled in the pocket of his Windbreaker—it was woefully inadequate against this weather—for his switchblade, finally wrapping his fingers around it and yanking it out. He was beginning to shiver heavily but tried to ignore the chill. This would be over soon, and then he would climb back into the toasty warmth of his idling car, where he would have hours to dry off while driving back to D.C.
The switchblade snapped open with a snick. Tony reached into the passenger compartment, moving carefully, supporting himself with his right hand on the crushed windshield frame. With a practiced flick of his wrist, Tony deftly sliced Lisa Jensen’s throat, opening a gash that ran from the right side of her jawbone to the left.
Blood spurted. It was not the cleanest kill Tony had ever made, but under the circumstances he was satisfied with the result. Dead was dead, after all. Following the initial burst of bright crimson arterial spray that added more of Lisa Jensen’s blood to the interior of a car already soaked with it, the volume rapidly slowed, then ended entirely.
Within ninety seconds Lisa Jensen was dead, and Tony no longer had to worry about this particular loose end—he had tied it up into a very nice, neat bow.
CHAPTER FIVE
The driver of the beer truck was named Bud Willingham—a never-ending source of amusement to his fellow drivers, who thought it the funniest thing in the world that a guy named Bud was driving a truck filled with Bud—and he was crying hard now. He crawled out from under the wreckage of the car he had rammed and struggled back to the cab of his truck. He was soaking wet and freezing and certain he was about to lose his job.
Oh yeah, and he had probably just killed someone.
Looking at the scene from the inside of his truck, lit by the flickering yellow glow of the fire, Bud thought you would never know there had just been a horrible car accident were it not for the smells of burning cloth and rubber. The amount of damage his rig had sustained was minimal and the Toyota was mostly invisible from this vantage point.
Bud grabbed his cell phone from where he kept it clipped to his sun visor and punched in 911, giving his location to the emergency dispatcher. The operator asked him to stay on the line unti
l the emergency responders arrived, but he disconnected the call. Then he removed the portable fire extinguisher from the back wall of the cab and leapt back down to the wet road. He landed in a puddle and didn’t notice. He began spraying the base of the fire in wide arcs around the carcass of the smashed car.
He sprayed the fire-retardant foam until the canister was empty and then threw it to the pavement in frustration where it bounced once and skittered to the side of the road. He had made virtually no dent in the still expanding blaze. Helpless to do anything now but wait, Bud trudged to the side of the deserted road and waited for the emergency vehicles to arrive, something he fervently hoped would happen soon. He blinked in surprise when he noticed a dark sedan drive slowly away from the scene toward the interstate’s southbound ramp.
Bud had assumed he was alone except for the poor victim trapped inside the car, but it was obvious from the position of the departing sedan that it had been parked right behind his truck. How long the sedan had been there and what its driver had seen Bud had no idea, but the occupant was a witness to a major automobile accident. Bud knew the driver of the other car should not be leaving and yet there he went, motoring into the darkness, swallowed up by the rain.
He shook his head, spraying water in all directions, trying to comprehend what could possibly have compelled the anonymous witness to stop at the scene of a car wreck and then drive away without offering any help.
Then he forgot all about this strange occurrence until much later as his attention was drawn to a string of emergency vehicles speeding toward the accident site from the direction of Merrimack proper. Within seconds they began screeching to a halt, their strobes jaggedly slicing the 3:00 a.m. darkness in brilliant flashes of red, white and blue.
