Pursuit

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “A TV truck?” Realization hit Jess like a bucket of cold water to the face. The wreck . . . She shivered. Her stomach clenched. “Mrs. Cooper’s death is all over the news, isn’t it?” It occurred to her that, as someone who had been in the accident and survived, the only one who had survived, she was a very obvious focal point for the media. “Are there reporters here at the hospital, too?”

  Her mother nodded.

  “They’ve been camped out around the place since before I got here, and it seems like more of ’em just keep coming. It’s a nightmare just trying to get to the car. We had to tape the curtains in here closed because one of them got up in a room in the wing across the way and was trying to take pictures of you lying there in that bed through the window. They’ve even tried to sneak up here a couple of times. If there wasn’t security at the door, I don’t know what we would have done.”

  “Security?”

  “There’s two Secret Service agents outside the door right now. They change shifts every eight hours or so.”

  Judy’s voice was hushed with respect. Jess knew she was impressed that her daughter rated notice from the White House, no matter how horrific the circumstances. To Judy, a president was somebody you saw on TV. The fact that her daughter’s job brought her into daily contact with people who knew people in the White House had been a source of tremendous pride. When Jess had told her that her boss was the First Lady’s lawyer and personal friend and that she herself had actually been in the same room as the First Lady and been introduced to her by name and shaken her hand and talked to her, Judy’s awe had been palpable.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  But even before Judy shook her head, Jess knew she was not.

  Jess wet her lips. The thought of Secret Service agents outside her door made her blood run cold. Why? She didn’t know, precisely, she realized. The idea of it just made her feel—panicky.

  “Can you believe it? The White House sent them. ’Cause they want to help us out until you’re back on your feet, they said.” Judy’s expression changed as she focused on her oldest child. “How you feeling, honey?”

  Jess thought about that. She was anxious. She was dizzy. She hurt all over, with special emphasis on her head and ribs. And her back ached, right down at the base of her spine, with a continuous, deep, throbbing pain that had her arching this way and that in a futile effort to relieve it.

  “My legs . . .”

  Fighting a rush of fear as she remembered how they had refused to work before, she tried to move them.

  Her right leg slid sideways maybe a couple of inches. The toes curled on her left foot. The pain in her back turned excruciating, shooting up her spine, freezing her in place. She grimaced, and would have groaned, except she didn’t want to worry her mother.

  “When the doctor came in to see you this morning, he said the X-rays didn’t show any sign of permanent damage. No fracture or anything like that. He thinks you must have bruised your spine. They’ve been giving you painkillers, and steroids to help with the swelling, and he said when that goes down you should be able to move better. He said you’ll be stiff and sore for a while, but everything’ll heal sooner or later. It’s just going to take some time.”

  Hearing that made Jess feel like a humongous stone had just been lifted from her chest.

  “Thank God.” She took a deep breath. Until that moment she hadn’t realized just how frightened she had been that she might have lost the use of her legs for good. If she wasn’t going to die or be paralyzed, then she was going to live and eventually be fine, so she might as well get on with it. “I want to sit up.”

  Her mother nodded and hit the remote. Jess felt the head of the bed slowly rising beneath her.

  “How’s that?”

  “Better.”

  Filled with renewed determination, gritting her teeth with effort, Jess concentrated on moving her legs. Her right knee rose off the mattress high enough to tent the covers. She was less successful with her left leg but managed to at least shift it sideways. The effort sent another sharp pain shooting up her back and electric tingles coursing down both legs, causing her to squirm in protest, but still she felt a wave of relief. At least that was proof she could move.

  “You’re doing good,” her mother encouraged as Jess, frozen in place now, waited for the pain to recede. Which, somewhat to her surprise, it did.

  Breathing easier, she concentrated again, and managed to get her left knee off the mattress, too. Then she cautiously wiggled the toes on both feet and turned her feet from side to side at the ankle. The pain was bad but not nearly as bad as the thought of her legs being paralyzed had been, so she persevered until she was sure everything still worked. Finally, using her hands for leverage, she scooted farther up in the bed until she was propped up against her pillows, and brushed her hair back from her sweaty face with both hands. Moving hurt. So did lifting her arms and scrunching up her face, which she did in reaction to the other pain, but she kept on. She figured that if she did only what didn’t hurt, she would basically just lie there and breathe. Shallowly.

  “I need a shower.”

  “How about I get a bowl of water and some soap and you make do with washing your face and hands for now?”

  Jess thought about the effort required to move at all, extrapolated that to the far greater effort to get out of bed and somehow make it to the shower, then stand, sit, or lie there beneath the steaming-hot water for long enough to get clean, and made a face. With the best will in the world, she couldn’t do it. A bowl of water and some soap was not what she wanted, but clearly it was what she was going to have to settle for.

  “Fine,” she said with a sigh.

  Her mother headed for the bathroom, flipping on the overhead light as she passed the switch. Jess flinched at the unexpected assault of so much brightness. While her eyes were adjusting to the near-blinding fluorescent glow, she cast a quick look at the bedside clock. The numbers were blurry since she wasn’t wearing her contacts, but by squinting and tilting her head and shading her eyes with her hands she was able to read them. The time was five-twenty-three, and from the light filtering in around the curtains she knew it wasn’t a.m., because at this time of year at almost five-thirty in the morning it would still be dark outside. Therefore, it was late Sunday afternoon; ordinarily, she would be finishing up briefs to be presented in court on Monday. Apparently, whatever they’d put in the shots they’d given her—no way was she ever having another IV for as long as she lived, as she’d finally made crystal clear to the bevy of hospital personnel who had taken turns trying to bully her into it—must have been something potent to make her sleep for a little more than twelve hours. Her mother had said they’d given her painkillers; she was still feeling pain, so they weren’t doing so great with that, but at least she’d gotten plenty of sleep.

  Her glasses, the ones with the big black frames that she kept as backup to the contacts, rested on the table beside the clock. They were a little fuzzy around the edges but unmistakable, and she guessed that someone—Grace, most likely—must have fetched them from her apartment. Reaching for them greedily, sliding them on and experiencing the instant relief of seeing the world around her in focus again, she noticed something else: the TV remote beside the clock.

  The temptation proved irresistible. She didn’t want to know, she was better off not knowing, but she couldn’t help herself: She picked up the remote, clicked it at the ceiling-mounted TV just beyond the foot of her bed, and . . .

  A close-up of Annette Cooper smiling as she shook hands with someone an unseen narrator identified as Chilean president Jorge Peres de Toros blinked to life. The camera pulled back, and Jess saw that the First Lady looked beautiful in a floor-length white evening dress that shimmered with sequins. Her trademark short blond hair gleamed in the light of the overhead chandelier. Her skin was smooth and tan and glowing. Her eyes were bright.

  Jess had expected it, of course, when she had turned on the TV. Still, the shock of seein
g Annette Cooper was overwhelming. She caught her breath. As agonizing as it was to watch, she couldn’t look away as the First Lady said something over her shoulder to her tuxedo-clad husband, who laughed and nodded in response.

  “. . . such a short time ago Mrs. Cooper was at the President’s side as he ...”

  Biting down hard on her lower lip, Jess changed the channel.

  A shot of the White House filled the screen. A crowd, an enormous sea of people that seemed to stretch all the way to the Mall, had gathered around it, and the camera panned dozens upon dozens of weeping faces. It seemed to be a live shot, taken in real time, because the sky that formed the backdrop was streaked with sunset colors of orange and purple and gold, and the White House itself cast a long shadow across the lawn.

  “. . . thousands gathering in the capital to pay tribute to First Lady Annette Cooper, who this evening is lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Mrs. Cooper was killed in a car crash shortly after . . .”

  Punching the button with far more force than was necessary now, Jess changed the channel again. She was breathing hard, she realized, and her palms were sweaty. Her stomach churned. She felt gorge backing up in her throat.

  It was night, and a car, blackened and crushed and flipped over on its roof, filled the screen.

  Jess’s eyes widened. She was instantly bathed in cold sweat. The shot seemed to have been taken from above, and it showed the still-smoking undercarriage, the flattened tires, the circle of charred grass in which the vehicle rested, the dozens of firefighters and rescue workers and police officers and military personnel and plainclothes investigators moving around the scene. Make and model were impossible to determine because of the car’s burned-out state, but she knew instantly that it was the black Lincoln that Davenport had sent her to pick up Mrs. Cooper in. It was a night shot, lit up by big orange klieg lights focused on the scene and the bright beams of spotlights crisscrossing the wreck from above—helicopter searchlights, she realized, and realized, too, that the shot had been taken from a helicopter soon after the accident.

  So soon that she might still have been lying semiconscious on the dark slope that fell away from the road on the right side of the shot.

  Jess started to shake.

  “. . . preliminary investigation indicates that the vehicle was traveling at excessive amounts of speed—one estimate suggests as much as ninety miles an hour in a forty-five-mile-an-hour zone—when the driver, identified as Raymond Kenny of Silver Spring, Maryland, who had worked for the company that owned the car, Executive Limo, for fourteen years, lost control and the car went off the side of Brerton Road and rolled down an embankment, killing three of the four people inside, including First Lady Annette Cooper. She was said to be on her way to visit a dying friend at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital in Fredericksburg and . . .”

  Dear God.

  Closing her eyes, feeling like the world was tipping sideways and she was clinging on by her fingernails in an effort not to fall off, Jess hit the power button, hit it without even consciously making the decision to do so. It was as if her body, reacting in its own defense, just said no to exposure to anything else that might cause her distress. But even with her eyes closed, even with the voices from the television silenced and the screen gone black, it still felt like she was tumbling down into nothingness as images from the accident chased one another through her mind.

  9

  Speeding through the night, going faster and faster until the rolling hills and dark pastures and a narrow fence line of tall trees outside the window became nothing more than a black blur and her heart was pumping with alarm, feeling a hard jolt that sent the car skidding sideways, the terrible squeal of brakes drowned out after a single terrified moment by screams . . .

  “Jess, are you all right?”

  Jess opened her eyes. She was drenched in sweat and drawing deep, shuddering breaths, and she realized from her mother’s expression that she was probably as pale as a piece of angel food cake.

  “She was said to be on her way to visit a dying friend at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital in Fredericksburg . . .” That’s what they’d said on TV.

  Only it was a lie. They were telling lies.

  Why?

  “Jess?”

  Frowning, Judy walked toward her carrying a blue plastic basin filled with water that sloshed softly with every step, a small unwrapped bar of soap, a blue washrag, and a matching towel.

  “Jessica Jane? Do you hear me talking to you?”

  It occurred to Jess that she was staring at her mother as if she had been poleaxed. She willed herself to focus.

  Think it through later. Shake it off.

  “Oh, sorry. I was just . . . I’m fine.”

  That is, other than the fact that she was dizzy and limp with dread. Which she didn’t mean to share with her mother. Which she didn’t even totally understand herself. Taking a not-too-deep breath, she fought to get her emotions under control, to seem like her normal self, so her mother wouldn’t guess that something was majorly wrong. She didn’t know why she felt this was so important, but she did.

  Dark figures rushing past her down the slope . . .

  Jess realized she was breathing way too fast.

  “You don’t look fine. You look worse than you did when you were unconscious, for pete’s sake.”

  “I have a little headache.”

  That was true, as far as it went. Also, her palms were sweaty. Her mouth was dry. Her pulse was racing. Disoriented, that’s how she felt. Almost as if she could see—no, she didn’t want to see.

  Who were the dark figures? Were they even real?

  She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to know.

  Her mother’s frown deepened. She was looking at her hard.

  “Maybe I should call the nurse.”

  “No. No, don’t.”

  You can’t go there now. Snap out of it.

  Every instinct Jess possessed screamed that she had to keep her mother—keep her family, keep everyone—from knowing that her memory wasn’t totally wiped out where the crash was concerned after all. Instead, it was throwing up weird images like puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit. No, make that terrifying images.

  Fire . . . It started as a tiny orange burst and then—boom!—it exploded, pillars of flame enveloping the car, shooting toward the ink-black sky. . . .

  Jess closed her eyes. She clenched her fists. She bit down hard on the tip of her tongue. The pain did what it was supposed to do—it cleared the hideous pictures from her mind.

  “Jess?”

  Jess opened her eyes. “It’s just a headache . . . I’m better now.”

  “It’s been a while since they last gave you anything for pain—maybe we ought to ask for something.”

  “It’s okay. It’s gone.”

  Her mother was still looking at her with concern. Jess took a deep breath and managed a weak smile for her mother as Judy settled the basin on her stomach.

  “Thanks.” Jess felt limp, as if the pictures in her head had taken a physical toll on her body. “And thanks for staying with me, by the way.”

  “Are you kidding? It’d take wild horses to get me out of here. After you thought somebody attacked you?” Judy made a tsk-tsk noise. “Here, let me help you with that.”

  “I can manage.”

  Making a conscious effort to keep her hands steady and her head in the present, Jess summoned another perfunctory smile and tucked her hair behind her ears and dipped the washrag in the warm water.

  “Maybe the attack was a hallucination.” Careful to keep her voice free of any inflection, Jess wrung out the rag without looking at her mother.

  The attack was real. It happened.

  But even though she was almost completely convinced of it, she didn’t say so. After listening to the TV, she was beginning to get her mind around the true enormity of what Annette Cooper’s death meant. The global scope of it. The interest in it. And the possible ramifications. Through no fault of her
own, she was caught up in a world-class tragedy. As the only living witness, in fact. Not a comfortable spot to be in. And, she was becoming increasingly afraid, not a safe one.

  Whatever was going on—and she was almost positive that something she’d really rather not know about was going on—she didn’t want to get her mother—her family—involved.

  That was the thing about family, she was discovering. Having them, having people you care about, makes you so damned vulnerable.

  Annette Cooper fled the White House.

  “Whether it was a hallucination or not”—Jess, mindful of her injuries, carefully dabbed at her cheeks and chin, as Judy retrieved a hairbrush from her purse, held it up so Jess could see it, and set it on the bedside table next to the remote—“I’m not leaving this place until you do.”

  That was her mother—loyal to the bitter end. For better or for worse.

  “I love you, Mom.” It was something she almost never said anymore. None of them did.

  Her mother’s face softened. “I love you too, Jessica Rabbit.”

  It was a nickname from when she’d been a little girl, funny, so her sisters said, because their Jessica was the polar opposite of her cartoon namesake. Not sexy, not a man-eater, just plain, skinny, blind-as-a-bat bookworm Jess.

  Thanks for the confidence builder, guys. She could almost hear them answering, You’re welcome, Wabbit.

  “Look what else I’ve got.” The crinkle of tearing plastic wrap was followed by her mother waving a cheap pink toothbrush at her, then placing it and a small tube of Crest beside the hairbrush. “It’s been in my purse since the dentist gave it to me.”

  Jess’s eyes lit up. “Fantastic.”

  Judy poured her a glass of water from the yellow plastic pitcher beside the bed, and Jess quickly brushed her teeth. The minty tang of the toothpaste was so normal, so much a part of her regular, everyday life, that the very ordinariness of it felt special.