by Jayne, Chris
When the PA had come in the door, Louise had set her phone down on the end of the exam table. She picked it up now, intending to try Roger again while they waiting. The screen of her smart phone was black. For a second, she felt complete disorientation. Since the cell phone didn’t work at her house, she often let it go dead, but it had been on the car charger for the entire way to Lewiston, and she’d looked at it when they had arrived at the hospital. It had been at over 40%. Absolutely no way was it dead.
“Sandy,” she said, uncertain. “Look at your phone.”
“What?”
“Look at your phone.”
In the darkness, Louise could hear Sandy fumbling for her purse. There was a pause, then, “It’s dead. But, how can that be? I know I charged it last night.”
“Mine’s dead too,” Louise said.
“Maybe the power outage affected the phone networks,” Sandy suggested.
“No,” Louise said. “No. It doesn’t work like that. Even if the networks were out and we didn’t have a signal, our phones, the screens,” she clarified, “should still work.”
“You’re right,” Sandy agreed tentatively. She gazed at her phone for a long moment as if the answer would suddenly materialize. “What’s going on?”
The two women sat in silence, listening to the voices around them. Without warning, the curtain to their cubicle separated wide. Silhouetted against a small amount of light coming in through the emergency room outer doors was a man. “Do your phones work?” he asked.
Louise had no idea who the man was, but he didn’t seem like a staff member. “No,” she said. “Neither of ours do. Do you know what’s going on?”
“No,” the man snapped, and threw the curtain closed again.
Suddenly, they heard shouting. “We have a staff emergency, we have a staff emergency,” a voice called out.
“What the…” Decisively, Louise stood and turned to Sandy. “Wait here.” Pulling back the curtain she walked out into the dark ER. Only two or three of the other eight cubicles had been occupied, so it was not particularly crowded.
The physician’s assistant who had come into talk to them ran by. Louise caught her arm. “What’s happening?”
“Not sure,” the woman said in a rush, her face frightened. “The generators didn’t kick on. There’s a couple people on ventilators in the surgical suite who need to be bagged manually and…”
“The little girl with the broken arm?” Louise explained. “We were just leaving, but we didn’t get our script.”
The woman threw her hands up and looked distractedly away, as the shouting at the door that connected the ER with the rest of the hospital increased in volume. Even in the dim light, Louise could see her uncertainty. “You can wait,” she offered. “But unless the power comes on, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t even give you a prescription unless we can enter it into the computer first.” She took a step away, then turned back and lowered her voice. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but if it were me, I’d just go ahead and leave. She’s not hurt that badly. No point in sitting here. What they gave her will keep her knocked out for at least a couple of hours. By then, the power will surely be back on and we can call in the prescription.” She paused. “I’m sorry, but…”
Behind them, the double doors to the ambulance bay banged wide open with a crash. There was enough light for Louise to see it was a police officer. “I need a doctor,” he shouted. “We got problems out here, people, big problems.” His voice was desperately out of breath, as if he had run a long way. “All the cars stopped working at once. We got at least a couple people hurt bad on Main. Car rolled right onto the sidewalk, ran over a woman with two little kids.”
“Oh my God,” the PA gasped and ran off towards the officer. Louise, shaken, went back into the cubicle.
“Did I hear someone say someone got run over?” Sandy asked, her voice now holding a note of real fear. “Run over? What is this, Lou?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound good.” She looked around the cubicle. “Do you have a water bottle?”
“A what?”
“A water bottle.”
Hesitantly, Sandy handed a half empty plastic bottle to Louise, who rushed to the cubicle’s small sink. The water appeared to be still flowing, at least for now. She filled Sandy’s bottle. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim light, and squinting, she realized there was an empty plastic bottle in the trash. She grabbed it out, and filled it too.
“What are you doing?” Sandy asked, shocked. “You don’t know whose that was.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Louise snapped. “We’re going.”
“But we don’t have the prescription.”
Louise caught her friend’s arm. “I don’t think we’re going to get it,” she said. “We need to go.”
Sandy looked horrified. “But she can’t walk. And we can’t leave without the doctor saying it’s okay.”
Louise rushed out of the cubicle, frantically scanning the ER. The PA to whom she’d spoken just minutes earlier had gone out the door with the police officer, Louise assumed. Other than one man who stood, looking confused in the opening of his cubicle, wearing nothing but his boxers, the place seemed empty.
All hospitals are the same, Louise reminded herself, and she rushed to the door where she was hopeful she would find… Yes! Tucked away in an alcove were multiple wheelchairs. Snapping one open, she scooted it back to where Sandy waited.
“Where did you get that?” she asked. “Did they give it to you?”
“I borrowed it,” Louise said. “Come on.”
“I don’t think we should move her, Louise. Really.”
“Come on!” Ignoring Sandy, she went and gently started lifting Marie off the table.
“What are you doing?” Sandy grabbed Louise’s arm. “Louise, you can’t take her!”
As quickly and gently as possible, Louise lay Marie back down and grabbed Sandy by the shoulders. “Something’s happened, Sandy. Something bad. You need to listen and trust me. We need to get out of here, now.”
Something in Louise’s tone got through to Sandy. In the dim light, Louise saw her friend’s face collapse with emotion. She glanced around the dark cubicle and finally, it seemed like the eeriness of the silent Emergency Room was registering. “Okay,” she whispered and helped Louise gently ease the nine-year-old into the wheelchair. Frantically, Louise opened cabinets, and found a stack of blankets. She grabbed every one of them and stuffed them into the chair next to Marie.
No one said a word as Sandy pushed the wheelchair containing her daughter, Louise walking ahead, out of the emergency room’s double doors into the parking lot, out into a world that had just changed forever.
Chapter 3
Angela
Monday
11:10 AM Mountain Time
Interstate I-90 near Reed Point, Montana
* * *
Angela Jones looked out at the terrain that flashed by the car, impressed by what she saw. Montana was absolutely spectacular, so different from everywhere she’d lived in the United States, and also very different from Albania.
There, she’d grown up in the mountains, but it was nothing like this. Albania was deep valleys, sharp hills, small squalid villages, all rocks and up and down. Here, the glimpses of the ranges she was getting to the north, towering over endless grasslands, were breath-taking, made all the more impressive by the fact that what she seeing was at least fifty miles away, perhaps even more. From the highway, she was even getting occasional glimpses of the Yellowstone River.
Angela had been tracking their progress on the map app on her phone, and she glanced at it now. Just a few more minutes until they’d be pulling off the interstate and traveling north on a two-lane road. Angela’s options were rapidly diminishing.
She understood now, fully, why she was here. They needed someone whose FBI credentials were absolute and unimpeachable. Rossi, as a Miami cop, had some clout in Florida, but across state lines, he was a n
obody. She was not. To get out of tough spot, they’d use her. By the time anyone checked that no FBI agent named Angela Jones was working in Florida - or now Montana - in any official capacity, they’d be gone. Her cover would be blown forever, but Saldata didn’t care. Couldn’t care. If they didn’t find and neutralize Lori Dovner, it was likely his life in the United States was over.
Her options were narrow and getting worse. Reflexively, she opened her bag and checked for her gun. Ironic that they had taken away her burner phone and left her with her own cell and a gun. Clearly, they thought the horrific threats Saldata had made against her family were enough to keep her in check. Unfortunately, at least for now, they were.
Angela was a small woman; unlike the massive handguns that the men carried, she preferred a Glock 43 9mm. Though she’d been an agent for seven years, she’d never fired her gun in the field. She was terrified that those days were at an end. She also knew that in the trunk of this rental car were several long guns in their hard shell cases, as well as a bag containing items she didn’t even want to think about. Bottom line? On a private jet, you can transport quite an arsenal.
Angela knew that the next time the car stopped, she could put a bullet in both of the men’s brains before either could turn his head halfway back to look at her. But what good would that do? The call that Saldata had promised her had to be made at regular intervals would not happen, and she would be signing a death warrant. She might live, but her family would not. Saldata’s threat was not a bluff.
Considering her options, she looked at the stack of papers and folders next to her on the back seat, and wearily she picked up the top folder, wanting to review her notes again about Bowenville, Montana and the home where they all assumed Lori would be staying with her sister and brother-in-law. She’d reviewed the information about the town while on the plane, and she had to say it didn’t look good. Although the town was isolated and rural, the actual house was in a very standard neighborhood. No forest cover to hide behind, and the town small enough that a car parked randomly on a street for hours was sure to be noticed. Parking on the street and waiting for Dovner to show her face was not a very smart option. Unfortunately, she didn’t see what other choices they had.
Flipping through the stack, she saw Lori Dovner’s face staring out at her on one page, then another and another. They had many photos of her; she’d been photographed extensively through the years at many parties, as well as featured in local magazines that covered local food and lifestyle stories, but the one in the stack Angela paused on was Dovner’s driver’s license photo, provided to Saldata by Rossi who of course had access to her DMV files. Most license pictures were horrible, but Dovner’s was actually quite good, clear, her attractive face staring directly at the camera. In most of her photos, her red-blond hair flowed loose around her face, but in her license photo it was tied back in a ponytail, almost hidden, and, her eyes…
Angela paused. Dovner’s eyes. They were so familiar. Those eyes in a face with no hair…
Before she could stop or control her reaction in any way, she gasped out an involuntary, “Oh!” loudly enough for the men in the front seat to hear her.
Raoul Saldata turned sharply and looked at Angela. “What?”
Angela realized in a heartbeat that she had made a terrible mistake, but it was too late to try to cover it. Saldata would know she was lying and if he even suspected she was not being completely truthful with him, they’d stop the car and Garth would start cutting her fingers off until she talked. And talk she would; everyone did eventually. So, in the millisecond after she realized her mistake, she also realized that there was no point in trying to hide anything.
“I saw her.” She raised her face and looked him confidently in the eye. “She was there.” Hopefully her utterly calm demeanor would fool him far more than any attempt at prevarication would.
It seemed to. “Who?”
Tentatively, her hand shaking, she held up the printout of Dovner’s license photo. “Dovner. She was there at the rest stop. I saw her in the ladies room. She looks totally different. Her hair is very short and black and I would never have realized it was her, except she took her sunglasses off.”
Her stomach churned with nausea, but she prayed nothing showed in her face. Her plan - that if she could just find and warn Dovner somehow - had been handed to her. Dovner had been there, in front of her, in the one place Saldata was not watching her, and she’d not seen it.
“Go back,” Saldata hissed to Garth. “Now.”
Garth, behind the wheel, stepped on the gas, accelerating to nearly 100 miles an hour, before de-accelerating almost as sharply to near zero. With wheels squealing, they turned into a “Authorized Vehicles Only” crossover in the interstate’s median. The eastbound lanes were clear, Garth jerked the wheel to enter the road and…
…the car slowed, then rolled to a silent stop.
And in one instant, the world changed forever.
Part II
One Week Earlier
Chapter 4
Lori
Monday
8:00 AM Eastern Time
Miami, Florida
* * *
How was it, Lori Dovner asked herself, that the most popular, trendy, sought-after young caterer in Miami, Florida couldn’t manage to get breakfast on the table for a five-year-old and a ten-year-old? How was that even possible?
She’d served sitting senators and congressmen, the CEOs of some of the biggest corporations in America, one ex-president, and the Dalai Lama, but she couldn’t seem to make a frozen waffle that a five-year-old would eat.
“Brandon, you liked these last week.”
Brandon shoved the pieces of cut waffle around on his plate. “No, I didn’t.”
“Pretty sure you did.”
“He only likes the Mickey Mouse ones,” Grace offered helpfully.
Thanks, Grace, Lori muttered to herself.
Brandon started to cry. Big fat tears ran down his chubby cheeks. Lori knew the real problem, and it wasn’t waffles. On a fundamental level, Brandon hated school. He’d been deliriously happy in the pre-K day care he’d attended four mornings a week for two years, but this year, in full day Kindergarten, he’d been miserable from day one. Nearly two months into the school year it was getting worse by the day.
Lori had tried more than once to talk to him, to figure out what was causing this change in her formerly cheerful little boy. Was someone being mean to him? Did the teacher yell? Was the work too hard? Not hard enough? Was he bored? Overstimulated? Just last Thursday, when he’d tried to plead a stomachache for the third day in a row, she’d gone in and talked to the teacher, Joy Brinkley. Ms. Brinkley, who seemed as nice and sweet as could be, had professed herself equally confused. But when she described Brandon as “quiet and withdrawn,” Lori knew it was worse than she thought.
This last weekend, Lori had events Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night, leaving her no time to puzzle over the problem. But this coming week was much slower - only a dinner party for eight on Saturday night - and she was going to make Brandon’s unhappiness her top priority.
However, right this second, she did not need this, not on a Monday morning, when she hadn’t gotten in until after 11:00 last night and - she took a quick look at her phone calendar app - she had a vet appointment with Sasha at 9:00 and then two home visits scheduled. “Brandon, it’s a waffle. You don’t have to cry about it.”
Simone, Lori’s French au pair, breezed into the room. “He likes the big breakfast at McDonald’s.” She shrugged, typically French. “I have time to take him before school.”
“I appreciate the suggestion, but no.” Frozen waffles were bad enough, but the idea that she’d send her five-year-old off to fast food as a better alternative was horrifying. “Brandon, what if I made you…”
Lori froze. As she’d been bustling around the kitchen getting the food out for Brandon and Grace, she’d been simultaneously organizing her own day. Suddenly she realized s
he didn’t see her catchall hobo bag. She looked at Simone. “Have you seen my bag?” Even as she said it though, she knew the question was absurd. Simone had been asleep when Lori came in last night, and this was the first time the au pair had been downstairs.
“No.”
Her laptop computer, her wallet with her license and all her credit cards, everything was in that catchall. “Oh crap.” Lori slumped.
She knew exactly where the bag was.
“Swear jar, mom,” ten-year-old Grace piped in.
“Crap’s not swearing,” Lori muttered, distracted.
“Then why can’t we say it?”
“I don’t know. Ask me tonight. Oh, crap!” Lori repeated. At Simone’s utterly confused look, Lori explained. “I left my bag at the job last night. I got it out of the car because I needed my laptop to check a recipe.” She shook her head, frustrated. “I know it’s there. I’m positive.”
“How far is it? To go back to get it?”
“It’s not that far. He lives in one of the big houses on Waterway.” Lori paused, not really sure how to go on.
When the silence lengthened, Simone prompted, “What is it?”
“The last thing I want to do is go back there. It was sort of weird when I left last night.” Normally, Lori would not have shared something both professional and personal with the twenty-one-year-old young woman, but so odd had the events of the previous night been, that she found the words tumbling out.
Simone popped a granola bar from the cabinet into her backpack. “Weird?”
“I don’t know,” Lori paused as she pictured the scene. “Yeah, weird. Out of the blue, he just asked us to leave. Walked into the kitchen and told us to go. We hadn’t even served the dessert.”
Simone digested this. “Was he mad?” Simone worked for Lori as an au pair, a live-in household helper, but on several occasions when one of employees had cancelled at the last minute, she had filled in on catering jobs, so she had enough experience to know that this was very unusual. Customers didn’t just ask the caterer to leave in the middle of the party.
